Had a long conversation with Kim Strassel today. She had just returned from Michigan and will have an op ed in tomorrow's Journal. Meanwhile she sent pictures of the three wunderkind!
She called to inquire about my wife and other assorted matters.
Kim is one remarkable young lady, journalist without peer, mother and wife.Go Kim! (See 1 below.)
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Will Obama stay asleep if the 3PM call comes? And will we continue to deceive ourselves regarding Iran? (See 1and 1a below.)
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How is this for irony?
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Meanwhile, Russia continues to upgrade Syrian and Iranian detection capabilities to thwart or impede the success of a possible Israeli attack.
The reset button foreign policy Obama instituted through Sec. Clinton rusted out from the git go. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)The Race to Define Rick Santorum
Is the former senator a go-along-get-along Republican or an entitlement crisis visionary?
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The Michigan primary, and possibly the Republican presidential nomination, may come down to this one question: Who is Rick Santorum?
Is he, as the former Pennsylvania senator avers, a consistent "full-spectrum" conservative, a pioneer on tough policy, and the only candidate who can provide a clear contrast with Barack Obama? Or is he, as his opponent Mitt Romney argues, little more than a Bush-era big-spender, a political insider?
Michiganders will make that choice Tuesday, as an estimated 1.7 million voters go to the polls. Mr. Romney may be Michigan's native son, but the state has become Mr. Santorum's to lose. His early-February victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri vaulted him to the top of national polls and to a double-digit lead by mid-February in the Great Lake State. Yet Mr. Santorum has been steadily losing ground and enters in a dead heat.
Part of that slide is a reinvigorated Mr. Romney. The Santorum threat has finally convinced the former governor to try to connect with his base, and in the past week he's unfurled new tax-cut proposals, new plans for fixing Medicare, and a stronger message against unions. At a Saturday event at Kettering University in Flint, Mr. Romney showed a new passion on the big arguments, hitting hard on President Obama's plans to raise taxes, his failed energy policy, his refusal to address entitlements. Mr. Romney is spending less time on biography and more on his reform proposals.
It has helped, yet in conversations with voters it is also clear that plenty of Mr. Romney's resurgence rests on the doubts he's sown about Mr. Santorum. This is where the Romney money and organization have consistently proven most effective—in making the race about his competitors. He did it to Rick Perry in Iowa and to Newt Gingrich in Florida. And he's doing it to Mr. Santorum here, in a race that has become largely a fight over how to define the Pennsylvanian.
His opening has been Mr. Santorum's 16-year record in Washington. For weeks now, Mr. Romney has been pounding away at Mr. Santorum's votes for earmarks, for raising the debt ceiling, for protecting unions. Millions of voters have seen his ads, and particular charges have stuck. "Rick Santorum has voted for the Bridge to Nowhere, he's voted for other earmarks, he's an insider," says Laurie Chamberlain, a 51-year-old homemaker from Saginaw, in what is a near recitation of one Romney TV ad.
Mr. Santorum struggled in last week's Arizona debate to explain these votes, and his comment that sometimes you "take one for the team" has given Mr. Romney a new opportunity. He's arguing that Mr. Santorum's votes weren't just bad but proof of political gamesmanship.
Speaking to some 1,200 conservatives at a weekend event in Troy, organized by grass-roots outfit Americans for Prosperity, Mr. Romney noted that Mr. Santorum had said "he was opposed to Planned Parenthood, but voted for it," that he was "opposed to No Child Left Behind, but voted for it."
"We can't do that anymore," said Mr. Romney. "We can't continue to take one for the team."
The reality is that many votes are complex, and the very Senate leadership job that occasionally required Mr. Santorum to vote with his party was also the perch that allowed him to lead the way on bigger issues like entitlement reform. But voters aren't in the mood for nuance, and Mr. Romney knows it. His goal is to paint Mr. Santorum as another of the Bush-era "insiders" that voters threw out. And to some extent it is working.
