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Obama is allowing Iran to go nuclear as if he ever had a believable and sincere intention of doing otherwise.
Meanwhile, he has us engaged in another war with those he claimed were defeated and which is the direct result of his precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. ( Ah, but once again Obama blames others and most particularly our intelligence agencies yet, G.W was called a liar for listening to his intelligence agencies.)
Furthermore, Obama is unlikely to take the advice of his military advisers because he is politically motivated and has no desire to do what it might take to win against Isis. Air strikes alone will not be determinative. So we are back to square one.
What tragedies this incompetent ideologue has gotten us into and I suspect matters will only worsen.
To make things more disheartening , if that is possible, Senators Reid and Warren are busy spending tax payer money to buy off one group after the other in order to hold onto the Senate
Eventually Americans might awake to the fact they have been defrauded and played for fools. When, and if, that occurs there is no telling where their anger and disgust will lead, particularly in the event Obama's War turns south..
Meanwhile, investigations of various alleged Obama Administration Scandals continue as Obama and his appointees continue to stonewall Congress, refusing to produce necessary documents to clarify what happened and why. Once again, the nation's future rests in the hands of the federal judiciary.. (See 1 below.)
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Noonan writes what I have been saying when it comes to the continuing Republican campaign and strategy dysfunction. (See 2 below.)
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Netanyahu tries to get the West to focus on Iran but I doubt he will be successful.
He made a powerful and blunt speech, did not mince words and held out his hand to the Arab/Muslim World. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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The New York Times continues to distort when it comes to Israel. Why are the owners of "The Gray Lady" so disingenuous? Is it because they are intellectual German Jews who continue struggling with their insecurities and need to be accepted by New York's Society? You decide! (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Iran Makes the Rules
Tehran holds firm while the U.S. keeps making nuclear concessions.
ENLARGE
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Obama sucked up most of the media oxygen at the United Nations last week with his call for collective action against the Islamic State and other jihadists. But if anyone made real news from the General Assembly's green-marble podium, it was Iranian President Hasan Rouhani. The fabled Iranian moderate's unsubtle message: You'll play by our rules now.
"The people of Iran," he said, "cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government and those who have imposed sanctions." That was a kick in the shins to U.S. diplomats who have made little secret of their desire to make common cause with Tehran against the Islamic State—albeit a kick dressed up as an inducement to lift the sanctions. It follows Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's claim last week that Secretary of State John Kerry is "lying" about the nature of U.S. overtures toward Iran. How's that for improving the diplomatic mood music?
Mr. Rouhani also gave no ground on nuclear negotiations, whose latest deadline is late November, in time for the lame duck Congress in case Republicans retake the chamber. Iran would continue to enrich uranium, said Mr. Rouhani, never mind Security Council resolutions demanding a suspension of enrichment.
He also claimed that Iran had honored its obligations under the interim nuclear agreement. That's despite a report this month from the International Atomic Energy Agency noting that Tehran continued to stymie its efforts to investigate the "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear program. "These activities," the IAEA reported, "are likely to have further undermined the Agency's ability to conduct effective verification."
All of this explains why nuclear negotiations have gone nowhere after nearly a year—and after President Obama made a point of quashing a Congressional effort to revive sanctions if Iran fails to negotiate in good faith. Harder to explain is why the Administration is now seeking ever more creative ways to give the mullahs what they want.
The latest Administration brainstorm is to abandon the longstanding demand that Iran dismantle its uranium-enriching centrifuges, of which it currently has installed about 10,000, with an additional 9,000 built. Under one Western proposal, Iran would merely be asked to disconnect some of the pipes connecting one centrifuge to the next. Another idea, according to the Associated Press, is to allow Iran to keep as many as 4,500 centrifuges, provided Iran agrees to enrich uranium at a lower rate.
