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Congress has announced they intend to make it more difficult to claim Unemployment Benefits.
Starting this Monday, the forms will be printed only in English.
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Obama's claims that our nation's problems are because 'lady luck' turned against him and he is being thwarted by a 'do nothing Congress' is simply more whining from a pathetic, petulant president who is out of his league. His dogs simply do not hunt. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
Obama's "Attack Rabbit" moment? For those who are old enough they might remember this was one of many self inflicted wounds Jimmy Carter accomplished.
Lady Luck, where are you when I need you? (See 1c below.)
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More bad luck regarding Obama's ineffective Middle East policies? Hamas rockets continue to rain down on Israel including a school that, fortunately, was not in session.
Netanyahu must realize he cannot treat Hamas attacks as did his predecessor, Olmert. Neither should Netanyahu stand down when Obama and Hillary demand he exercise restraint. Israel must deal Hamas a blow from which it cannot recover - Israeli school begins in a few weeks! Defeat is the only thing terrorists understand and the U.N. only understands it is always Israel's fault so waiting for Godot is not going to work - never has, never will.
Netanyahu should reject Hamas' overtures because they mean nothing and Hamas will restart attacking Israel when it serves their purpose.
Of course, easy for me to say because I am not being rocketed.(See 2 below.)
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Israel's vaunted military and leadership seem stymied by Iran's cunning and power.
A strong U.S. president would never have allowed Iran to achieve its pinnacle of power but there are no strong U.S. presidents in sight.
So, we will have to settle for Obama's weapon of choice. More empty words and meaningless threats from our feckless State Department.
We can at least take comfort that Obama is receiving daily briefings in between rounds of golf while Israelis receives rounds of rockets. (See 3,3a and 3b below.)
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According to Morgan Stanley's Asian Executive, China may be switching gears. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Next President Must Live Like Coolidge, Not Obama
By MARK STEYN
Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has been in the presidential race for only 20 minutes, but he's already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign:
"I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can."
This will be grand news to Schylar Capo of Virginia. The 11-year-old made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days and, for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish and Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers) who charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species and issued her a $535 fine.
If the federal child abuser has that much time on his hands, he should have charged the cat, who was illegally transporting the protected species from his gullet to his intestine.
So Schylar and other middle schoolers targeted by the microregulatory superstate might well appreciate Gov. Perry's pledge. But you never know, it might just catch on with the broader population, too.
Bill Clinton thought otherwise.
"I got tickled by watching Gov. Perry," said the former president. "And he's saying, 'Oh, I'm going to Washington to make sure that the federal government stays as far away from you as possible — while I ride on Air Force One and that Marine One helicopter and go to Camp David and travel around the world and have a good time.' I mean, this is crazy."
This is the best argument the supposedly smartest operator in the Democratic Party can muster?
If Clinton wants to make the increasingly and revoltingly unrepublican lifestyle of the American president a campaign issue, Perry should call his bluff.
If I understand correctly the justification advanced by spokesgropers for the Transport Security Administration, the reason they poke around the genitalia of 3-year-old girls and make wheelchair-bound nonagenarians in the final stages of multiple sclerosis remove their diapers in public is that by doing so they have made commercial air travel the most secure environment in America.
In that case, why can't the president fly commercial?
You'd be surprised how many heads of state do.
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands flies long haul on KLM. Don't worry, she's not in coach all night squeezed next to the mom with the crying baby and the party of English soccer hooligans baying moronic victory chants all night.
She rides upfront and has so many aides that sometimes she'll book the entire first class cabin!
By contrast, the president of the United States took his personal 747 (a trans-Atlantic aircraft designed to hold 500 people that costs a fifth of a million dollars per hour to run) to go from Washington to a Democratic Party retreat in Williamsburg, Va., 150 miles away.
Queen Margrethe of Denmark flies commercial, too. For local trips she has a small Challenger jet. When she's not zipping around in it, they use it for fishery enforcement off Greenland.
Does that detail alone suggest that a thousand-year dynasty dating back to King Gorm the Sleepy (regnant 936-958) travels in rather less luxury than the supposed citizen-executive of a so-called republic of limited government?
Undoubtedly King Gorm the Sleepy would have slept a lot better on Air Force One, yet the Danish Royal Family seems to get by.
