.jpg)
.jpg)
</
---
So you think Israel is dangerous?:
The coach had put together the perfect team for the Chicago Bears. The only thing that was missing was a good quarterback. He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European Leagues, but he couldn't find the guy who could ensure a Super Bowl win.
Then one night while watching CNN he saw a war-zone scene in the West Bank. In one corner of the background, he spotted a young Israeli soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand-grenade straight into a 15th story window 100 yards away. KABOOM! He threw another hand-grenade 75 yards away, right into a chimney. KA-BLOOEY! Then he threw another at a passing car going 90 mph. BULLS-EYE!
"I've got to get this guy!" Coach said to himself. "He has the perfect
arm!" So, he brings him to the States and teaches him the great game of
football. And the Bears go on to win the Super Bowl.
The young man is hailed as the great hero of football, and when the coach
asks him what he wants, all the young man wants is to call his mother.
"Mom," he says into the phone, "I just won the Super Bowl!"
"I don't want to talk to you," the old woman says. “You are not my son!"
"I don't think you understand, Mother," the young man pleads. "I've won
the greatest sporting event in the world. I'm here among thousands of my
adoring fans."
"No! Let me tell you!" his mother retorts. "At this very moment, there are
gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two
brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have
to keep your sister in the house so she doesn't get raped!"
The old lady pauses, and then tearfully says,
"I will never forgive you for making us move to Chicago!"
---
Several economists have done work that suggests once you pass 90% you restrain GDP growth. (See 1 below.)
---
I have been listening to a lot of ying and yang over the NASA revelations. I find the arguments interesting.
Obviously we need to protect our nation and therefore our freedom but in doing so if we lose our freedom trying to protect our freedom where are we?
Dershowitz makes a distinction between external and internal surveillance and suggests he would be willing to give up external freedom, ie. the government knowing his whereabouts, versus having the content of his messages and speech exposed etc.
Others suggest the government is going to drown in content etc. and thus, will be ineffective and based on recent scandals is not trustworthy. Others have indicated out of the millions of surveys etc. only some 30 or so true surveillances have been conducted.
We know whistle blowers are encouraged and then persecuted once they engage in same and we know government bureaucrats will go to any length to cover their behinds, citing the 5th etc.
Then there is the argument there is no way the Founding Fathers could have anticipated drones, atomic power and therefore the Constitution is useless.
I submit, The Founders gave us a document of broad principles and the document is more valuable today than at any period because our very freedoms are under attack and/or are threatened from within. The very government The Founders warned us about and wanted to protect us from.
The young man who started all this broke the law and his agreement not to reveal secrets but, presumably, he did us a favor by forcing what will be a national discussion and for this we should be grateful.
Stay tuned because it should prove a very interesting period.
---
Who is Rohani? I will bet 4 to 1 on Bret's analysis versus the crap and self-delusion coming from the Eastern Press and White House!
The Eastern Press always has a knee jerk reaction and are inclined to swallow whatever helps them believe we do not have to live in fear of enemies. (See 2 below.)
Follow up to Bret Stephen's op ed. (See 2a, 2b and 2c below
The White House has to buy the claim that Rohani is moderate in order to get Obama off the hook again. Otherwise Obama would have to be president and he would rather be a golfer who is always playing the back nine.
---
Everything I have felt, everything I have written, everything I have believed about Obama and his wife has pretty much come to pass.
This president has now lost moral authority and that makes it almost impossible to lead as if he ever had the ability. We are in for three more tough years.
It has never been a racial thing with me because even Thomas Sowell, who I admire and respect, feels the same way and has. (See 3 and 3a below.)
---
President day late and dollar short? (See 4 below.)
---
--
Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Former GOP Senator Judd Gregg to Moneynews: US Debt-to-GDP Ratio Is Exploding
By Glenn J. Kalinoski and David Nelson
The debt-to-GDP ratio in the U.S. is moving to dangerous levels seen in Europe, said former Republican Senator Judd Gregg.
"We know that once a country's cost is at 60 percent debt-to-GDP level they're in trouble," he told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
"Historically our debt-to-GDP level is 35 percent up until three, four years ago. Then it's bounced," said the veteran politician, who also was governor of New Hampshire and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Now it's up to around 70 percent. It's headed toward over 100 percent. You look at Greece, you look at Spain, you look at Italy, you look at France. Their debt-to-GDP ratios exceed 100 percent and they're essentially in bankruptcy or headed in that direction. Unfortunately, our debt-to-GDP ratio is heading in that direction, too."
The Republican discussed his service on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which he said came to the conclusion that "we could stabilize [at] 70 percent and we'd be doing a good job." Gregg said that would require a reduction in spending by, "at that time, that was two years ago," $4 trillion over 10 years.
"Now we need to reduce spending by approximately $5 trillion over 10 years in order to hit that same number." Gregg said.
Putting politics before people was another topic Gregg covered when discussing his time on Capitol Hill.
"There's a natural tendency in Congress to want to get re-elected first and not worry too much about anything else," he said. "It's a difficult issue because these are complex questions. They involve very important issues that affect all Americans — Medicare, Social Security, tax reform," he said.
"When you step on to that ground, you're stepping on to a very volatile area of politics. But at its core is a question of whether or not we have a solid country, and if you don't have a solid country, then you're not doing your job as a member of government."
Gregg also discussed his recent appointment as CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
"One of the great advantages that America's always had is we've had a very strong capital market," he said.