"[Santorum] is a go-along-to-get-along guy, and we can't afford that luxury anymore," says Jayson Corey, who is on the staff of Michigan's Romeo Area Tea Party and who, with his wife Deborah, attended the Troy event and intends to vote Romney. The debate over Mr. Santorum's record has inspired voters like the Coreys to do their own research, and to unearth more positions they aren't happy with—for instance, the senator's 1998 vote to confirm (now Supreme Court Justice) Sonia Sotomayor to a circuit court job.
Then, too, there is the race to define Mr. Santorum's social views. Those positions have earned the senator critical support among evangelicals and cultural conservatives and have been a key component in his victories. Yet they have reached a high-enough pitch that they are now also playing into Mr. Romney's electability argument with some voters.
Says Robert Murphy, another tea party member attending the Americans for Prosperity event: "The object here is to get the most conservative person who can win." He worries Mr. Santorum is being painted as a "religious radical" and will "alienate the 40% of the voters in the middle," so he's voting Romney.
The irony is that all this is coming at a time when Mr. Santorum has never looked so good on the stump. He's toned down his talk on social issues and is reassuring voters he doesn't intend to "impose" his views on the country. He's hitting hard on the economic message and reminding audiences that he was pushing big reforms before it was fashionable. At his own turn at the Troy event, he joked of the entitlement mess, "I saw it coming. And people were behind me . . . way behind me."
Most notably, he's honed his argument that Mr. Romney has too much baggage and too little nerve to provide a clear contrast with Mr. Obama. If Republicans nominate Mr. Romney, "We give up the issue of freedom of conscience! We give up the issue of bailouts! We give up the issue of cap-and-trade!" thundered Mr. Santorum. "Why would we do that? Why would we nominate someone who's uniquely unqualified to take on the biggest issues of the day?" By the end of his speech, many of the activists in the crowd were shouting "Go, Rick, go!"
This has been Mr. Santorum's strategy to rebut the Romney attacks, by trying to keep the focus on the big picture and remind voters of Mr. Romney's own liabilities. It has worked with folks like Lori Grajek, a 52-year-old substitute teacher from Dearborn. She's heard about his votes, but she believes she can "trust him" given his longer record of "fighting to get things like health-savings accounts even before they were popular."
Mr. Santorum can't outrun his votes, and his big-picture strategy is arguably his best means of moving beyond them. That's why Michigan matters. The state will not prove decisive—this nomination fight will continue. The results could also be muddled by a Democratic campaign encouraging its party faithful to make mischief by voting in the GOP primary, for Mr. Santorum and for Ron Paul.
Yet a Santorum victory here would prove he could weather the attacks and give him the crucial opening to continue making his broader case. A defeat risks further deflating his surge, once again leaving Mr. Romney to divide and conquer.
Ms. Strassel writes The Journal's Potomac Watch column.
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2)Here Comes Obama's 3 AM Phone Call
By James Lewis
In the next 60 days Obama's presidential career will finally meet that concrete wall of reality. He will either fail or survive. Trouble is, he might take many innocent people with him if he fails.
So far, the most hyped-up and unqualified president in US history has shown no capacity at all to act, in the face of a do-or-die challenge. This is the ultimate test of character, the one that John F. Kennedy met well enough in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. This is the test that Jimmy Carter failed so miserably that Ronald Reagan beat him handily in the following election. This is the same test of reality that every single Democratic Administration has tried to avoid; it's the reason why Bill Clinton refused to do anything about Osama Bin Laden when he had four separate chances to take him out.
This time, abject apologies to ranting Pakistani mobs will not make a smidgen of difference. Even Axelrod's disinformation campaigns can't save Obama now, because that 3 am phone call is almost sure to come by April Fool's Day of 2012, when the real fool will stand revealed to the world.
On or about April 1 of 2012, that 3 AM phone call will reach the White House. We know what it will be -- which is itself a sign of stunning incompetence in this White House. None of this information should ever be public. Ever.
But this administration has chosen its Secretary of Defense to publicly leak the most closely guarded secret of Israel's back-against-the-wall defense against Iranian nuclear weapons.