Symbols are important. In other circumstances, the Obamas' vacation on Martha's Vineyard might not be terribly relevant.
But this is a president who blames his dead-parrot economy on "bad luck" — specifically, the Arab Spring and the Japanese tsunami. As Harry Truman would have said, the buck stops at that big hole in the ground that's just opened up over in Japan.
Let us take these whiny excuses at face value and accept for the sake of argument that Obama's Recovery Summer would now be going gangbusters had not the Libyan rebels seized Benghazi and sent the economy into a tailspin.
Did no one in the smartest administration in history think this might be the time for the president to share in some of the "bad luck" and forgo an ostentatious vacation in the exclusive playground of the rich?
When you're the presiding genius of the Brokest Nation in History, enjoying the lifestyle of the superrich while allegedly in "public service" sends a strikingly Latin American message.
Underlining the point, the president then decided to pass among his suffering people by touring small town Minnesota in an armored Canadian bus accompanied by a 40-car motorcade.
In some of these one-stoplight burgs, the president's escort had more vehicles than the municipality he was graciously blessing with his presence.
By sheer coincidence, I happen to be writing a conspiracy thriller in which a state-of-the-art Canadian bus transporting President Michael Douglas on a tour of Minnesota goes rogue and takes over the American government.
Eventually, crack CIA operative Keira Knightley breaks in the rear window and points out to the Canadian bus that it's now $15 trillion in debt. In a white-knuckle finale, the distraught and traumatized bus makes a break for Winnipeg pursued by Chinese creditors.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Instead of demonstrating the common touch — that Obama is feeling your pain Clinton-style — the motorcade tour seemed an ingenious parody of what (in Victor Davis Hanson's words) "a wealthy person would do if he wanted to act 'real' for a bit" — in the way that swanky Park Avenue types 80 years ago liked to go slumming up in Harlem.
Why exactly does the president need a 40-car escort to drive past his subjects in Dead Moose Junction? It doesn't communicate strength, but only waste, and decadence.
Are these vehicles filled with "aides" working round the clock on his supersecret magic plan to "create" "jobs" that King Barack the Growth Slayer is planning to lay before Congress in the fall or winter, spring, whatever?
If the argument is that the president cannot travel without that level of security, I note that Prince William and his lovely bride did not require a 40-car motorcade on their recent visit to Los Angeles, and there are at least as many people on the planet who want a piece of Wills and Kate as do of Obama.
Like the president, the couple made do with Canuck transportation, but in their case they flew in and out on a Canadian air force transport described as "no more luxurious than a good motor home": The shower is the size of a pay phone. It did not seem to diminish her royal highness' glamour.
I wish Gov. Perry well in his stated goal of banishing Washington to the periphery of Americans' lives.
One way he could set the tone is by foregoing much of the waste and excess that attends the imperial presidency. Believe it or not, many presidents and prime ministers manage to get by with only a 14-car or even a four-car motorcade.
I know: Hard to imagine, but there it is. A post-prosperity America that has dug itself into a multitrillion-dollar hole will eventually have to stop digging.
When it does so, the government of the United States will have to learn to do more with less.
A good place to start would be restoring the lifestyle of the president to something Calvin Coolidge might recognize.
1a)Economist Jeffrey Sachs Hits Obama: "There's Never Been A Plan"
"We're almost three years into this administration, and there's never been a plan. And that's what everybody feels. And the president didn't lead. He waited. The quintessential image, sadly, of an administration that I supported and hoped for much better, is the president waiting by the phone to hear what Congress calls to tell him. It doesn't work in this country that way. It's not a matter that it's August. It's a matter that it's August 2011. So we've been drifting for a very long time. And we've been drifting down. And we had a short-term plan that failed. A short-term stimulus that was supposed to get the economy back on track, but it failed. And now we have nothing behind it. And we have no agreements, and we have no leadership. And, frankly, I do think it's pretty odd the president's on vacation right now. Normally I wouldn't care about such things, but the world markets are in deep crisis. It's no joke. This isn't just an up-and-down little blip. This is a very serious situation."