"If you … want to take a risk, put sweat equity into your activities, and, as a result, are successful and start to create jobs, you're probably going to have [to] find some money to support you even doing that," he said
"And what America has is a capital market which allows you to get those types of funds, either through borrowing or through direct capital investment. It's a very integrated system and it basically has worked fairly well making us the most prosperous country in the world, in history. It's a critical element of maintaining our prosperity on Main Street."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Republican discussed his service on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which he said came to the conclusion that "we could stabilize [at] 70 percent and we'd be doing a good job." Gregg said that would require a reduction in spending by, "at that time, that was two years ago," $4 trillion over 10 years.
"Now we need to reduce spending by approximately $5 trillion over 10 years in order to hit that same number." Gregg said.
Putting politics before people was another topic Gregg covered when discussing his time on Capitol Hill.
"There's a natural tendency in Congress to want to get re-elected first and not worry too much about anything else," he said. "It's a difficult issue because these are complex questions. They involve very important issues that affect all Americans — Medicare, Social Security, tax reform," he said.
"When you step on to that ground, you're stepping on to a very volatile area of politics. But at its core is a question of whether or not we have a solid country, and if you don't have a solid country, then you're not doing your job as a member of government."
Gregg also discussed his recent appointment as CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
"One of the great advantages that America's always had is we've had a very strong capital market," he said.
"If you … want to take a risk, put sweat equity into your activities, and, as a result, are successful and start to create jobs, you're probably going to have [to] find some money to support you even doing that," he said
"And what America has is a capital market which allows you to get those types of funds, either through borrowing or through direct capital investment. It's a very integrated system and it basically has worked fairly well making us the most prosperous country in the world, in history. It's a critical element of maintaining our prosperity on Main Street."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)A 'Pragmatic' Mullah
Iran's new president Hassan Rohani is no moderate.
By Bret Stephens
'There's a sucker born every minute" is one of those great American phrases, fondly and frequently repeated by Americans, who tend to forget that it was said mainlyabout Americans. In the election of Hassan Rohani as Iran's president, we are watching the point being demonstrated again by someone who has demonstrated it before.
Who is Mr. Rohani? If all you did over the weekend was read headlines, you would have gleaned that he is a "moderate" (Financial Times), a "pragmatic victor" (New York Times) and a "reformist" (Bloomberg). Reading a little further, you would also learn that his election is being welcomed by the White House as a "potentially hopeful sign" that Iran is ready to strike a nuclear bargain.
All this for a man who, as my colleague Sohrab Ahmari noted in these pages Monday, called on the regime's basij militia to suppress the student protests of July 1999 "mercilessly and monumentally." More than a dozen students were killed in those protests, more than 1,000 were arrested, hundreds were tortured, and 70 simply "disappeared." In 2004 Mr. Rohani defended Iran's human-rights record, insisting there was "not one person in prison in Iran except when there is a judgment by a judge following a trial."
Mr. Rohani is also the man who chaired Iran's National Security Council between 1989 and 2005, meaning he was at the top table when Iran masterminded the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people, and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. airmen. He would also have been intimately familiar with the secret construction of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities in Arak, Natanz and Isfahan, which weren't publicly exposed until 2002.
In 2003 Mr. Rohani took charge as Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, a period now warmly remembered in the West for Tehran's short-lived agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its nuclear-enrichment work. That was also the year in which Iran supposedly halted its illicit nuclear-weapons' work, although the suspension proved fleeting, according to subsequent U.N. reports.
Then again, what looked to the credulous as evidence of Iranian moderation was, to Iranian insiders, an exercise in diplomatic cunning. "Negotiations provided time for Isfahan's uranium conversion project to be finished and commissioned, the number of centrifuges at Natanz increased from 150 to 1,000 and software and hardware for Iran's nuclear infrastructure to be further developed," Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Mr. Rohani's spokesman at the time, argues in a recent memoir. "The heavy water reactor project in Arak came into operation and was not suspended at all."
Nor was that the only advantage of Mr. Rohani's strategy of making nice and playing for time, according to Mr. Mousavian.
"Tehran showed that it was possible to exploit the gap between Europe and the United States to achieve Iranian objectives." "The world's understanding of 'suspension' was changed from a legally binding obligation . . . to a voluntary and short-term undertaking aimed at confidence building." "The world gradually came close to believing that Iran's nuclear activities posed no security or military threat. . . . Public opinion in the West, which was totally against Tehran's nuclear program in September 2003, softened a good deal." "Efforts were made to attract global attention to the need for WMD disarmament by Israel."
And best of all: "Iran would be able to attain agreements for the transfer of advanced nuclear technology to Iran for medical, agricultural, power plant, and other applications, in a departure from the nuclear sanctions of the preceding 27 years."
Mr. Mousavian laments that much of this good work was undone by the nuclear hard line Iran took when the incendiary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.
But that's true only up to a point. Iran made most of its key nuclear strides under Mr. Ahmadinejad, who also showed just how far Iran could test the West's patience without incurring regime-threatening penalties. Supply IEDs to Iraqi insurgents to kill American GIs? Check. Enrich uranium to near-bomb grade levels? Check. Steal an election and imprison the opposition? Check. Take Royal Marines and American backpackers hostage? Check. Fight to save Bashar Assad's regime in Syria? That, too. Even now, the diplomatic option remains a viable one as far as the Obama administration is concerned.