Such public leaks amount to near treason in time of war. Imagine if someone leaked General Eisenhower's plans for the D-Day invasion in June of 1944. FDR would have fired them instantly, or if they were foreigners he would have felt justified to have them killed. Hundreds of thousands of American and Allied lives were at stake on D Day. In Israel today, hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives are at stake. Don't expect countries fighting for their national survival to act any differently.
The Israelis have now publicly retaliated against the Panetta leak. They have accused General Dempsey, our top general, of publicly taking the Iranian side in the confrontation. But General Dempsey is not the target. The General knows better. The real target is his boss in the White House.
This is the moment every sane person knew had to come, ever since Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski knowingly allowed the radical suicide regime of Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the modernizing Shah of Iran. That was the single most self-destructive decision by any American President in modern history.
Jimmy Carter empowered the first Islamic throwback regime since Kemal Ataturk modernized Turkey in the 1920s.
Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalization has only accelerated, culminating in the 9/11/01 attack on New York City. Obama's equally suicidal "Arab Spring" has now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, instead of our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama knowingly chose to support Sadat's assassins.
So much for America's loyalty and word of honor.
Now Egypt is in economic and political despair, along with the other "Arab Spring" countries. The Saudis are ordering their own nuclear weapons, because they cannot trust the United States to protect their vital interests any more.
Obama thrives on crisis and chaos. He is a gambler and a con artist who follows Napoleon's slogan of "audacity, audacity, always audacity." But Napoleon met his Moscow winter and his Waterloo. The only question is when Obama will crash into his own brick wall of reality.
April Fool's Day would be a very suitable target date for the coming Iranian nuclear crisis. The Administration has already started to undermine Israel's case for defending itself by claiming, dontchaknow, that the Iranians are not making nukes after all. They are just making highly enriched uranium, folks. Nothing to worry about. False alarms, all you fools! It's just that Zionist plot again.
Obama's string puppets at J Street and other Soros fronts are bound to start anti-Israel propaganda again, aided by the New York Times and its ilk. But the Iranians just said (again!) that they are bound and determined to "wipe Israel off the map."
It will make no difference. The Israelis are sensitive to hate propaganda by the international left, except when survival is at stake. Then they act to survive. That used to be US policy as well, until the fantasy-ridden Democrats took over the country. Today Obama is cutting our defense budget and reducing US nuclear weapons to the lowest level ever, even while nuclear proliferation breaks out all over the world. Good timing, BHO.
The conventional wisdom is that Israel must attack Iranian nuclear sites soon, because Ahmadinejad is moving his nuclear industry into deep mountain tunnels on an emergency basis. Once his nuke industry is deeply bunkered it is essentially invulnerable to conventional weapons. It is the point of no return.
The conventional wisdom also claims that Israel cannot maintain a long-term bombing campaign. Only the United States can do that. But the US is refusing to be the cop on the block, leaving the defense of the world's biggest oil supply to ... nobody. No one else has the power to do it. Which is why the Saudis are nuking up.
Israel will act as in defense of its right to live. The left will predictably turn reality upside-down, the way it always does. They keep their brains in the darkest place they can find. Nothing will change those facts.
The United States is the only nation with the power to knock down the Iranian threat with reasonable safety to itself and other countries. We have done it before. If Israel acts without our active help, the risks of great casualties on all sides will be much, much greater. In 1973 Golda Meir came close to using Israel's own nuclear arsenal when invading tank divisions from Egypt threatened to overrun Israel's cities. That decision was barely averted when Israeli tanks broke through the Egyptian lines.
Obama is by far the most mentally fixated president in the nuclear age. Nobody else has come even close to having his mental blinders, not even Jimmy Carter. Obama has little regard for human life, which is why he whipped up regional chaos in the "Arab Spring," by demanding the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Obama is happy to empower radical Islamist regimes, just like Jimmy Carter. With a solid phalanx of media liars, Obama has been able to evade responsibility for three years of solid misgovernment in foreign and domestic affairs.