1b)Barack Obama: He's come undone
The wheels are off the Obama bus. It's up on the cinder blocks on some rental property in Martha's Vineyard this weekend. It is the end of the summer of discontent for a president who's clearly in over his head and whose wallowing is most unbecoming.
Mr. Obama's economic policy prescriptions, textbook Keynesian mumbo jumbo, have failed. History would have been instructive had only he been learned in the discipline. Obviously, he's not. Next month, he'll return with yet another chapter of the novella best titled "Hocus Pocus."
Policy failures aside, we can only wonder if America also should be worried about the mental state of this president. Just prior to his Midwestern bus tour, at a private New York fundraiser, Obama's reported to have likened opposition to his presidency to the persecution of Martin Luther King. Then, on tour, his maudliness plunged deeper as he compared his plight to the sufferings of Abraham Lincoln.
As Gettysburg College history professor Allen C. Guelzo reminded in National Review Online, Mr. Lincoln rose to the challenge and exhibited greatness in his leadership. But, "In our current national agony ... we have come to see a littleness, not a greatness, in Barack Obama. And it is not for him that we feel sorry, but for ourselves."
For it is a tragedy of our own making.
1c)Obama dangerously close to a 'Killer Rabbit' moment
President heads for Martha's Vineyard vacation as unemployment lines grow
Jimmy Carter had reason to regret going fishing on his vacation to Plains, Ga., while he was president. (Jimmy Carter Library photo / August 19, 2011)
By John Kass
Is President Barack Obama on the verge of being attacked by a bunny wabbit?
Absolutely.
All the signs suggest that Obama is in immediate danger of a rabbit attack. It would ruin what's left of his presidency. And it would horrify Democrats by ushering in, say, a President Bachmann.
It might happen while he's on that ridiculous vacation of his. Obama is chilling at some exclusive multimillion-dollar estate on Martha's Vineyard, even as thousands more Americans hit the unemployment lines, and as Republicans like Michele Bachmann make wild-eyed, crazed claims about bringing back $2 per gallon gas.
"I think it's a little too early yet for the president to be attacked by a rabbit," cautioned a veteran Chicago Democrat wise in the ways of Obama. "But it's close. Real close."
Anyone who thinks Obama is safe from a rabbit attack has forgotten what happened to President Jimmy Carter In 1979. Carter was attacked by a swimming rabbit, and the subsequent "Killer Rabbit" stories helped destroy his presidency. It led to the election of Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide and an unprecedented economic revival.
There are eerie similarities. Like Obama, Carter was at that point where he was constantly viewed as weak and ineffectual. His fellow Democrats had lost patience with him. Liberal writers who once fawned on him had turned against him.
And like Obama, Carter foolishly left the White House for a "vacation." Carter went home to Georgia for some fishing. Once his canoe hit the water of a pond, a terrible thing happened. A rabbit swam near with anger in its eyes.
The story was reported by the Associated Press, and the papers picked up accounts of the "Killer Rabbit." Network news operations jumped on it too. Here's the top of the original story:
President Carter beat back an attacking rabbit with a canoe paddle when it swam at him as he fished near his Plains, Ga., home last spring.
He's got a picture to prove it, but the evidence is locked away at the White House.
The White House declined to make public photographs of the president and the bunny. "There are just certain stories about the president that must forever remain shrouded in mystery," Deputy Press Secretary Rex Granum explained Wednesday."
Because the White House refused to release photographs of the rabbit attack — and what president would want photographs released of him in a life-or-death struggle with a cute Peter Cottontail — the media was forced to use cartoons to illustrate the historic combat.
One of the first cartoons was a parody of the poster for the popular movie "Jaws," except that instead of a shark, it was a rabbit with "Paws."
And then Sen. Ted Kennedy, the famed swimmer of Chappaquiddick, took advantage of Carter's weakness and challenged him for the Democratic nomination.
This image was carved into the national mind: A beleaguered president showing teeth and fear, wild-eyed, as the tiny little rabbit leaped in anger, just like that killer rabbit in that Monty Python movie.
Folk singer Tom Paxton even wrote a tune about it, called "I Don't Want a Bunny Wunny."
President Carter got into his boat;
Wasn't in a hurry, wanted to float,
Think about the country, think about sin.
Along swum a rabbit, and he tried to climb in.
And what did Jimmy say?