Then there are Iran's ballistic missiles, an essential component of its nuclear-weapons program. Security Council Resolution 1929 "decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons." Yet over the summer Mr. Khamenei called on his Revolutionary Guards to mass-produce ballistic missiles, and now the Administration is looking for an accommodation.
Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told a House committee in July that Resolution 1929 is "not about ballistic missiles per se," but about nuclear-armed missiles. But that ignores that a ballistic missile that can carry a conventional warhead, or a satellite, can also carry a nuclear warhead.
The larger problem is that these diplomatic gambits rest on the fanciful notion that the same regime that is stonewalling the IAEA can be trusted not to reconnect its centrifuges on short notice or increase their rates of uranium production or develop more powerful rockets. Iran has spent a decade taking advantage of the diplomatic process to buy time and advance its nuclear programs.
"The Iranian nuclear game is to compromise on the elements of the program they've already perfected in order to gain time on the elements they haven't," says Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "They've perfected enrichment so they can suspend it for the time being. What they've gained in exchange is time to work on advanced centrifuge R&D. The more efficient the centrifuges, the fewer they need; the fewer they need, the easier they are to hide."
All this is happening while America's attention has been consumed by the rise of the Islamic State and Vladimir Putin's depredations in Europe. But permitting Iran to get to the edge of nuclear capability would be the worst setback to U.S. and world security so far in the Obama era, which is saying something. Members of both parties on Capitol Hill need to start speaking up about the Administration's dangerous concessions to Iran's rules.
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2)
Republicans Need a Direction
They could win by default, but that's not good enough.
ENLARGE
MARTIN KOZLOWSKI
In a year when Republicans are operating in such an enviable political environment, why aren't their U.S. Senate candidates holding big and impressive leads? Why does it look close? Why are party professionals getting worried?
The Democratic president is unpopular. What progress can be claimed in the economy is tentative, uneven, feels temporary. True unemployment is bad and people who have jobs feel stressed and hammered by costs. Americans are less optimistic than they've ever been in the modern era, with right-track/wrong-track numbers upside down. Scandals, war, uncertain leadership—all this has yielded a sense the whole enterprise of the past six years just did not work.
But Republicans aren't achieving lift-off. The metaphor used most often is the wave. If Republicans can't make, catch and ride a wave in an environment like this, they've gone from being the stupid party to the stupid loser party.
What's wrong?
An accomplished establishment Republican this week shrugged and noted the obvious: Every race is state-by-state and has its own realities; some candidates prove good and some are disappointing. Another establishment figure, an elected officeholder, observed with satisfaction that Republicans in Washington have done a good job making sure local candidates weren't nutty persons who said nutty things.
But is that enough? Kellyanne Conway of The Polling Co. says no: "It's not enough for voters to have a candidate who doesn't say something controversial. They need something compelling."
The party's consultants say it comes down to money: Republicans are raising less than Democrats and need more. But Ms. Conway notes that in 2012, well-funded Republicans George Allen, Connie Mack, Linda McMahon, Josh Mandel and Tommy Thompson all went down to defeat. It's not all about money.
The question this week is whether the election should be nationalized, lifted beyond the local and given power by clear stands on some agreed-upon national issues. Those who resist say the election has already been nationalized by Barack Obama. His and his administration's unpopularity are all the unifying force that's needed.
But put aside the word "nationalized." Shouldn't the Republican Party make it clear right now exactly what it is for and what it intends to do?
Here the views of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and much of the Washington-based GOP election apparatus have held sway. If you are explicit in terms of larger policy ideas, you just give Democrats something to shoot at. Don't give them a target. ObamaCare, the foreign-policy mess, the IRS—these are so unpopular they're more than enough reason to vote Republican. Don't give voters a reason not to!
This sounds like the hard practicality of big-time politics, and it has a certain logic. But it doesn't take into account some underlying realities.
One is the rising air of public crisis. Many voters, especially in the Republican base, feel America is under threat and we are losing our country. They feel they are fighting to save it. In a time of alarm, vagueness doesn't seem clever but oblivious—out of touch and unaware.