Now the West is supposed to be grateful that Mr. Ahmadinejad's scowling face will be replaced by Mr. Rohani's smiling one—a bad-cop, good-cop routine that Iran has played before. Western concessions will no doubt follow if Mr. Rohani can convince his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to play along. It shouldn't be a hard sell: Iran is now just a head-fake away from becoming a nuclear state and Mr. Khamenei has shown he's not averse to pragmatism when it suits him.
The capacity for self-deception is a coping mechanism in both life and diplomacy, but it comes at a price. As the West cheers the moderate and pragmatic and centrist Mr. Rohani, it will come to discover just how high a price it will pay.
Bigoted buffoon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has finally been fired as the president of Iran and replaced by the supposed moderate reformer Hassan Rowhani, who just won a landslide victory with more than fifty percent of the vote in a crowded field of eight candidates.
“The sun of my moderation has risen,” announced Arman, a reformist newspaper. The election, according to another reformist newspaper called Shargh, signifies “the return of hope and victory for reformers and moderates.”
Some journalists in the West are swooning, as well. Rawhani’s election, writes Karl Vick at Time magazine, “may bring the country out of the severe economic and diplomatic isolation imposed by world powers intent on Iran’s nuclear program.” “Hassan Rouhani's victory in the Iranian election is truly stunning,” writes Jonathan Steele at The Guardian. “It opens a window of hope for an easing of tension between Iran and the west on the strained nuclear file but also on the more urgent issue – the self-destructive clash between Shia and Sunni Islam that is killing thousands in Syria and Iraq and threatens the entire Middle East region.”
Well, maybe, but probably not. It’s way too early to get carried away.
First of all, Rowhani is not the head of state. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is. Rowhani is basically a powerless figurehead. So there’s that.
Second, Iran’s election only looks democratic and meaningful if you squint hard enough at it. So stop squinting and look at it squarely. Khamenei, Iran’s actual tyrannical ruler, wasn’t elected. He was hand-picked by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. And Khamenei and his claque of appointed jurists hand-picked all the presidential candidates who just stood for election. Those they didn’t approve of (and they were legion) did not get to run.
How would you feel about the next American election if Barack Obama or Dick Cheney were to selectall the candidates you could choose from? Iranian elections are a little like Henry Ford’s first line of Model-T cars. His customers, he famously said, could have their cars painted any color they like as long as it’s black.
Iranian expat Sohrab Ahmari put it bluntly, and aptly, in The Wall Street Journal. “This is what democracy looks like in a theocratic dictatorship. Iran's presidential campaign season kicked off last month when an unelected body of 12 Islamic jurists disqualified more than 600 candidates. Women were automatically out; so were Iranian Christians, Jews and even Sunni Muslims. The rest, including a former president, were purged for possessing insufficient revolutionary zeal. Eight regime loyalists made it onto the ballots. One emerged victorious on Saturday.”
But let’s pretend, for the sake of argument and analysis, that none of those things are true or that none of them matter. However he got the job, Rowhani is being billed as a moderate and a reformer. But the problem with the word “moderate” is that its meaning is entirely relative. The Muslim Brotherhood is moderate compared with Al Qaeda. Bashar al-Assad is moderate compared with Saddam Hussein. Fidel Castro is moderate compared with Josef Stalin. General Franco was moderate compared with Adolf Hitler.
But are the Muslim Brothers, Bashar al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Francisco Franco moderates compared with Western political figures who are labeled as moderates? No, no, no, and no.
It’s not even clear that Rowhani is a moderate compared with Ali Khamenei, the only comparison that actually matters.
“Hassan Rouhani is a regime pillar,” notes Lee Smith. “As an early follower of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rouhani joined him in exile in Paris, and over the last 34 years, the 64-year-old Qom-educated cleric has held key positions in the regime’s political echelons, and served in top military jobs during Iran’s decade-long war with Iraq. As Iran’s chief interlocutor with the West on the regime’s nuclear portfolio, Rouhani boasted of deceiving his negotiating partners. Domestically, he has threatened to crush protestors “mercilessly and monumentally,” and likely participated in the campaign of assassinations of the regime’s Iranian enemies at home and abroad, especially in Europe. Currently, Rouhani serves as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative on the supreme national security council.”
Even if Rowhani was a genuine reformer, it’s not at all clear that he’d be able to change anything. Remember Mohammad Khatami? He was Iran’s moderate reformist president from 1997 to 2005. He racked up a grand total of zero reforms in eight years.
It’s not even clear that he was a moderate or a reformer.
In July 1999 thousands of university students demanded the hard-liners in the regime resign from the government. They didn’t, of course. And Khatami and Rowhani—the old and new “moderate reformers” respectively—brazenly sided with the hard-liners. You can read all about it Countdown to Crisis by Kenneth R. Timmerman, but here’s the relevant passage quoting Rowhani, the new president.
“Addressing the crowd [of regime loyalists], Hassan Rouhani, one of Khatami’s vice presidents, promised to arrest pro-democracy protesters and execute them. ‘Two nights ago we received decisive instruction to deal with these elements,’ he announced. ‘And at dusk yesterday we received a decisive revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these opportunistic elements wherever it may occur. From today our people shall witness how our law-enforcement force and our heroic Bassij [militia] shall deal with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their faces.’”
Rowhani has a track record of thuggishness abroad as well as at home. John-Paul Pagano dug up some old reports from Iranian state media detailing Rowhani’s support for the region’s terrorist organizations and his opposition to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
IRNA news agency (Tehran, in English 1910 gmt 4 Apr 94) reported that Rohani, who is also the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, reiterated “Iran's firm support for Islamic resistance in southern Lebanon”.