"I don't want a bunny wunny in my little rowboat,
In my little rowboat in the pond.
For the bunny might be crazy and he'll bite me in the throat
In my little rowboat in the pond."
Another line in the song asked:
If you were the president, how would you feel?
But you know how you'd feel. You'd feel like President Chumbolone.
The metaphor of the Killer Rabbit expressed weak Democratic leadership, much in the same way the way George H.W. Bush's ignorance about the price of a gallon of milk was used to demonstrate Republican insensitivity.
Was it fair? No. It was politics.
But since that time, whenever a president's job approval ratings are hitting bottom, someone invariably brings up the Killer Rabbit attack. It's been applied to Republicans and Democrats, and pundits are applying it to Obama with increasing frequency.
Personally, I don't want our president molested by a cuddly mammal. It wouldn't be good for the country.
And I wouldn't want to see the Chicago City Hall guys running away from Obama, shrieking, their hands up as they skedaddle to leave the president to confront the Killer Rabbit alone.
But even with all the bad news, there's some good news for the president.
He's not much of a fisherman.
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2)An Uncertain Arab Transition
By David Ignatius
U.S. intelligence analysts, like most American observers, have often referred to the process unfolding in the Middle East as the "Arab Spring," with its implicit message of democratic rebirth and freedom. But some senior analysts are said to have argued for a more neutral term, such as "Arab Transition" -- which conveys the essential truth that nobody can predict just where this upheaval is heading.
The uncertain transition rumbled on last week in Syria: President Bashar al-Assad's hold on power appeared to weaken, with his military stretched to the breaking point in an attempt to control the protests. President Obama, evidently sensing that the endgame is near, Thursday called on Assad to step down.
Syria illustrates the paradox of the Arab transition. The courage of the Syrian people in defying Assad's tanks is breathtaking. Yet this is a movement without clear leadership or an agenda beyond toppling Assad. It could bend toward the hard-line Sunni fundamentalists who have led the street-fighting in Daraa and Homs, or to the sophisticated pro-democracy activists of Damascus. The truth is, nobody can predict the face of a post-Assad Syria.
The Syrian confrontation is already devolving into a regional proxy war. Iran has been rushing assistance to Assad, who is Tehran's key Arab ally and provides a lifeline to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. To counter the Iranians, a newly emboldened Saudi Arabia has been pumping money to Sunni fighters in Syria. Damascus is the fault line -- for Sunni-Shiite tensions, and for the confrontation between Iran and the U.S. and Israel.
Despite these uncertainties, Obama is right to demand that Assad must go. Some commentators have chided the White House's hyper-caution. (Saudi Arabia, hardly a beacon of change, denounced Assad a week ago.) But I think Obama has been wise to move carefully -- and avoid the facile embrace of a rebel movement whose trajectory is unknown. America's goal should be an inclusive democracy that enfranchises the Sunni fighters in the streets, yes, but also protects Alawites, Christians and Druze who fear a bloodbath.
As the Arab transition moves through summer toward fall, it's a good time to take stock -- and to remind ourselves that there won't be any automatic movement toward prosperity and rule of law. The citizen revolt that began in Tunisia is surely a positive trend -- and it's unstoppable, in any event. But analysts offer some important cautionary points:
-- The Arab movements for change will probably retard the process of economic reform that was under way in nations such as Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak was an arrogant leader, but over the last decade he did encourage free-market policies that helped boost Egypt's growth rate over 5 percent. Two architects of those pro-market policies were Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid. Both have now been charged with corruption. The populist anger is understandable but it won't help Egypt get much-needed international investment.
-- Democracy is likely to disappoint the protesters. They went into the streets to demand a better life -- jobs, freedom from secret police, personal dignity -- and they want these rights (BEG ITAL)now(END ITAL). Hopefully, citizens in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and the rest will soon be able to vote for democratic governments. But struggling democracies often aren't very good at meeting the basic demands that spawned the revolutions. Asia put economic reform first, with political reform gradually following. The Arabs have decided to go the other direction -- with uncertain consequences.
-- The Arab transition needs to embrace the tolerance of secular societies rather than the intolerance of theocracy. That's one lesson this generation could learn from the "Arab Renaissance" movements of the last century. The Baath Party and the Nasserites are rightly rejected now, but in celebrating "Arab nationalism" they gave an identity to citizens that was broader than religion, sect or tribe. That spirit of inclusive identity will be essential for a happy Arab future.