But the coming crisis cannot be evaded. Obama and his propaganda media will spin and spin -- before, during, and after the coming crisis between Israel and Iran. Obama wanted above all to force Israel to retreat back to 1948 or face a nuclear Iran. It was a choice between slow genocide and fast genocide.
It looks like Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the left and the right of Israel's parliament, called Obama's bluff. No American president has ever allowed an international crisis to come so close to the brink. Obama has now allowed the Middle East to deteriorate so far that he has lost control. He now owns whatever is going to happen. His fingerprints are all over it.
Around April 1, the biggest fool of the 21st century will stand revealed to the world.
After that, the American people will have to decide.
2a) The Russians have upgraded their Jabal Al Harrah electronic and surveillance station south of Damascus opposite Israel’s Sea of Galilee, adding resources especially tailored to give Tehran early warning of an oncoming US or Israeli attack, DEBKAfile’s US military sources report.
Before it was boosted by extra advanced technology and manpower, the station covered civilian and military movements in northern Israel up to Tel Aviv, northern Jordan and western Iraq. Today, its range extends to all parts of Israel and Jordan, the Gulf of Aqaba and northern Saudi Arabia.
Part two of Moscow’s project for extending the range of its Middle East ears and eyes consisted of upgrading the Russian-equipped Syrian radar stationed on Lebanon’s Mount Sannine and connecting it to the Jabal Al Harrah facility in Syria. Russian technicians have completed this project too. Russia is now able to additionally track US and Israeli naval and aerial movements in the Eastern Mediterranean up to and including Cyprus and Greece.
According to sources, the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kutznetsov’s stay at the Syrian port of Tartus through most of January and up to mid-February had the special mission of keeping an eye out for any Israeli preparations for attacking Iran, Syria or Hizballah. It filled the gap left by the Russian station south of Damascus which was fully occupied with feeding data on Syrian opposition movements to Bashar Assad and watching out for signs of foreign intervention, military or covert, against his regime.
The Russian vessel meanwhile followed increased traffic of US drone over Syria keeping track of the Syrian arsenal of missiles with chemical, biological and nerve gas warheads.
Washington disclosed on Feb. 25 that the US State Department had sent out warnings to six countries, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, to beware of these deadly weapons. It was not clear whether the warning referred to a possible Assad regime’s decision to use WMD against those nations or the danger of their transfer to terrorists embedded within those countries.
Moscow decided to boost its radar tracking and surveillance reach for Iran’s benefit in response to a complaint from Tehran that it could not longer count on Russia for a real-time alert on an incoming US or Israeli military strike, because those resources were stretched to the limit in support of the Assad regime.
After expanding and upgrading their range to meet Iranian needs by interconnecting the two stations and adding extra Russian manpower, Moscow ordered the Admiral Kutznetsov to depart Tartus on Feb. 13 and sail to home port at Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula. The Russian stations in Syria and Lebanon were by then ready for their expanded missions.
1b)America's Iranian Self-Deception
Let's admit the facts about its nuclear program and then have an honest debate about what to do.
By FREDERICK W. KAGAN AND MASEH ZARIF
Americans are being played for fools by Iran—and fooling themselves. There is no case to be made that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. There is no evidence that Iran's decision-makers are willing to stop the nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions or anything else. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Friday that it has made no progress in its negotiations with Iran and that Iran continues to accelerate its enrichment operations, which are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and agreements with the IAEA.
Yet the policy discussion in the U.S. is confused. Former Ambassador Dennis Ross writes that the Iranians are ready for talks. Anonymous administration officials refer to one of the most dangerous Iranian nuclear installations, Fordow, outside the city of Qom, as "a Potemkin facility." The media are full of comparisons to Iraq in 2003, when suspicions that Iraq was pursuing a covert nuclear program led to war.
People are conflating intelligence assessment with policy recommendation. The prospect of war with Iran is so distasteful that people are desperate to persuade themselves that the problem is not serious.