According to an IRNA news agency report (2036 gmt 4 Apr 94), Rohani told the leaders of the 10 Palestinian factions that “what Yasir Arafat has signed with the Zionist regime as an agreement is ‘self humiliating’ and will not realize any of the goals and rights of the Palestinian nation”.
If Rowhani goes on record right now as president retracting his support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and proclaiming his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that would be interesting. It would be even more interesting if Ali Khamenei did these things instead since he’s the one with the power. Neither are likely to happen, nor would we be wise to trust the sincerity of such statements until we see them backed up with action because Rowhani as well as Khamenei has a track record of deception in foreign affairs.
Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and of the outstanding book The Shah, read Rowhani’s recent memoir and had some interesting things to say about it a few months ago in The New Republic. “The recent memoir by Hassan Rouhani,” he wrote, “who was for several years Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, and is now a possible compromise candidate in the upcoming presidential election, offers a more objective account of Iran’s nuclear strategy and what happened during the negotiations. More than once Rouhani admits that Iran’s strategy was to buy time and thereby to create a new reality on the ground. More than once he reiterates the view that Iran was willing to make concessions—such as the temporary suspension of enrichment activities—only if it would not delay their overall goal of achieving a full fuel cycle and of advancing the other relevant technologies (such as building more sophisticated centrifuges).”
So what do we have here in Iran? A man who barely won fifty percent of the vote in a rigged electoral system, who supports vicious repression of Iranian democracy activists as well as international terrorist organizations, who opposes Middle East peace, and who freely admits to deceiving Western diplomats about his country’s nuclear program to buy time.
There is nothing encouraging here whatsoever, so don’t be a sucker.
2b)Who is Hassan Rowhani?
When Iranians elected moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani their new president by a landslide on Friday, they surprised Washington and the world. The process of figuring out what his election means has only just begun. Moderate as applied to Iranian mullah politicians is a relative term – even the reformists tip the far conservative end of the political spectrum — but Rowhani’s win represents an opportunity for easing relations between Iran and the West. The country is still led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but the Supreme Leader indicated that he would allow Rowhani to engage in direct talks with the U.S., should he so wish.
Rowhani won with more than 50% of the vote, garnering more votes than all five of the hardliner candidates put together. He ran on a platform of moderation and rationality. He called for opening talks with the west, and placing the economy ahead – or at least on par – with the nuclear program as a national priority. And he advocated for the release of political prisoners, including former Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, whose loss four years ago sparked mass protests and a brutal government crack down. Mousavi, a reformist, has been detained in an undisclosed location since. “This victory is the victory of wisdom, moderation and awareness over fanaticism and bad behavior,” Rowhani said in his first speech to the public as president-elect on Sunday.
Rowhani is no American patsy. He was one of the original revolutionaries, living in exile in Paris with Iran’s first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His loyalty to the Supreme Leader is absolute, or he wouldn’t have been allowed to run. He’s an insider who’s spent decades atop some of Iran’s most important committees. In recent weeks he’s voiced support for Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and in his first press conference as president-elect, he insisted the time has long past for Iran to negotiate on its enrichment of low-grade uranium – that is Iran’s unassailable right. In 2004, as lead negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program, he bragged that he kept the West talking while Iran was importing advanced materials to further the program. “We will go ahead with confidence-building and will endeavor to build up our [nuclear] technical capability,” Rowhani reportedly said at a news conference at the time. “This is our diplomacy: to proceed [in] both directions simultaneously.”
So, who is Hassan Rowhani? Conservative? Reformer? Honest broker? Double dealer? As Iran nears Israel’s red line – when Israel believes it will no longer be possible to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — and risks a military conflict, Rowhani could potentially be the key to war or peace in the region.
Hassan Rohani, 64, was born Hassan Feridon in Sorkheh, a city in Iran’s northern Semnan province. His family, he has said on the campaign trail, was anti-Shah and he was sent to a religious seminary in Semnan at the age of 12. A year later he moved to another seminary in Qom, the seat of Iran’s Shia branch of Islam. He took the name Rowhani, which means community of clerics, during his religious studies in the place of his ancient Persian, but non-Muslim, given name Feridon, according to Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council.
Rowhani studied law at the University of Tehran, graduating in 1972. On the campaign trail he said that the fact that he had to pay for his own schooling gave him character. After graduation, he devoted himself full time to traveling Iran and giving anti-Shah, pro-Khomeini speeches. By 1977, he was forced to leave Iran as his life was in danger. He joined Khomeini in Paris and continued his speaking to student groups in Europe. He returned with Khomeini to Iran after the 1979 revolution and joined the government. He’s risen steadily in the political ranks since.
Since the late 1970’s, Rowhani has been hailed as “doctor” in public circles, an honorarium given to many Iranian students who left advanced studies abroad to return home for the revolution. In 1995, Rowhani finally earned a masters degree in philosophy from Glasgow’s Caledonian University for a thesis entitled, “The Islamic legislative power with reference to the Iranian experience” and a PhD from the same school four years later for another thesis entitled, “The Flexibility of Shariah with reference to the Iranian experience.” He’s said to speak fluent Persian, English, Arabic, French, German and Russian.