Viewing events in the Arab world, President Obama has talked often of being "on the right side of history." But frankly, that's an incoherent concept. History doesn't have a side; it isn't a straight line that moves inexorably toward progress. Movements that start off calling for liberation often produce the opposite.
What should guide U.S. policy in this time of transition is to be on the right side of America's own interests and values. Sometimes those two will conflict, requiring difficult choices, but they coincide powerfully in the departure of Syrian President Assad.
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3)Blood in the Streets
By Caroline B. Glick
Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets.
In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces' open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups.
The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph's Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman.
Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph's Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians.
In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah's massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi'ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006.
In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008.
It is to be hoped that Thursday's sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt.
By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack.
The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams.
There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt.
Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday's attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF's institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula.
This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear.
LIKE THE watershed events in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Thursday's attack from Sinai did not come out of nowhere. It was a natural progression of the deterioration of the security situation in Sinai in recent months and years.
For more than a decade all the security trends in Sinai have been negative.
Sinai is populated mainly by Beduin. When Israel controlled Sinai from 1967 through 1981, the Beduin were willing to cooperate with Israel on both civil and military affairs. When Egypt took over in 1981, it punished the Beduin for their willingness to work with Israel. Perhaps as a consequence of this, perhaps owing more to regional trends emanating from Saudi Arabia, since the mid-1990s, the Sinai Beduin, like neighboring tribes in the Jordanian desert and, to a degree, their Israeli Beduin brethren, have been undergoing a process of Islamification as the loyalties of more and more tribes have been transferred to regional and global jihadist forces.
The first tangible indication of this came with the 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Taba.
That attack was followed by bombings in Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab in 2005 and 2006. All the attacks were reportedly carried out by Beduin terror cells affiliated with al-Qaida.
Since the Palestinian terror war began in 2000, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak did almost nothing to prevent massive arms smuggling by Palestinian terror groups through Sinai. The Palestinians - from Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad - were assisted by Sinai Beduin as well as by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah. Mubarak also did next to nothing to prevent human and drug trafficking from Sinai into Israel and Gaza.
Mubarak did, however, protect the Egyptian regime's control over Sinai by among other things sealing the official land border from Egypt to Gaza at Rafah, defending Egyptian police stations and other security installations and vital infrastructure such as the gas pipeline from attack. Forces from his Interior Ministry kept a firm grip on the Beduin tribes.
As bad and increasingly complex as the security situation was becoming in Sinai under Mubarak, it has drastically deteriorated since he was overthrown in February. Actually, the Egyptian government arguably lost control over Sinai while Mubarak was being overthrown, and until last weekend made no attempt to reassert its sovereign control over the area.
As the world media ecstatically reported on the photogenic anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, almost no attention was paid to the insurgency unfolding in Sinai. Shortly after the protests began in Cairo in mid-January, Hamas sent forces over the border into Egyptian Rafah and El-Arish to attack police stations with rifles and RPGs. Hamas fighters reportedly went as far south as Suez. There they joined other terror forces in bombing and raiding the police station in the town that abuts the Suez Canal. In consortium with local elements, Hamas carried out the first of five bombings so far of Egypt's gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.
In a sharp departure from Mubarak's policies, the ruling military junta opened Egypt's border with Gaza and so gave local and regional jihadists the ability to freely traverse the international border.
Hamas and its fellow terrorists have used this freedom not only to steeply expand the missile and personnel transfers to the Gaza Strip. They have also escalated their challenge to Egyptian regime control over Sinai.
Over the past several months, in addition to recurrent bombings of the gas pipeline, these forces have attacked police stations and the port at Nueiba. In the wake of their July 30 attack on El-Arish in which two policemen and three civilians were killed, jihadist cells distributed leaflets calling for the imposition of Islamic law on Sinai.
According to media reports, jihadists also took over many of the main highways in Sinai at the beginning of August.
THESE LATEST assaults and the open challenge the leaflets and road takeovers pose to Egyptian state authority caused the military to deploy two battalions of armored forces to Sinai last weekend.