Asecond reality is the GOP's brand problem. Everyone knows about it and is tired of saying it; the Democrats continue exploiting it because it's almost all they have. Moreover, history suggests a political brand problem gets resolved only by a vivid figure like FDR or Reagan, who through their popularity and power changed how people saw their parties. Republican politicians can't sit around waiting for a vivid figure to come along, so they don't talk about the problem anymore.
The cliché is that Republicans are old, white, don't like women or science, are narrow, numeric and oppose all modern ways. The cliché probably isn't as powerful as it used to be because the president has made so many new Republicans, but it's still there.
But Republicanism right now has a special duty to be dynamic and serious. It has to paint a world of the possible. It has to make people feel that things can be made better. The spirit animating the party should be "This way, we will take that hill and hold it. Together, now, let's march." To rouse people you have to tell them your plans.
And it would be especially welcome at this moment. The Democratic Party in the last years of Obama is running on empty, pushing old buttons. To judge by their current campaigns, their only bullets are mischief and malice. The mischief includes a wholly fictional Republican war on women and the malice involves class-mongering and "check your privilege" manipulation. Only the young seem idealistic; older Democrats seem like a sated force.
The Democrats' reputation is suffering, but the point here is the Republicans'. When you have a poor brand, do you spend all your time saying the other guy is worse? Or do you start rebuilding your reputation? In politics that means saying what you are for, not what you are against, and what you will do, not what the other guy will do if the voters let him.
A third reason to go with the idea of avowed meaning is the suspicion some voters must have that while to vote Democratic this year is to vote for the potential of more trouble, to vote Republican may be a vote for nothing changing or improving very much.
Both parties in Washington use stasis as a strategy. I suspect there are Republicans on the ground who intuit the Republican version of this. Republican inertia was outlined to me this spring, ironically, by a GOP congressman:
The 2010 election, he explained, was about winning the House, don't rock the boat. Twenty twelve was all about the presidential—again don't rock the boat, don't mess things up with anything controversial, win the presidency to effect change. In 2014, he said, it's all about the Senate—win it, hold the House. Then in 2016 it's going to be all about the presidential and holding the Senate. In 2018, he said, it will be all about holding Congress for a Republican president or against a Democratic one. Then in 2020 it will be all about the presidential.
After that, he said, we might do something!
His point was that party professionals think the party has to keep winning, so—wait. For what?
Republican political professionals need to get the meaning of things back. Otherwise, if Republicans do take the Senate, their new majority will arrive not having won on the basis of something shared. They will not be able to claim any mandate for anything. That will encourage them to become self-driven freelancers in a very pleasant and distinguished freelancer's club, which is sort of what the Senate is.
It's good to win, but winning without a declared governing purpose is a ticket to nowhere.
Some feel a vague list of general stands might solve the problem and do the trick. They think it's probably too late to do more than that. But there are 6½ weeks before the election, and plenty of voters would be asking for more information and open to changing their minds. In such circumstances, explicit vows are more likely to be taken seriously than airy sentiments.
Republicans need to say what they're for. They need to make it new and true—not something defensive but something equal to the moment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) Netanyahu to Push Iran as Bigger Threat Than Islamic State at UN
By: Calev Ben-David
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will urge world leaders to keep up the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program even as they confront the threat of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
Netanyahu, addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, will expand on his Sept. 22 remarks mocking “esteemed commentators in the West” who say “the major powers need to go easy on Iran’s nuclear program so that Iran will fight” Islamic State, according to aides familiar with his speech. They asked not to be identified because it hasn’t been delivered.
Two years ago, Netanyahu pulled out a cartoon bomb at the same forum to argue time was running out to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb. With efforts to crush Islamic State overshadowing the General Assembly session, his message may be tougher to sell this time.