According to his official biography, he spent much of his early governmental years in the defense sector, serving on the Supreme Defense Council before heading the High Council for Supporting War during the Iran/Iraq war. He rose to deputy commander of the war and eventually was appointed deputy commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces in 1988. He turned down the job of intelligence minister in 1989. “This guy really was a child of the revolution,” says Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst with the Eurasia Group who met Rowhani at a Persian Gulf security conference organized by an Iranian think tank in the early 2000’s. “There’s a lot of conflating of Hassan with [former Iranian President and reformist] Mohammed Khatami and Mousavi. He’s not. This guy is an insider.”
In 2000, he was elected to the religious body, the Assembly of Experts, which elects the Ayatollah. In 2003 he was named Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, the only cleric before or since to hold that role, earning him the nickname the “sheikh diplomat.” At the time, he had a reputation for having the ear of Khamenei, who appointed him the chief nuclear negotiator. “People don’t realize that he’s the one who convinced Khamenei to stop the clandestine military nuclear program at the end of 2003,” says Francois Nicoullaud, France’s ambassador to Iran at the time. “This makes me optimistic now because I believe that he is a man able to take such an important steps.”
Rowhani resigned as secretary from the Supreme National Security Council when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected President in 2005, and has remained a vocal critic of Ahmadinejad since. In a 2006 letter to TIME, Rowhani argued that “a nuclear weaponized Iran destabilizes the region, prompts a regional arms races, and wastes the scare resources of the region.” During the campaign, Rowhani blamed the current nuclear negotiator and presidential rival Saeed Jailili for being too uncompromising to the West and bringing crippling economic sanctions on Iran. “Ahmadinejad was very aggressive and made some unprecedented statements. Rowhani is not like that,” said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a close deputy of Rowhani’s who fled Iran in 2007 after Ahmadinejad accused him of spying for the Europeans. Mousavian teaches at Princeton, though he now plans to return to Iran to work for Rowhani in the coming months. “He’s more of a listener. Before he talks he thinks a lot.”
Rowhani married when he was about 20 and had five children. His eldest son was assassinated in his early 20’s at the family’s home on a military base in southern Tehran, according to Mousavian. The young man, who had been training to be a pilot, was shot to death in what the family believes was a politically motivated killing, though the killer has never been found, Mousavian said. For years Rowhani investigated the death, but he ultimately “decided to be silent and not pursue it,” said Mousavian. Rowhani has four other children: one son, who is an engineer and three daughters, one of whom is married, according to his biography.
Rowhani is a workaholic, getting to work at 7am and rarely leaving work before 10pm, Mousavian said, and he’s very “demanding” on his staff. Still, Rowhani manages to slip away two–to-three times a week for walks in the mountains north of Tehran in the Velenjak area, and he regularly swims, Mousavian said. He loves Iranian cinema, traditional Iranian art and his favorite singer is Shajarian, Mousavian said. “Some people say he is reformist others say he’s conservative,” Mousavian said. “But I know him. He’s never been a conservative or a reformist. He’s always been a centrist, not believing the government can be ruled by one faction, either reform or conservative, but using capable managers from both factions.”
America doesn’t expect Iran to open up overnight. “The Supreme Leader holds the nuclear portfolio,” State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday. “We have not had expectations leading up to this election that that would change.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted that all of the presidential candidates were hand picked by the Supreme Leader and the West shouldn’t be fooled “into wishful thinking and weaken the pressure on Iran.” That said, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that he sees Rowhani’s election as “a potentially hopeful sign.”
For his part, Rowhani said in his first press conference that he would like to sit down with the Americans and work out a deal akin to the one he discussed with the Europeans in 2005. In that proposal, the West would recognize Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear program and allow low grade enrichment and would dismantle the economic sanctions and in return Iran would abide by International Atomic Energy Agency standards and give complete access to inspectors, pledging to never weaponize its uranium. “The Iranian people…will be happy to build trust and repair relations with the United States,” Rouhani said. “Both nations need to think more about the future and try to sit down and find solutions to past issues and rectify things.”
2c)Netanyahu: Rohani has no say in Iran's nuclear program
Eli Leon, Lilach Shoval, Yoni Hirsch
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the recent election of Hassan Rohani as Iran's president was unlikely to bring about any change in Iran's nuclear policy. Netanyahu was commenting on Rohani's statement pledging to promote nuclear transparency and dialogue with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
“He [Rohani] doesn't count. He doesn't call the shots,” Netanyahu said. He said it was Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who made all the decisions on nuclear policy, which the West fears is geared towards developing an atomic weapon.
“The Iranian election clearly reflects deep disaffection of the Iranian people with its regime, but unfortunately it doesn't have the power to change Iran's nuclear ambitions,” Netanyahu told Reuters.
Iran, he said, was using its presidential elections to buy time: “They are using time. He himself admitted they were using time basically to continue Iran's nuclear weapons program.”
Commenting on the international sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program, Netanyahu said, “These sanctions actually produced the change we have seen today. They did not work counterproductively. They produced some change in Iran, but they have not yet produced the change that we need to see. So stay firm with the demands and firm with the sanctions.”
Netanyahu said he would not be setting any further red lines, but that world powers had to persuade Iran to halt all enrichment and remove the uranium stockpiles.
“The red line has not changed. Neither has the Iranian pursuit of approaching it gradually, running out the clock, buying time, putting up a more hospitable face. These are all tactics. Again and again and again,” he said.
Rohani held his first news conference as Iran's new president on Monday in Tehran, expressing his hope that the world would grasp a new opportunity for “constructive interaction” with Iran and pledging to be more transparent about the Islamic republic's nuclear program to see the sanctions imposed on his country lifted.