The stated aim of their operation is to defeat the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist cells operating in the peninsula. Since Egypt's peace treaty with Israel prohibits the deployment of Egyptian military forces to Sinai, the Egyptian military regime requested and received Israeli permission for the deployment.
It is unclear how effective the latest Egyptian military deployment had been until Thursday's cross-border attacks on Israel had been. What is clear enough is that Israel cannot expect to receive serious cooperation from the Egyptian military in combating the enemy forces emanating from Sinai. Indeed, at this point it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Egyptian military personnel participated in the murderous attacks.
Passengers in one of the civilian cars attacked by gunmen in the first stage of the operation told the media that their attackers were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.
Almost immediately after the attacks took place, Egyptian military authorities denied the attackers entered Israel from Sinai. These denials signaled that the Egyptian military government will not assist Israel in its efforts to defend itself against the rapidly escalating threats it now faces from Sinai.
And this is not surprising. Since it overthrew Mubarak, the ruling military junta has assiduously cultivated close ties with the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood.
Three days before the attack, the IDF announced that its 2012-2017 budget includes no increase in either force size or equipment levels. As one IDF official told Reuters, "Our current capabilities are sufficient for our foreseeable requirements, though we will be investing anew in training and improving rapid-response mobility to allow for more flexibility during emergencies."
Recently, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz explained that the reason the IDF does not intend to change the training or size of the Southern Command, despite Egypt's increasing hostility towards Israel, is because Israel doesn't want to provoke Egypt by preparing for the worst. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to ignore Egypt and point his finger at the usual suspects in Gaza.
While it is reasonable to assume the Palestinians were involved in the attack, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the only culprits. And given the deteriorating security situation in Sinai and Egypt's escalating hostility, it is madness to limit Israel's attention in the wake of the attack to Gaza.
What the attack shows is that Israel must prepare for the new strategic reality emerging in Egypt. True, it is early yet to predict how Egypt is going to behave in the coming years. But we do not need perfect information about the emerging strategic reality to prepare for it.
Israel's requirements are clear. We need to invest the necessary resources to fortify the 240-km. border with Egypt by completing the security fence.
We need to increase the Southern Command's force levels by at least one regular division, preferably an armored one. We need to equip the IDF with more tanks and other platforms designed for desert warfare. We need for the IDF to begin training in desert warfare for the first time in 30 years.
We need to drastically ramp up the quality of our intelligence about Egypt.
On Thursday, we were shown that although the revolution in Egypt was not about Israel, Israel will be its first foreign victim as the new Egypt rejects the former regime's peace with the Jewish state.
It is a bitter reality. But it is reality all the same and we need to contend with it, as the blood in our streets makes clear.
3a)Tehran pulls strings of Gaza missile war through proxy Jihad Islami
Therole of Iran and Hizballah in manipulating the ongoing Palestinian war on Israel from Gaza is manifest. They planned, orchestrated and funded the coordinated attacks on the Eilat Highway Thursday, Aug. 18 - in which gunmen shot dead eight Israelis and injured 40 - and its sequel: volleys of 90 missiles launched day and night from Gaza against a million Israeli civilians since then.
Yossi Shoshan, 38, from Ofakim, was killed by one of the dozen Grad missiles hitting Beersheba and his home town Saturday night. More than a dozen people were injured, at least one critically.
The prime mover in the missile blitz is Tehran's Palestinian arm, the Jihad Islami, which is responsible for 90 percent of the launches. Hamas is left on the sidelines, cut off for the first time from top levels of authority in Tehran and Damascus.
The IDF is held back from substantive action to snuff out the Iran-backed offensive by the indecision at the policy-making level of the Israeli government, which is still feeling its way toward determining the dimensions and potential thrust of the military crisis landing on Israel out of the blue.
Under Egyptian, Israeli and US noses, Tehran managed to transfer to its Palestinian arm in Gaza, the Jihad Islami, more than 10,000 missiles well in advance of the violence launched three days ago. Most of them are heavy Grads bringing Beersheba, capital of the Negev and Israel's 7th largest town (pop. 200,000), within their 30-kilometer range for a sustained, massive missile offensive.