“Netanyahu has a big problem, because the main issue in this UN General Assembly is the Islamic State, and he’s coming with Iran, which people will say is not as important,” said Eytan Gilboa, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. “As in previous General Assemblies, Netanyahu may have a message, but no audience.”
Netanyahu’s diplomatic efforts at the UN and a White House visit on Oct. 1 will also be clouded by new frictions with the Palestinians. Over the weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN to set a timetable for establishing a Palestinian state and accused Israel of perpetrating a “war of genocide” in Gaza -- a charge Netanyahu denounced as “slander and lies.”
Existential Threat
World powers are trying to reach a nuclear deal with Iran as a U.S.-led military coalition strikes Islamic State, an al- Qaeda splinter that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria and gained notoriety for beheadings and crucifixions. Although Iran isn’t part of that alliance, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it has a role to play in defeating Islamic State.
Kerry will have a private meeting with Netanyahu in New York this evening, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Netanyahu says a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to Israel’s survival and dismisses the Iranian government’s claims that its atomic program is peaceful. Having brandished the threat of a possible military strike, he has urged that any nuclear deal between Iran and world powers force Iran to end its uranium enrichment and other activities that could be used in bomb making.
Iran says its nuclear work is designed for energy and medical purposes and has rejected those conditions. On Sept. 25, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the General Assembly his country is “committed to continue our peaceful nuclear program, including enrichment, and to enjoy our full nuclear rights on Iranian soil.”
Hard Work
After addressing the UN, Netanyahu will make a brief trip to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama. The two men have had tense relations and at times Netanyahu has turned to allies in Congress seeking support for Israeli government policies on Iran and other issues.
The president, in his own remarks to the General Assembly on Sept. 24, only briefly mentioned the nuclear talks with Iran, assuring its leaders they can “reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.”
Obama focused more on other threats to global security, including Islamic State, Russian actions in Ukraine, and Africa’s Ebola virus epidemic. With U.S.-led Mideast peacemaking in tatters, he also declared that “the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.”
Common Ground
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in April, and were followed by an Israeli military offensive against Gaza militants in July and August. Israel was censured internationally for a Gaza death toll that topped 2,100, including hundreds of women and children. Israeli officials say the tally ballooned because Palestinian militants used civilians as human shields. Seventy-two people died on the Israeli side, almost all of them soldiers.
Finding common ground with the U.S. on Iran and other regional issues might require Netanyahu to be show more flexibility with the Palestinians, according to analyst Gilboa. “Both the defeat of Hamas and the threat of Islamic State produced an opportunity to move forward with Israeli-Arab relations,” he said.
Obama probably will want to hear from Netanyahu what the Israeli leader has meant in recent months with his repeated references to a new “political horizon,” Gilboa added.
Retired Major General Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, says he thinks that means new opportunities for cooperation with Arab nations that view radical Islamic states and groups as potential threats, rather than new moves on the Palestinian front.
“For the first time in the Middle East for many years there is a common interest among so many nations in the region to fight against common threats, which might serve as a basis of cooperation,” Amidror said. “How to do actually go about that, how to manage it, that’s the big question.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at cbendavid@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine atasalha@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel
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4)
New York Times: New Year, Same Old Distortions
It’s somewhat ironic that the New York Times chose to publish an opinion piece on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, entitled “How Israel Silences Dissent.” For it is anoft used tactic of Israel’s detractors to take advantage of Jewish holidays, Shabbats and the like to disenfranchise many Jews from a conversation.
As for the opinion piece itself, the ominous sounding headline is indicative of an attempt to paint Israel as some sort of police state where minority views are not only frowned upon but actively persecuted, more in keeping with many of Israel’s Middle Eastern neighbors rather than a free and liberal democracy.
The “Bad News from the Netherlands” project and others like it were created, using the Netherlands as an example, to demonstrate that media coverage can degrade a country’s image by using selective news without context. And so Mairav Zonszein takes some examples from the extremes of the Israeli discourse and uses them to tarnish an entire country and its people.