A moderate conservative cleric, Rohani scored an emphatic and surprise election win over conservative rivals on Friday and has quickly moved to assure Iranians and the world that he will keep his pledges of better relations with other countries.
“There is an opportunity now … I hope that all countries take advantage of this opportunity, because this opportunity is beneficial from the point of view of mutual national interests. If one looks at the world today, we see tensions and stresses in the economic and political arenas across the world as well as in the [Middle East] region. Therefore relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its new government will not only be beneficial for the Iranian nation, but also for the countries in the region and the wider world,” he said.
Rohani, who served as Iran's nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, said Tehran would be more transparent about its activities in the future in order to resolve the long-standing nuclear dispute.
“We will look at taking two specifics to allow us to remove and resolve the issue of sanctions [against Iran]. The first is to take the path towards increased transparency [over Iran's nuclear program]. Of course our nuclear programs are totally transparent in nature. But we are ready to show more transparency and to show the world that Iran's nuclear work complies fully with the international framework.
“Secondly, we will promote the growth of mutual trust between Iran and other nations. Wherever this mutual trust is under threat, we will make efforts to strengthen this mutual trust. In my view, the way to end the sanctions regime [against Iran] is through mutual trust and greater transparency within the framework of international rules and regulations,” he said.
Asked if Iran would be willing to engage in direct dialogue with the U.S., Rohani said the U.S. had to recognize Iran's nuclear rights and pledge not to interfere in its internal affairs before direct talks between the two countries could take place.
“The issue of relations between Iran and America is a difficult and complex one. It is not a simple problem. There exists an old wound [between the two countries] and it is necessary for it to close in order for it to heal,” he said.
“Of course, we will not seek to increase or widen tensions [between the two countries]. Logic and sense also dictates that the two people and the two nations should look forward to the future, and to sit down and think about the past and how to make amends.
“But any dialogue with America, aside from the fact that it has to be based on mutual respect, on mutual interests and on a level field, has to be based on a set of conditions which have to be adhered to and implemented.
“Firstly, the Americans must agree that they will not interfere in Iran's internal affairs. Secondly, they must recognize all the rights of the Iranian nation, including the right to a nuclear program. And thirdly, they must put aside policies that are one-sided or those that try to bully and intimidate Iran. Of course, with these conditions the ground could be ready, and if there is a sense that there exists a degree of good will, then there will be a level playing field.
“But everyone must understand that the future government [of Iran] will not give up what rightfully belongs to the Iranian nation.”
3)The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency's massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess.
The belated recognition of this administration's contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
But what if the NSA program has in fact thwarted terrorists and saved many American lives in ways that cannot be revealed publicly?
Nothing is easier than saying that you still don't want your telephone records collected by the government. But the first time you have to collect the remains of your loved ones, after they have been killed by terrorists, telephone records can suddenly seem like a small price to pay to prevent such things.
The millions of records of phone calls collected every day virtually guarantee that nobody has the time to listen to them all, even if NSA could get a judge to authorize listening to what is said in all these calls, instead of just keeping a record of who called whom.
Moreover, Congressional oversight by members of both political parties limits what Barack Obama or any other president can get away with.
Are these safeguards foolproof? No. Nothing is ever foolproof.
As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: "Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state."
In other words, we do not have a choice whether to trust or not to trust government officials. Unless we are willing to risk anarchy or terrorism, the most we can do is set up checks and balances within government -- and be a lot more careful in the future than we have been in the past when deciding whom to elect.
Anyone old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when President John F. Kennedy took this country to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, may remember that there was nothing like the distrust and backlash against later presidents, whose controversial decisions risked nothing approaching the cataclysm that President Kennedy's decision could have led to.
Even those of us who were not John F. Kennedy supporters, and who were not dazzled by the glitter and glamour of the Kennedy aura, nevertheless felt that the President of the United States was someone who knew much more than we did about the realities on which all our lives depended.
Whatever happened to that feeling? Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon happened -- and both were shameless liars. They destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility of the office.
Even when Lyndon Johnson told us the truth at a crucial juncture during the Vietnam war -- that the Communist offensive of 1968 was a defeat for them, even as the media depicted it as a defeat for us -- we didn't believe him.
In later years, Communist leaders themselves admitted that they had been devastated on the battlefield. But, by then it was too late. What the Communists lost militarily on the ground in Vietnam they won politically in the American media and in American public opinion.
More than 50,000 Americans lost their lives winning battles on the ground in Vietnam, only to have the war lost politically back home. We seem to be having a similar scenario unfolding today in Iraq, where soldiers won the war, only to have politicians lose the peace, as Iraq now increasingly aligns itself with Iran.
When Barack Obama squanders his own credibility with his glib lies, he is not just injuring himself during his time in office. He is inflicting a lasting wound on the country as a whole.
But we the voters are not blameless. Having chosen an untested man to be president, on the basis of rhetoric, style and symbolism, we have ourselves to blame if we now have only a choice between two potentially tragic fates -- the loss of American lives to terrorism or a further dismantling of our freedoms that has already led many people to ask: "Is this still America?"