Tehran has now launched the hardware smuggled into the Gaza Strip ready for a Middle East war offensive for five objectives:
1. To leave Syrian President Bashar Assad free to continue brutalizing his population and ignoring President Barack Obama's demand backed by Europe that he step down.
2. To manufacture a direct military threat on the Jewish state, whose destruction is a fundamental of the Islamic Republic of Iran's ideology.
3. To thwart the Egyptian military junta's operation last week for regaining control of the lawless Sinai Peninsula and destroying the vast weapons smuggling network serving Iran in its capacity as the leading international sponsor of terror.
4. To render the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his bid for UN recognition of an independent state on Sept. 20 irrelevant. His isolation was brought home to him last Thursday by the coordinated Palestinian terrorist attacks near Eilat last Thursday.
5. To plant ticking bombs around Israel for potential detonation and explosion into a full-blown regional war.
Washington sources disclose that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined this peril to Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshall Muhammad Tantawi, Saturday night, Aug. 20, to dissuade him from recalling the Egyptian ambassador to Israel over the deaths of three or five Egyptian police in the melee over the Palestinian terror attack near the Sinai border.
This danger was on the table of Israel's inner cabinet of eight ministers when they met early Sunday to decide on IDF action for terminating the Palestinian missile war.
However, just as Cairo discovered that its operation for eradicating al Qaeda and other Islamist radical groups' grip on Sinai would give Iran the pretext for aggression, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the IDF high command found themselves at a loss to determine whom to attack.
Up until now, Israel declared the Hamas rulers of Gaza accountable for all attacks originating in the enclave.
That formula is no longer valid. The Eilat Highway attacks were planned and executed behind Hamas's back and so was the missile offensive - until Saturday night, when Hamas decided to try and step in. Both Hamas and Cairo are in fact out of the picture.
Israel's leaders are stuck for solutions because no one in Washington, Jerusalem or Cairo can be sure of the outcome of any military steps they might take. They can't be sure whether they will douse the violence or just play into the hands of Hizballah and Tehran who may have more shockers in their quivers ready to loose.
Only three facts stand out from the fog of uncertainty:
First, the security crisis besetting Israel has the dangerous potential for dragging the Middle East into a regional war.
Second, America and Israel are paying in full the price of their quiescence in the face of Iranian, Hizballah and extremist Palestinian belligerence and active preparations for war, including the stockpiling of thousands of increasingly sophisticated weaponry on Israel's borders.
Third, the first step an Israeli soldier or tank takes into the Gaza Strip to silence Jihad Islami's missile fire is more likely than not to precipitate a second Iranian-orchestrated assault on another of Israel's borders.
Sunday morning, no one in any of the capitals concerned was ready to risk guesstimating how far Tehran was ready to go in its current offensive and what orders Hizballah and its Palestinian puppets had received.
3b)Netanyahu accepts ceasefire to placate Egypt, leaves Jihad Islami for later
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ruled Sunday, Aug. 21, that his government's first priority is to let Egypt's military rulers have the kudos of brokering a ceasefire in the four-day Palestinian missile war against Israel from Gaza – and deal some time in the future with the Palestinian Jihad Islami, which fired most of the 100 missiles exploding in Israel from Gaza since last Thursday.
Analysts criticize this decision as one of the prime minister's most unfortunate strategic mistakes since he took office nearly three years ago. During the day, Netanyahu directed Maj. Gen. Meir Eshel, head of the Planning Division in the General Command, who was standing by in Cairo from early morning, to accept Egypt's proposal for Hamas to declare a ceasefire as of 9 pm Sunday night, Aug. 21.
The prime minister acted under the harsh impression of Cairo's decision a day earlier to recall the Egyptian ambassador from Israel to protest the deaths of Egyptian policemen during Thursday's Palestinian terror attack on the Eilat road. Washington stepped in speedily to defuse that crisis.
According to sources, up until Sunday afternoon, Netanyahu had not briefed either Defense Minister Ehud Barak or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on his decision to accept a Gaza ceasefire, sharing it only with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz. The defense minister while touring the Iron Dome anti-missile battery in Ashkelon Sunday told the suffering citizens of the town they would have to put up with the attacks for another few days, but Israel would be sure to "separate [its enemies'] heads from their bodies."