According to Zonszein:
The vilification of the few Israelis who don’t subscribe to right-wing doctrine is not new. Similar acts of incitement occurred before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. But now they have multiplied, escalated and spread.
This would suggest that the majority of Israelis are “right-wing” despite evidence such as the current makeup of the Knesset that suggests otherwise. (A significant number of Knesset members belong to centrist or left-wing parties.) But when you come from the place on the political spectrum occupied by Zonszein, it isn’t surprising that most Israelis appear to be right-wing in her eyes.
Mairav Zonszein
Zonszein’s bio on the radical left +972 Magazine where she writes, states that she is an activist with Ta’ayush, “a direct-action Arab-Jewish group whose activism focuses on the rural Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills.” According to NGO Monitor, Ta’ayush emphasizes the language of demonization and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Over and over Zonszein treats us to a polemic whereby Israelis are portrayed as rabid religious nationalists hellbent on rooting out dissenting voices:
The aggressive silencing of anyone who voices disapproval of Israeli policies or expresses empathy with Palestinians is the latest manifestation of an us-versus-them mentality that has been simmering for decades.. . .Israeli society has been unable and unwilling to overcome an exclusivist ethno-religious nationalism that privileges Jewish citizens and is represented politically by the religious settler movement and the increasingly conservative secular right.. . .Israelis increasingly seem unwilling to listen to criticism, even when it comes from within their own family. Not only are they not willing to listen, they are trying to silence it before it can even be voiced. With a family like that, I would rather be considered one of “them.”
Zonszein evidently doesn’t see the irony of her own biography which states:
I began working as an editor with Haaretz.com in 2012. Before that I was an editor with +972, and have also worked for various NGOs, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Ir Amim.
All of this is evidence of a very healthy civil society and a free press, something that Zonszein cannot bring herself to acknowledge in her opinion piece.
That a majority of Israelis do not subscribe to Zonszein’s politics does not make it a tyranny of the majority. It does, however, appeal to the holier than thou attitude of the New York Times towards Israel, which regularly gives a voice to dissenting opinions on how Israel should conduct itself.
3a)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the UN general assembly on Monday in New York and warned the crowd of the threat of radical militant Islam.
He said that the Arab world, for the first time, was beginning to recognize the benefit in aligning themselves with Israel and seeing they have a common enemy.
He also said that he is willing to make a "historic compromise" with the Palestinians.
The prime minister spoke in his speech of the correlation between Hamas and ISIS, saying the two are "branches from the same poisonous tree."
He warned that the escalation of the radical groups is similar to that of the Nazi's and continued to warn about Iran, saying that Iran is not actually willing to give up nuclear weapons, rather just wants to get rid of the sanctions against them.
Netanyahu then spoke about Operation Protective Edge, saying that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.
Netanyahu said that Israel "faced a propaganda war because in an attempt to gain sympathy, Hamas used human shields, homes and hospitals to fire rockets at Israel while Israel surgically struck military targets."
He said that Israel took steps to minimize civilian casualties and that "Palestinians were tragically and unintentionally killed. Israel was not targeting citizens."
Prior to leaving for the US on Sunday, Netanyahu said that his speech would "deflect all the lies about us, and tell the truth about the heroic soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world."
Netanyahu's comments followed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's speech at the UN on Friday, in which he accused Israel of "committing genocide in Gaza."
In what appears to be a new phase in the Palestinian diplomatic drive for unilateral recognition of statehood, Abbas said that he would seek the approval of the Security Council for a draft resolution that establishes a timetable for independence.
"During the past two weeks, Palestine and the Arab Group undertook intensive contacts with the various regional groups in the United Nations to prepare for the introduction of a draft resolution to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to push forward the efforts to achieve peace," he said.
Netanyahu was scheduled to discuss Palestinian unilateralism and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapon in his meeting with US President Barack Obama on Wednesday.
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