3a)Obama's Loss of Trust and Credibility
By Janice Shaw Crouse
The latest polls show that President Obama's approval ratings are in free fall like a hot air balloon with the fire extinguished; his approval rating has declined eight percentage points over the past month. CNN reporter Chris Cuomo described the decline as "dropping like a stone." Lara Brown of U.S. News and World Report, declared, "The Obama presidency becomes more Grant than Lincoln every day." Even his standing as a "leader" has shown a six-percentage-point drop among those who think he is a decisive and strong leader. Worse, CNN reports that half of the public no longer trust the president or find him honest, credible, or trustworthy. The worst news, though, is that 54 percent of the public disapprove of the president's job performance - up nine points over the past month. Taken as a whole, this is a meltdown of public support for the president and the first time since November 2011 that a poll revealed that a majority of Americans view the president negatively. Significantly, it is the Democrats, young people, independents, and minorities - the president's former friends and formerly his strongest supporters - who are causing the shifts in approval. In fact, the biggest drop this month is among the under 30's, which dropped 17 points since last month.
The dive in approval ratings, of course, coincides with media coverage of the cascade of scandals washing over the White House. While the impetus for the decline in approval likely is concern for the unprecedented invasions of privacy and the distaste for government surveillance of private citizens, the president's numbers dropped across the board: economy (down two points), deficit (down four points), immigration (down four points), terrorism (down 13 points), foreign affairs (down five points). The catalyst for the heretofore somnolent media's sudden attention to the administration's misfeasance, if not malfeasance, probably is that its own freedoms are threatened this time. As Breitbart noted, the mainstream media has not broken a single one of the major scandals of Mr. Obama's second term, nor have they even covered the scandals until recently. Instead, as Breitbart also noted, the "media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered." In that, of course, the White House has been even more diligent; the president and his team have worked to downplay the seriousness of the allegations of all the scandals. None of the major players has had push-back - Eric Holder, though cited for contempt of Congress, is still Attorney General, and both Susan Rice and Samantha Power have had promotions. In fact, a factor of the public's about-face in support for the president comes, I believe, from his "in-your-face" response to thescandals. He seems to put his administration above the fray when it comes to accountability and transparency - in spite of all the high-sounding campaign and political rhetoric about transparency.
3a)Obama's Loss of Trust and Credibility
By Janice Shaw Crouse
The latest polls show that President Obama's approval ratings are in free fall like a hot air balloon with the fire extinguished; his approval rating has declined eight percentage points over the past month. CNN reporter Chris Cuomo described the decline as "dropping like a stone." Lara Brown of U.S. News and World Report, declared, "The Obama presidency becomes more Grant than Lincoln every day." Even his standing as a "leader" has shown a six-percentage-point drop among those who think he is a decisive and strong leader. Worse, CNN reports that half of the public no longer trust the president or find him honest, credible, or trustworthy. The worst news, though, is that 54 percent of the public disapprove of the president's job performance - up nine points over the past month. Taken as a whole, this is a meltdown of public support for the president and the first time since November 2011 that a poll revealed that a majority of Americans view the president negatively. Significantly, it is the Democrats, young people, independents, and minorities - the president's former friends and formerly his strongest supporters - who are causing the shifts in approval. In fact, the biggest drop this month is among the under 30's, which dropped 17 points since last month.
The dive in approval ratings, of course, coincides with media coverage of the cascade of scandals washing over the White House. While the impetus for the decline in approval likely is concern for the unprecedented invasions of privacy and the distaste for government surveillance of private citizens, the president's numbers dropped across the board: economy (down two points), deficit (down four points), immigration (down four points), terrorism (down 13 points), foreign affairs (down five points). The catalyst for the heretofore somnolent media's sudden attention to the administration's misfeasance, if not malfeasance, probably is that its own freedoms are threatened this time. As Breitbart noted, the mainstream media has not broken a single one of the major scandals of Mr. Obama's second term, nor have they even covered the scandals until recently. Instead, as Breitbart also noted, the "media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered." In that, of course, the White House has been even more diligent; the president and his team have worked to downplay the seriousness of the allegations of all the scandals. None of the major players has had push-back - Eric Holder, though cited for contempt of Congress, is still Attorney General, and both Susan Rice and Samantha Power have had promotions. In fact, a factor of the public's about-face in support for the president comes, I believe, from his "in-your-face" response to thescandals. He seems to put his administration above the fray when it comes to accountability and transparency - in spite of all the high-sounding campaign and political rhetoric about transparency.
If the Nixon era should have taught politicians anything, it is that trust and credibility are essential to the presidency. Nixon's downfall was not so much in the petty thievery of his campaign researchers; it was the lying and cover-up that brought him down. With Obama, abuse of trust is the theme running through all the scandals. Ironically, the shear number of scandals is helping the president in the short term - there is scattershot investigative coverage rather than focused probing. The cumulative effect, though, is beginning to show. Americans bought into the president's campaign image of "hope and change," but lately, they instinctively know that "where's there is smoke, there's fire" and the "smoke" of all the scandals seems to come directly from fires at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In the Internet era, doubletalk doesn't work; there've been too many side-by-side comparisons of truth versus White House spin.
It's bad enough that the public doesn't trust the president and his White House czars; it is disastrous when the Obama Administration's cronyism and scandals destroy trust to the point that the credibility not just of this administration but of the whole of the United States Government is threatened. Nowhere is this a more pressing problem than in the Internal Revenue Service scandal; the president added the newly minted responsibility to administer parts of the Affordable Care Act to the IRS's responsibility for collecting tax revenues. The idea that the public will trust the IRS after what has been revealed about ideology contaminating the processing of applications for tax-exempt status has dealt it a body blow from which it will be difficult if not impossible to recover. Voluntary compliance with tax regulations has, by and large, been the hallmark of this country. But unless some drastic housecleaning and reform are implemented, tax avoidance such as is rampant in countries like Italy, Greece, and some South American countries may spread like a plague.