Barak had not realized when he made this remark that the prime minister had ruled in favor of taking up Egypt's offer to mediate a ceasefire and against embarking on military action against the Iran-sponsored Palestinian terrorists plaguing southern Israel with hourly missile fire.
Netanyahu was won over by the assurance Washington received from Egypt's military rulers that the Jihad Islami's leader Ramadan Shalah had endorsed the Hamas truce.
Because the prime minister did not trust Shalah, he held out a single condition for Israel's acceptance: The Palestinians must uphold the ceasefire for 12 hours up until Monday morning, Aug. 22.
There were no other provisions on the Israeli side – any more than there were five months ago, when the Netanyahu government gave its unconditional consent to a Hamas ceasefire from April 24. Then too he agreed the IDF would not strike terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip so long as no missiles were fired from there.
Military sources complain Netanyahu did not even insist on Hamas taking responsibility for preventing any terrorists from any Gaza-based organization striking Israel targets - like the gunmen from Gaza who shot up the Eilat Highway near the Egyptian border Thursday and left eight Israelis dead.
Three hours after the deadline Hamas set for the truce to go into effect, Jihad Islami predictably fired another three Grad missiles against Ashkelon.
Military circles explain that these truces often need 24 hours to take hold before the attacks die down altogether.
However, sources see in this triple shooting a last Jihad gesture of triumph and defiance. It was intended to show Israel, Egypt and Hamas that not only had Iran's Palestinian surrogate broken all records in the number of missiles fired on Israel's cities, but it was free to restart its missile offensive any time it wished.
Those sources don't make light of the prime minister's overriding desire to pacify the new rulers of Egypt and keep the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty safe from the disruptions which could result from strained relations. This consideration is a weighty one, they say. On the other hand, the cost of this gesture to Israel's national security interests is prohibitive:
1. By giving into Cairo, Netanyahu has already gone a long way toward meeting the military rulers' demands to revise the peace accords signed at Camp David and allow Egyptian troops to be deployed on the Egyptian-Israeli Sinai border for the first time in three decades.
2. This concession is just the start. The generals depend heavily on the Muslim Brotherhood for controlling the Egyptian street and its hotheads and will therefore present Israel with more demands to further the interests of coexistence with the Brothers.
3. Letting Jihad Islami have the last word in the Gaza Strip confrontation grants its masters, Iran and Hizballah, a victory and encourages them to believe that the Netanyahu government is easy prey and will cave in again under the pressure of renewed missile and terror attacks.
4. Since Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and its army's withdrawal from the Philadelphi border dividing Gaza from Sinai, every understanding Israel and Egypt have reached has one way or another undermined Israeli security and undercut its strategic leverage – mainly because Cairo never fully met its obligations. There is no reason that this time should be any different
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4)Roach: China May Stop Buying U.S. Debt
By Forrest Jones
China may ease up on buying Treasurys as U.S. growth slows and instead focus on developing internal demand, says Stephen Roach, the non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
China traditionally buys Treasurys to help finance the U.S. economy so Western consumers will buy goods made in China, but less demand here leaves the Asian giant little choice but to do what many say needs to be done anyway: export less and buy more at home.
"This is China's wakeup call," Roach tells CNBC.
China can "no longer afford to stay the course of export-led growth that is hooked on the bandwagon of the American consumer."
A Chinese shift away from U.S. Treasuries could mean Washington would have to pay higher interest rates to attract investors to U.S. debt and make up for any vacancies created by China.
By focusing heavily on exports, China was sitting on "trade surpluses, current account surpluses, and massive accumulations of foreign-exchange reserves, two-thirds of which have to be reinvested in dollar-based assets," Roach says.
But as China boosts internal consumption, domestic savings go down and so does its foreign-exchange accumulation, Roach says.
"And guess what ... they stop buying dollar-based assets, not because they're mad at us...but just because they don’t need to do it," he said.
China has expressed concern in the past over the level of debt the U.S. economy carries and what that means for its investment in U.S. Treasurys.
Vice President Joe Biden tells China's Caijing magazine the administration "is deeply committed to maintaining the fundamentals of the U.S. economy" so as to "ensure the safety, liquidity, and value of U.S. Treasury obligations for all of its investors," Bloomberg reports.
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