Facing economic pressure and rampant inflation, residents in Tehran question whether their vote in the March parliamentary elections will have an impact. (Video: Reuters/Photo: Getty Images)
IAEA inspectors on the ground at Iran's nuclear facilities reported the following facts on Friday: Iran's inventory of centrifuges enriching uranium isotopes has been steadily expanding, along with the stockpiles of uranium enriched to 3.5% and 20%—important stages on the road to weapons-grade uranium. Iran has installed and run advanced centrifuges in the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant. Iran has buried an enrichment facility under a small mountain at Fordow, installed air-defense systems around it, and brought new centrifuges online there.
Iran is developing techniques and technologies needed to turn weapons-grade uranium (which it is not yet producing) into an atomic bomb. The IAEA reported that the Iranians "dismissed the Agency's concerns [about weaponization] . . . largely on the grounds that Iran considered them to be based on unfounded allegations." The Iranians have denied inspectors access to the facilities that inspectors suspect are being used to work on weaponization.
The price of this refusal, including U.N. and international sanctions, has devastated the Iranian economy. Unemployment and popular dissatisfaction with the regime are high. Unprecedentedly harsh sanctions imposed by the Obama administration are driving off customers for Iran's oil.
What peaceful purpose could be served by accepting such damage to pursue an illegal nuclear program? The international community has repeatedly offered Iran enriched uranium for its reactors to produce both electricity and medical isotopes—and Iran has refused. Iran's behavior makes sense only if its leadership is determined to have a nuclear program that can develop and field atomic weapons.
The pressure on Iran's economy and tensions within its political elite persuade some observers that Iran's leaders are nearing a decision to trade the nuclear program for relaxed sanctions. That may be true—but there is no evidence for it. Iran's leaders continue to insist on Iran's right to the nuclear program as it is being built. No Iranian leader has suggested that Iran should comply with the IAEA or abandon the program.
Western observers are confusing internal Iranian disagreements about how to manage their economic challenges with disagreements about foreign policy. Increasing external pressure this year could fracture the Iranian leadership on this issue, but no one has adduced any convincing evidence that is happening.
Iran is, however, preparing rhetorically for war with the West. Iran's military has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, attack American naval ships passing through it, and pre-empt what it perceives to be preparations for an attack on Iran. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other political figures have seconded these threats, and no Iranian leader has denounced them.
By contrast, there has been no vocal outcry for military action against Iran in the U.S. Even Israel's threats have been muted and confused. The bellicosity in this crisis is coming almost entirely from Tehran. Why should a state seeking a peaceful nuclear program work so hard to whip up war fever?
Some say that Iran's leaders are irrational. But their statements and actions in this instance—juxtaposing bellicosity with offers of negotiations—make perfect sense if they are intended to cover the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability.
The Iranians are advancing technically as fast as they can to acquire the fuel for a nuclear bomb. They also are pursuing key elements of a weaponization program separately and covertly. At the same time, they have attempted to draw the IAEA inspectors into protracted negotiations that would buy time to reach what the Israelis call the "zone of immunity" after which Israel no longer has a viable military option.
Add it up any way you like: Iran is starting to race to reach a breakout point at which the international community will be unable to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, short of a massive American military strike. The evidence available supports no other conclusion.
This is not a recommendation for a military strike on the Iranian nuclear program. One could decide that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities is preferable to the consequences of a military strike, or one could accept at face value President Obama's statements that the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear arsenal is unacceptable (which implies a willingness to use military force to prevent it). But the debate must take place on the basis of a reality not skewed to support one or another policy option.
Those who oppose military action against Iran under any circumstances must say so, and must accept the consequences of that statement. Those who advocate military action must also accept and consider the consequences—regional and possibly global conflict and all of the associated perils of war. But neither American nor Israeli nor any Western interest is served by lying to ourselves and pretending the predicament will go away.
Mr. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Zarif is research manager at the Critical Threats Project and leads its Iran team. Mr. Zarif's new report on the Iranian nuclear program can be found at http://www.irantracker.org/nuclear-program/zarif-timelines-data-estimates-february-27-2012.
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