What can we learn from this morality tale? When trust between a president and the people begins to unravel, the whole government starts to fall apart.
Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., a former Presidential Speech Writer for President George H. W. Bush, is now Senior Fellow for Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) The Troubling Timing of Obama's Syria Epiphany
By Noah Beck
Last August, President Obama declared that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons was a "red line." About four months later, Al Jazeera released unconfirmed reports that a gas attack killed seven civilians in a rebel-held neighborhood of Homs. Last April, the UK, France, and Israel each claimed that there was evidence that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Aleppo, Homs, and/or Damascus. By April 25th, the U.S intelligence assessment was that the Assad regime had likely used sarin gas, but President Obama dodged his red line by announcing that a thorough investigation was still needed (as if the Syrian government would ever allow one). Meanwhile, reports from foreign intelligence agencies and journalists continued to corroborate the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. So why did Obama's requirement of a thorough investigation to confirm the crossing of his red line suddenly vanish last Friday?
4) The Troubling Timing of Obama's Syria Epiphany
By Noah Beck
Last August, President Obama declared that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons was a "red line." About four months later, Al Jazeera released unconfirmed reports that a gas attack killed seven civilians in a rebel-held neighborhood of Homs. Last April, the UK, France, and Israel each claimed that there was evidence that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Aleppo, Homs, and/or Damascus. By April 25th, the U.S intelligence assessment was that the Assad regime had likely used sarin gas, but President Obama dodged his red line by announcing that a thorough investigation was still needed (as if the Syrian government would ever allow one). Meanwhile, reports from foreign intelligence agencies and journalists continued to corroborate the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. So why did Obama's requirement of a thorough investigation to confirm the crossing of his red line suddenly vanish last Friday?
Viewed through the lens of domestic politics, Obama's Syria epiphany looks conveniently timed to deflect attention from an ever-swelling wave of scandals: Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate, AP/Fox-gate, and now NSA-gate and State Department prostitution-gate. As the film Wag The Dog highlights, international crises are great at diverting attention from domestic scandals.
But from the perspective of the Syrian rebels, the timing and nature of U.S. military assistance may be viewed as either too little, too late, or a cynical attempt to ensure a perpetual stalemate. After all, the outgunned rebels have needed lethal weapons from the U.S. for over two years. Chemical weapons use by the Assad regime is old news. So what has changed? The Syrian regime recently defeated rebel forces at the crucial battle in Qusayr, a town providing a strategic supply conduit for rebel forces in Homs. After the military gains enabled by the robust battlefield support of Iran-backed Hezb'allah, the Syrian regime is now preparing for a major offensive to retake Aleppo. With another crushing blow to a key rebel stronghold, the regime could ultimately prevail in the conflict, unless the U.S. provides just enough rebel support to restore the pre-Qusayr stalemate.
Obama has already made it clear that any lethal weapons or no-fly zone provided by the U.S. would be limited. Such tentative U.S. involvement is unlikely to end the carnage, given the vigorous support that the Assad regime enjoys from Iran, Hezb'allah, and Russia (which could undermine a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone by supplying Syria with its potent S-300 missile defense system). Indeed, the New York Times reported on June 14th that "the president's caution has frayed relations with important American allies in the Middle East that have privately described the White House strategy as feckless. Saudi Arabia and Jordan recently cut the United States out of a new rebel training program, a decision that American officials said came from the belief in Riyadh and Amman that the United States has only a tepid commitment to supporting rebel groups."
What a difference two years makes. In 2011, the relatively non-sectarian Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the main force fighting for freedom from Assad's tyranny. Sunni Islamists had not yet felt compelled by FSA failures to join (and ultimately lead) the military effort in large numbers. In 2011, Obama also had far more credibility and political capital -- important presidential assets when undertaking a foreign military intervention.
But now the Syrian crisis has deteriorated into a regional sectarian war, increasingly creeping over Syrian borders and into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, and Jordan. The Syrian belligerents have also radicalized, decreasing the odds that the ultimate victor will be friendly to the U.S. or able to achieve a postwar reconciliation and reconstruction in Syria.
Today, with a death toll exceeding 90,000 Syrians (and increasing by 5,000/month) and millions displaced, the humanitarian need for intervention is greater than ever. But Iran and Russia are redoubling their support for the Assad regime, so the U.S. must not enter the Syrian cauldron with half-measures or it could suffer a costly setback with far-reaching repercussions. If Obama's "red line" was crossed months ago and the tardy "consequences" are America's feeble and ineffective entry into the Syrian civil war, then Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and other U.S. adversaries will only feel emboldened to challenge U.S. interests.
Thus, Obama effectively has two choices: 1) continue his disengagement from Syria to preserve whatever political capital and military deterrent he has left for the inevitable showdown over Iranian nukes, 2) enter the Syrian fray in a massive way that ensures a military victory and says to the Iranian regime: "you are next, unless you discontinue your nuclear program." After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran feared that thousands of American troops would turn eastward and offered to negotiate the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration refused to engage but Iran still temporarily suspended its nuclear program out of trepidation.
U.S. entry into the Syrian conflict could defeat Assad and deter Iranian nukes, but only with the resolve and overwhelming firepower to demolish the Syrian-Iranian-Hezb'allah axis (ideally with help from NATO forces). Joining the conflict with insufficient commitment mainly to distract a scandal-weary U.S. audience could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S., and that would be the biggest scandal of all.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, a doomsday thriller about the Iranian nuclear threat and current geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment