Now we have the pathetic comment from General Dempsey where he stole a line from Grandma Hillary regarding ISIS"s continued Victories in Iraq: "What difference does it matter."
Obama surely selected Dempsey knowing he would not give
unvarnished advice. Obama loves being surrounded by
Dempsey's!
Now, even Obama no longer can hide his lies regarding the
divisions caused by Khamenei. That said , Obama is
prepared to make more concessions relying upon the
re imposition clause knowing, full well, it will never see the
light of day or happen should the need arise as it very well
will. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Obama reminds me of the bunny in the battery ad. As a negotiator, he just keeps on giving and burying America, Israel and other allies with his feckless diplomacy.
===
If not a bunny is Obama simply just another schemer?' (See 2 below.)
Obama reminds me of the bunny in the battery ad. As a negotiator, he just keeps on giving and burying America, Israel and other allies with his feckless diplomacy.
He began the Iran negotiations with five conditions, has given in on all of them and over the past weekend caved again. Now he says his fall back position is re-imposing sanctions if Iran cheats.
Prospects of Iran cheating is 100% because they always have and still are.Chances of re-imposition - zero.
Another point. I do not understand Obama's opposition to coal,which has basically destroyed the industry yet, he seems unconcerned about the prospect of the atmosphere being seeded with nuclear radiation from an atomic war his weakness is likely to cause.
Perhaps, should it happen on another president's watch, he can 'reimpose' his blame everyone else approach.
(See 1b and 1c below.)
===
If not a bunny is Obama simply just another schemer?' (See 2 below.)
Opposed to coal but nuclear radiation acceptable? (See 2a
below.)
===
Kathleen Parker discusses the 'vaginal vote' issue. (See
3 below.)
Meanwhile, Grandma "Rodham" hams it up while trying to
recapture that 2008,New Hampshire 'come from
behind aura' and Obama continues to lead from behind and
gets further and further behind in the process. (See 3a
below.)
===
If Obama was a student of history and not an arrogant know
it all he would have learned what he is doing always has
backfired. (See 4 below.)
===
Interesting statistics of what a can do nation can accomplish!
(See 5 below.)
===
Kathleen Parker discusses the 'vaginal vote' issue. (See
3 below.)
Meanwhile, Grandma "Rodham" hams it up while trying to
recapture that 2008,New Hampshire 'come from
behind aura' and Obama continues to lead from behind and
gets further and further behind in the process. (See 3a
below.)
===
If Obama was a student of history and not an arrogant know
it all he would have learned what he is doing always has
backfired. (See 4 below.)
===
Interesting statistics of what a can do nation can accomplish!
(See 5 below.)
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) The Problem With ‘Creative Negotiations’
On Friday, President Obama acknowledged a painfully obvious factthat the White House and State Department have struggled mightily to ignore in the last two weeks. After generally dismissing the stark divide between the spin the United States has put on the framework nuclear agreement and statements that directly contradict that interpretation, the president decided to address that contrast head on. The president said U.S. diplomats would have to conduct “creative negotiations” in order to bridge the differences between the two sides on Iran’s nuclear program. In doing so, the president made it clear that any agreement would have to give the West the ability to reimpose sanctions on the Islamist regime if it cheats on the deal. That sounds good, but the problem is that over the course of the past two years of talks with Iran, we have been given a very good idea of what is meant by “creative negotiations” in the Obama administration. In Obama-speak, creative means Iran gets its way.
Let’s give the president some credit for addressing the fact that both Iran’s supreme leader and its negotiators have not been shy about contradicting the administration’s promises about severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear efforts, its possession of its stockpile of enriched uranium, and intrusive inspections. In fact, despite the president’s effort to sell the agreement as fait accompli that has put to bed the Iranian nuclear threat, it is in fact still nothing more than a hope for such an accomplishment. Iran expects sanctions to be lifted immediately and not on a gradual basis as the administration has long promised. Crucially, even the New York Times noted that the president was not repeating his past statements about phased lifting of sanctions on Friday. If sanctions are lifted almost immediately and so long as the location of that stockpile, the nature of the inspections, or the willingness of Iran to agree to open its military facilities to the West so that the extent of their progress toward a bomb is discovered are set according to Iranian rhetoric and preferences, the entire framework is essentially meaningless.
That is both a challenge and an opportunity for the Obama foreign-policy team. In theory, over the next two months, during which the text of the accord will be drafted and finalized, the president will have a chance to make good on his boasts about imposing severe restrictions that would actually stop their nuclear program in its tracks. However, as they have repeatedly stated, the Iranians have very different ideas about what has already been agreed upon and what they will consent to in the future. They seem to be under the impression that what they have agreed to is a very different sort of deal than the one the president keeps telling us about.
That sets up what could be an interesting confrontation in which the West could stick to its demands and threaten to walk away from the table rather than to consent to the abandonment of its goals. But in his call for creativity, the president gave us a hint of what lies ahead.
Rather than reflect an understanding of just how tough the Iranians have proved to be in the talks, the president seemed to indicate that the wide gaps between the two parties could be papered over with measures that would allow the Iranians to save face while still achieving his objectives. He believes that some sort of symbolic concessions to Iran would be enough to allow Iran the space it needs to give ground.
But the parties are not entering into the final stages of this negotiation without already showing us how they operate. We have already seen what happens when the West wants Iran to give in on vital points of contention. Iran says no and then an administration that is so besotted with the notion of a legacy-making entente with the Islamist regime gives up. With Obama having discarded the enormous economic and political leverage he held over the Iranians in 2013 when sanctions were put into place, it is now Tehran that holds the whip hand in the talks. Rather than the West being the side that will budge a little to let Iran save face, it has been Iran that wins its points every time while occasionally letting the president pretend that he has won victory on some insignificant issue.
As it stands now, the framework offers Iran two paths to a bomb. One is by cheating on easily evaded restrictions via meaningless inspections and continued nuclear and military research while it holds onto its infrastructure. The other is by abiding by the deal and waiting patiently for it to expire because of the sunset clause that the Iranians fought for and won.
But rather than pressing hard for Iran to agree to the points he knows make the difference between a parody of an agreement and one that would actually make Iran’s nuclear dreams an impossibility, the president is pretending that more charm will win the day. To that end, he even downplayed the significance of Russia’s sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran that further diminishes the already dismal chances of the use of force against its nuclear facilities if it blows up the talks.
In doing so, the president is betraying his transparent eagerness to get a deal at any price. Having already conceded so much to the Iranians, why does he think they will suddenly start giving in to him when throughout the process it has always been he who has been the one to give up? Far from looking to save face, Iran’s objective is to win the last stage of the talks the way they have every phase of the negotiations. To them, Western creativity is an invitation to intransigence that will always be rewarded with an Obama concession. The president can still change the ending to this story but in order to be willing to believe that he can suddenly show some spine to the Iranians, you have to ignore the fact that his desire for an agreement is far greater than Tehran’s willingness to trade tangible measures that will impact their chances for a bomb for mere symbolism.
1a)
1a)
THE
EMERGENCY
JOHN PODHORETZ , editor of Commentary Magazine,
WE HAVE ENTERED a state of emergency. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that effectively serve the purposes of one of America’s greatest foes and treat one of America’s dearest friends as though it were an adversary. The White House has implicitly taken up the cause of normalizing Iran and has become at the very least complicit in the international goal of isolating Israel.
Barack Obama has decided the key to his legacy is a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran that will enshrine its nuclear capacity but delay its ability to build and deploy a bomb for a time—that is, assuming Iran doesn’t cheat, which is an assumption that requires a leap of geopolitical faith Blaise Pascal would have blanched at. Meanwhile, 970 miles from Tehran, the State of Israel finds itself the unwanted focus of another Obama legacy effort: the effort to drive a wedge between the two countries and thereby realign America’s interests in the Middle East away from Israel’s interests.
In making clear his desire to establish a working relationship with a nation that does not abide by any standards of civilized conduct, a nation that oppresses in medieval fashion at home and that is the worst state sponsor of terrorism abroad, the president is tacitly accepting the everyday behavior and casting a blind eye on the plain language of one of the world’s most monstrous regimes.
“There is a practical streak to the Iranian regime,” the president told Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times on April 5. “There [is] an appetite among the Iranian people for a rejoining with the international community, an emphasis on the economics and the desire to link up with a global economy. And so what we’ve seen over the last several years, I think, is the opportunity for those forces within Iran that want to break out of the rigid framework that they have been in for a long time to move in a different direction. It’s not a radical break, but it’s one that I think offers us the chance for a different type of relationship.”
The overall purpose here is to remake the geopolitical map and include Iran among the nations with which we can and should do business. From this perspective, Iran’s systematic record of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and its role as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism are not bugs but features: Iran is important not only because it is an oil-rich state with religious and ideological ambitions, but also because it has set itself against the United States and the West. And so it must be attended to, its concerns taken seriously, its desires and wishes accorded respect. In Obama’s view, it is with adversaries that America must enmesh itself to find some form of common ground.
This theory has governed most of the Obama administration’s foreign-policy approaches over the past six years, from the Russian reset to the opening to Cuba. The corollary is that little or no positive attention needs to be paid to allies, especially if those allies are inconveniently situated either geographically or ideologically. Thus, in 2009, Obama had no problem abrogating the long-standing deal to put missile-defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, even though they are two stalwart friends of the United States, because they interfered with his efforts to improve the American relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Even those countries that we should not call our friends but with which many of our national interests align are to be consigned to the second ring of concern. Thus, while the president speaks gently of Iran and draws parallels between its politics and ours—it is a “complicated country,” he said to Friedman, “just as America is a complicated country”—he offers systematic criticism of the internal dynamics of the Sunni Arab nations in the Middle East that have expressed alarm over the thaw: “I think the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading. It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.”
The Obama policy of behaving high-handedly toward friends and charitably toward foes is most striking in the case of the State of Israel. The president and his people speak with barely disguised disgust about the policies of a friendly government and rough election-day tactics in a vibrant democracy in which 72.3 percent of those eligible to vote did so. They talk of revisiting the relationship with Israel, reevaluating it—all of which is code-speak for withdrawing American protection from Israel in the international bodies that wish to do it injury.
It was not mere chance that these two legacy policies converged in the month of March 2015. Something more sinister was at work.
T HE RESULTS of Israel’s election on March 17 were disappointing to the president and his team, given how tirelessly they had worked to undermine the eventually victorious Netanyahu. A key Obama campaign aide named Jeremy Bird had been dispatched to the Holy Land to manage a get-out-the-vote group called V15 whose sole campaign message was “Anyone But Bibi.” In the end, Netanyahu’s Likud party garnered 30 seats, as opposed to the 18 seats it had won just two years earlier—a result that has to be seen as a conscious rebuke of Obama’s effort to unseat the Israeli prime minister. In choosing not to reject Netanyahu but to strengthen him, Israelis effectively endorsed the views of Obama’s most dangerous critic—the only democratically elected leader on earth who might find it necessary to act drastically to save his country in a way that would scuttle Obama’s vision for the future of the Middle East.
Netanyahu has made it clear that he cannot stand by while a course is charted to a future in which Iran can build and deploy a nuclear weapon, given that its millenarian leaders have vowed to wipe Israel off the map. But under the terms of the strange April 2 agreement-with-Iran-that-is-not-really-an-agreement—terms we know the president had already conceded well before the Israeli elections on March 17—Obama has effectively endorsed a future in which Iran will have the power and the means to do exactly that.
Shockingly, on April 5, Obama acknowledged to NPR that at best the deal keeps Iran from going nuclear for a dozen years. (He did so unprompted by the interviewer, suggesting that for a moment the president had come under the spell cast on Jim Carrey inLiar Liar to speak the truth even when it would harm him to do so.) Forget about cheating: Even that 12-year delay will come about only if Iran hews to every particular of the terms Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry announced so triumphantly on April 2. Obama surely knows Iran is unlikely to assent to those terms in the final agreement to be signed on June 30—because a) Iran instantly began balking at the specifics we laid out and b) if those terms had been acceptable, the deal could have been signed and sealed in Switzerland. And yet Obama also felt free to tell Friedman that “this is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.” The man who said “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” when he knew it was untrue is repurposing the ObamaCare communications strategy for the Iran deal.
It is unquestionable that the understanding Obama’s underlings reached with Iran will at the very least permit the Islamic Republic to retain a stockpile of uranium, the advanced devices that can convert it into the guts of a bomb in a matter of months, and the facilities in which to do it. We are told Iran has agreed to dilute the uranium, put the centrifuges in a locked closet, and call its hardened bunker at Fordow “a research center.”
For the hard work of accepting such a deal, Iran will receive tens of billions of dollars in payoff money it can use for other purposes, thus freeing up resources to continue its work on military applications of nuclear technology if that suits the mullahs.
But look, Obama says. The deal-that’s-not-a-deal means Iran won’t be nuclear for a while yet, and the Iranians probably don’t mean it when they say they will destroy Israel, and even if they do, so what, because they’ll never try it, and you know what, if they do try it, America will “have Israel’s back.” Which sounds nice, but is useless as a basis for policy, since in the aftermath of a nuclear strike, Israel will not have a back for America to have, only tens if not hundreds of thousands dead and/or sickened unto death.
And this is the point. Of all the things on earth Obama does not have, “Israel’s back” ranks close to the top. For somehow, over the course of the nine years the world has been grappling with the Iranian nuclear threat, the goals of the United States have been defined downward—from prevention to containment. We have gone from insisting we had to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power (something the president declared unconditionally he would not allow to happen) to adopting a policy designed to manage Iran’s existence as one.
The term of art is that Iran has now become, and will remain, a “threshold nuclear power.” Some threshold: According to the president, Iran can cross it in two months. Obama says the deal—if there is a deal and if that deal is adhered to—will lengthen the distance across the threshold to a year, for another dozen years. In year 13, the threshold disappears. But 2028 is a long time from now. We’ll all be driving flying cars and living on Venus by then.
There are several reasons the original goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon altogether was absolutely necessary—among them, to forestall a Sunni–Shia nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and to keep a revolutionary terror-supporting anti-American regime from becoming a first-order world power.
Practically, however, the threat an Iranian nuke poses was and is primarily to one country—a country Iran’s former president continually said would soon cease to exist. Now, lest one think the goal of Israel’s destruction retired along with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2013, please note that the leader of its religious police militia said on March 30 that the aim of “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable.”
So the danger an Iranian nuke poses to the good working order of the world is profound. It will reorder military and strategic priorities in a profoundly destabilizing way over the course of this century. But the danger a deployed Iranian nuke poses to millions of Israelis is instantaneous.
And we should not balk at speaking the truth: Should a pact with Iran be signed, Barack Obama will be complicit in the act of casting a nuclear shadow over the future of the Jewish people, whose continued existence on this earth could not survive a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv—which would constitute a second Holocaust within living memory of the first.
T HIS TERRIFYING TRUTH is at the core of the warning Benjamin Netanyahu has been delivering about the Iranian threat for six years now—the warning against the temptation to believe it will be acceptable for Iran to go nuclear. Obama has surrendered to that temptation. He has now made an Iranian bomb acceptable.
Was the accuracy of Netanyahu’s characterization the true cause of Obama’s astonishingly vituperative response to Netanyahu’s conduct in the days leading up to the Israeli election? First Netanyahu acknowledged to an interviewer that current Palestinian conduct meant there would be no Palestinian state during his premiership—which is the truth and nothing but the truth, though it is a truth fantasists are loath to acknowledge and one that those who believe peace will be served by the creation of such a state as soon as possible find galling to hear.
Then, on election day, Netanyahu engaged in a profoundly ill-advised get-out-the-vote tactic by warning in vulgar terms of increased Arab-Israeli participation. That was distasteful and inappropriate, but it was far less ugly than election-day moves during other elections in other democratic countries whose results Obama has welcomed and celebrated in years past.
No matter. Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, said Netanyahu’s words about Arab voters “turning out in droves” were so horrific they “undermine the values and democratic ideals that have been important to our democracy and an important part of what binds the United States and Israel together.” Indeed, those words coupled with what the prime minister had said about Palestinian statehood triggered a phone call in which, according to a White House official speaking to Reuters, “the president told the prime minister that we will need to reassess our options following the prime minister’s new positions and comments regarding the two-state solution.”
Even after Netanyahu clarified his remarks and said he believed the best future for Israel was a two-state solution, the White House did not relent. “We do take him at his word,” said the press secretary before saying they didn’t take him at his word: “But he was quite clear that he did not envision a scenario where a Palestinian state would be established while he was the prime minister of Israel. . . . And his lack of commitment to what has been the foundation of our policy-making in the region means that the United States should rightfully reevaluate the kinds of policy decisions that we make as it relates to the Middle East. And that’s what the president has said he will do.”
Let us be clear about what the White House is considering. It is threatening to cease protecting Israel from the jackals at the United Nations and other international organizations. These words from the Obama administration came the same week that the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women singled out Israel—alone among the UN’s 193 member nations—as the worst abuser of women’s rights in the world. In brief, Obama is signaling his desire to Europeanize American policy toward Israel.
Two weeks later, Obama told Friedman: “It has been personally difficult for me to hear . . . expressions that somehow . . . this administration has not done everything it could to look out for Israel’s interest.” Why? “Because of the deep affinities that I feel for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people.”
Translation: Some of my best friends are Jewish.
M ANY LIBERAL American Jews think of Obama as their friend. He is not—not the friend of any Jew who understands his people are under unique and unprecedented threat. Obama is working to strengthen not only Iran’s hand but also the hand of those in the United States who believe the relationship between the U.S. and the Jewish state should be cleaved.
Nor is Obama a friend of Israel, for his policies are now aiding and abetting the nation that poses a literally apocalyptic danger to the Jewish people. If this deal is signed on June 30, Barack Obama will have made the world a far less safe and far more dangerous place—and by signing it, he will have signaled his willingness to see the Jewish future sacrificed on the altar of his own ambitions.
The threat is not immediate. The emergency is.
1b)
Whatever the Ayatollah Wants
President Obama keeps giving and giving and giving.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Give Ayatollah Ali Khamenei credit for knowing his opposition. Two weeks ago the Supreme Leader declared that Western sanctions had to be lifted immediately as a condition of a nuclear deal. And sure enough, on Friday President Obama said Iran would get significant sanctions relief immediately upon signing a deal.
The Ayatollah knows that Mr. Obama wants an agreement with Iran so much that there’s almost no concession the President won’t make. So why not keep asking for more?
***
Keep in mind that the talks began with the U.S. and its European partners demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear program. But to persuade the Ayatollah to accept the recent “framework” accord, Mr. Obama has already conceded that Iran can keep enriching uranium, that it can maintain 5,060 centrifuges to do the enriching, that its enriched-uranium stockpiles can stay inside Iran, that the once-concealed facilities at Fordow and Arak can stay open (albeit in altered form), and that Iran can continue doing research on advanced centrifuges.
All of these concessions are contrary to previous U.S. positions, and we’re no doubt missing a few. But none of that was enough for the Ayatollah, who quickly asserted two new deal-breaking objections: immediate sanctions relief, and no inspections under any circumstances of Iran’s military sites.
The White House has insisted that sanctions relief would be phased out based on Iranian compliance with the accord. Iranian negotiators quickly denied they had agreed to any such thing. At first White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed this as mere face-saving domestic politicking inside Iran. But then the Ayatollah weighed in with his demand for immediate sanctions relief, adding to reinforce the goodwill that the Obama Administration was “lying” and had “devilish” intentions.
On Friday Mr. Obama nonetheless turned the other cheek and suggested a compromise on sanctions relief is likely. White House sources whispered to reporters that the immediate windfall to Iran could be between $30 billion and $50 billion from access to frozen offshore Iranian accounts.
Mr. Obama even suggested at a press conference that sanctions relief wasn’t really that large an issue as long as the U.S. could reimpose sanctions if Iran cheats. “Our main concern here is making sure that if Iran doesn’t abide by its agreement that we don’t have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops in order to reinstate sanctions,” the President said. He added that this “will require some creative negotiations.”
It sure will. How “snap-back” sanctions would work is far from clear. The U.S. framework summary concedes that charges of cheating would go to a so far unspecified “dispute resolution process” that sounds like some kind of international committee.
That surely means foot-dragging by West Europeans who won’t want to interfere with their new commercial business with Iran, and it probably gives Russia and China an opportunity to take Iran’s side. As former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz argued recently on these pages, the U.S. would then be the isolated nation, not Iran.
The word “snap-back” in any such arrangement is spin to sell a deal, not a realistic description of the process. Mr. Obama nonetheless said on Friday that “I’m confident” the negotiations on sanctions “will be successful.” Look for more U.S. concessions on sanctions as the June deadline approaches.
As for inspections, a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps reiterated Sunday that all military sites are off-limits. Iran’s news agency reported that GeneralHossein Salami, the Guards’ deputy leader, said such inspections would be “selling out” to the enemy. “Iran will not become a paradise of spies. We will not roll out the red carpet for the enemy,” he said.
This contradicts the U.S. summary of the framework accord, which claims that U.N. inspectors would have access to any “suspicious sites.” It didn’t say only non-military suspicious sites. Mr. Obama has already conceded that the inspectors would need Iran’s permission to visit certain sites, rather than having on-demand and immediate access. If military sites are off-limits, then those sites are where Iran would do the cheating when it wants to. The entire inspections regime would be an act of Western self-deception.
These latest events reinforce a conclusion that the Iranian talks are heading toward a deal that confers Western blessing on Iran as a nuclear-threshold state. Tehran will retain the facilities and means to develop a bomb at the moment of its choosing. The main question now is how many more concessions the Ayatollah will squeeze from a U.S. President he believes is desperate for a deal.
1b) IRAN'S CHEATING
Author: Michael Makovsky
Is President Barack Obama right that the so-called framework nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) announced on April 2, will “cut off every pathway Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon”? Some will assess the truth of his statement by crunching the centrifuge and uranium stockpile numbers. However vital such analysis will be, it is important not to lose sight of the nuke for the centrifuges. For integral to Obama’s argument is his claim that this deal “provides the best possible defense against Iran’s ability to pursue a nuclear weapon in secret. . . . If Iran cheats, the world will know,” and “If we see something suspicious, we will inspect it.” But the promised inspections regime will not be intrusive enough to detect Iranian cheating or to thwart any breakout attempts in time.
Iran has a long and proud history of cheating on its international nuclear agreements. Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who once monitored Iran’s nuclear program, observed in 2013: “If there is no undeclared installation today . . . it will be the first time in 20 years that Iran doesn’t have one.” Indeed, Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz was a covert facility that was only discovered in 2002, by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group. A year later, the European Union struck a deal with Iran to prevent it from spinning its centrifuges and beginning to enrich uranium. Yet for much of the deal, Iran was busy mastering its uranium supply chain. “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran,” wrote Iran’s nuclear negotiator and now president Hassan Rouhani, “we were installing equipment in parts of the [uranium conversion] facility at Isfahan. . . . In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.” In 2009, the world learned of yet another clandestine enrichment plant, under a mountain at Fordow, that Iran was trying to construct.
Now, however, President Obama would have us believe that Iran is a changed country. Pushing back against “skeptics [who] argued that Iran would cheat, that we could not verify their compliance, and the interim agreement would fail,” the president insisted on April 2 that “Iran has met all of its obligations.” This is demonstrably false.
In the past year alone Iran has violated its international agreements at least three times. First, even though the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) prohibited Iran from enriching uranium in any centrifuges that were not in use at the time the deal went into effect in January 2014, last November the IAEA caught Iran operating a new centrifuge—worse still, it was an advanced IR-5 model. Second, the JPOA required Iran to process any low-enriched uranium it produced during the deal’s term from the gaseous form used for enrichment into a solid that can be used as reactor fuel, so that it would not be readily available for further enrichment and potential breakout. As of February 2015, Iran had an excess of some 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, in violation of the deal’s terms. Third, in parallel to the JPOA, the IAEA and Iran signed a Framework for Cooperation under which Iran agreed to answer outstanding IAEA concerns about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program. Iran answered only one question to the IAEA’s satisfaction and, for the past six months, has been stonewalling on the rest. This recent record of cheating, while Iran was negotiating a comprehensive arrangement and thus incentivized to be good, bodes poorly for the future under a new accord.
Obama claims, “International inspectors will have unprecedented access not only to Iranian nuclear facilities, but to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program—from uranium mills that provide the raw materials, to the centrifuge production and storage facilities that support the program.” He added, “With this deal, Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world.”
Heretofore, the largest and most intrusive monitoring effort ever set up was the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) created after that 1990-91 Gulf war to verify the dismantlement of Iraq’s WMD program. It had dedicated personnel based in Baghdad with their own helicopters and even a U-2 spy plane and with authority granted by the U.N. Security Council and backed by the U.S. military to go anywhere at any time to inspect anything. And yet it failed to gather an accurate understanding of the capabilities that Saddam Hussein did or did not have. As Charles Duelfer, who served as UNSCOM’s deputy executive chairman, recently wrote, “UNSCOM and the IAEA after more than seven years of operations inside Iraq could not verify that Saddam had completely disarmed.”
The inspections regime contemplated in the JCPOA seems woeful in comparison. Its central component is an understanding that Iran will “implement the Additional Protocol of the IAEA.” Every signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Iran, is legally obligated to sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Recognizing that the original agreement, which dates to the 1970s, was insufficient to monitor modern nuclear programs, the IAEA developed added measures in the 1990s, known as the Additional Protocol. Applying these to Iran would represent a major advance beyond the current, inadequate inspections regime. But there are problems.
First, there is no such thing as the Additional Protocol. There is a model Additional Protocol that the IAEA uses as a basis for negotiating a specific agreement with each individual country tailored to its situation. Indeed, this provision opens the door to yet another round of haggling with Iran, making it impossible to know what exact measures Iran will end up being bound by.
But we do know, and this is the second concern, that no Additional Protocol contains the sort of “anytime, anywhere” inspections that UNSCOM provided for and that experts agree is necessary to police Iran’s program. What an Additional Protocol would likely contain, according to the framework agreement, is an expansion of the number of facilities subject to inspections—to include Iran’s uranium mines and centrifuge factories—and stricter requirements for advance notice of any nuclear facilities Iran plans to construct.
If Iran decides to sprint for a nuke, however, it won’t do so in a uranium mine; it will do it at one of its enrichment plants, most likely a clandestine plant, potentially hidden on a military base. It is precisely such sites that the IAEA has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get access to for years. Of particular concern has been the Parchin military complex, where the IAEA suspects Iran tested high-explosives for a nuclear weapon. Yet inspectors have never been allowed to set foot on the site, watching instead as satellite imagery showed Iran demolishing the suspected site and paving it over to conceal any evidence of its cheating. The Additional Protocol will be no more successful in getting Iran to open up its facilities to inspectors. Obama claims that “Iran’s past efforts to weaponize its program will be addressed,” but that is so vague as to be meaningless. In fact, Iran claims the JCPOA does not require inspections of military facilities and such access will not be granted, with the defense minister calling it a “red line.” Without full knowledge about possible military dimensions of Iran’s program and access to all of its facilities, whether they are declared nuclear sites or not, it will be impossible to conduct proper verification.
Third, there is the ambiguity of the term “implement.” Iran has previously “implemented” an Additional Protocol. In 2003, about the same time it was cheating on its agreement with the Europeans, Iranian leaders signed an Additional Protocol with the IAEA. Indeed, for the next two years they actually observed it. But in early 2006, Iran announced that it would no longer abide by the Additional Protocol and curtailed inspectors’ access. They could well try to pull the same stunt again. And according to a “fact sheet” released by the Iranian foreign ministry, Iran believes it has only committed “to implement the Additional Protocol on a voluntary and temporary basis for the sake of transparency and confidence building.”
U.S. intelligence services have a dismal track record of detecting clandestine nuclear efforts and predicting breakout—in North Korea, Pakistan, and India, for example. Israeli security officials have admitted in private that they too have significant gaps in their knowledge about Iran’s facilities. This is not an indictment of American or Israeli intelligence capabilities; it is simply very challenging to detect covert nuclear activities. Permitting Iran to keep its vast nuclear infrastructure largely intact, as the JCPOA does, only compounds the challenges the United States and the world will have in detecting Iranian cheating.
An intrusive inspections and verification regime is the sine qua non of any arms agreement, especially with a congenital cheater like the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately, the JCPOA fails on this crucial issue, by not demanding complete information about the extent of Iran’s past nuclear weapons research and eschewing “anytime, anywhere” inspections of all facilities. In other words, it is currently worth no more than the paper it might have been written on.
Michael Makovsky is chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press).
2)Obama's Three Premises
Based on President Obama's actions of the past seven years, one can surmise that his worldview is based on three major premises. His economic perspective is deliberately aimed at weakening the United States. Thus, despite the disastrous past history of mandated government directives that forced banks to provide sub-prime loans, Obama and company are at it again forcing banks to engage in risky loans. In "separate new reports to Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveal Obama regulators are pressuring them to back high-risk home loans for 'very low-income' borrowers." Both mortgage companies are being "forced to accept mortgages with as little as 3% down."
And most telling, they must "[y]ield disparate results based on the race of the borrower." If that were not enough, one learns that the government is allowing "lenders to use unemployment benefits as source of income." And these mandates will not expire until 2019.
So here is a recipe for unmitigated economic disaster.
Another of the downward economic spirals produced by Obama and his minions is the looming student loan crisis, which is being manufactured and perpetuated by this White House. Twenty-seven percent of student loans are delinquent, of about one trillion dollars of student loan debt owed to the federal government. And while Obama continues to harangue about the difficulties that students have concerning mounting college costs, the real problem is that "in 2010 Obama eliminated the federal guaranteed loan program,” which "let private lenders offer student loans at low interest rates." But as with everything that Obama touches, now there is only one place to get a loan -- big government. Consequently "federal direct student loan debt has climbed by more than $100 billion." But Obama, the compassionate, has made it increasingly easier for students to avoid paying back student loans in full; thus, it is a problem that American taxpayers will have to shoulder -- along with the $18 trillion+ debt, courtesy of Obama.
Obama's second premise is that America must pay mightily for its success and its hubris. To that end, Obama concedes all safety precautions that a leader would insist upon in dealing with "Death-to-America"-chanting Iran. But one need only consider Obama's reaction to the 9-11-2001 attacks to understand his moral compass and his antipathy to the United States. On September 19, 2001 a story ran in the Hyde Park Herald containing then-State-Senator Barack Obama's response to the 9-11 events. Obama had this to say of the heinous actions of that day
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
So with 3,000 Americans dead, and with fears of more terror to emerge, Obama was concerned with the murderers’ "despair." Not once did he use the term “terrorism.” Not once did he speak of an ultimatum response towards the jihadists. Instead this Islam-educated man seeks compromise and a meeting of the minds with people who in twenty minutes just changed the entire landscape of this country. Instead Americans are supposed to "imagine the sufferings" of murderers.
Are we then surprised when only a decade and half later, Marie Harf parrots her boss and asserts that America needs,
"in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups.” One root cause, she went on to explain, was a lack of “gainful employment."
That shouldn't be too difficult with the porous southern border that Obama continues to exploit with his unconstitutional maneuvers on illegal immigration. And, courtesy of the American taxpayer, Obama is flying in more illegals.
Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, confirmed that under the State Department program, the Obama administration will fly children at taxpayer expense into the U.S. as refugees, and the ones who don’t qualify as refugees are going to be admitted under parole.
What it amounts to is that President Obama just gets to admit whoever he wants to let into the country.
But the leader of the free world has the temerity to castigate those who question Loretta Lynch's confirmation as U.S. attorney general even while she admits she will not adhere to federal immigration law, but will merely be the latest in the line-up of Obama's minions for whom the Constitution is an impediment. It is high time for the Liar-in-Chief to be embarrassed. But shame and embarrassment occur only when there is the awareness of having done something wrong or foolish. Obama's worldview is not consistent with the foundational heart of America's founding. He sees nothing wrong whatsoever in his actions. Thus, his opprobrium against America continues because we, as a nation, are wrong. Our values are distorted; our strengths are our weaknesses; our foundations are ill-begotten and need to be dismantled. His contempt for the nation is the correct reaction for Obama.
And thus, we find Obama will agree to a "phased-in relief to sanctions" for Iran with absolutely nothing in return but empty gestures. In other words, Iran has merely to sign a piece of paper and, voila, it will "gain access to these funds [between $100 billion and $140 billion]. As Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes, "[t]hink of it as a signing bonus given to desired major league players just for agreeing to come join the team, without ever having to even pick up the ball to play." Consequently, in 2015 with the Middle East being overrun by ISIS, Obama is concerned with Iran saving face as long as he can claim that he made a deal.
Although rational people cannot comprehend the madness that is emblematic of Obama's dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran and other enemies of America, it is critical to understand that this is exactly in line with Obama's perspective. He has no problem with the anti-American stance, the antisemitism of the players and the visceral hatred of freedom that mark these groups' ideologies. He appears to be indifferent about the murderous terrorist regime that wishes to spread across the world; he will not acknowledge the bestiality of ISIS because after all sin-filled Christian and Jewish America must continue to wallow in guilt and accept a punishment that is long in coming. Furthermore, from his worldview it is a righteous reaction to imperialistic America, notwithstanding the Islamic jihadist imperialists-on-steroids that bring true destruction and terror. Consequently, the words of veteran Brian Kolfage, fall on deaf ears because Obama sees what he is doing as a success, not as a failure.
The third part of Obama's triad of ideological premises is the one that seeks to demoralize America. He has set in motion painful policies like Obamacare that adversely affect far too many Americans. The IRS and Benghazi scandals continue to be hidden. The wrong doers are never punished. Furthermore, sneak that Obama is, the most potent effects will not be felt until after he has completed his term. Thus, when Republicans are in the majority and the full brunt of Obamacare policies hits like a ton of bricks, the mewling press will continue the screed that it is the racist, women-hating Republicans who brought this onto the public. Cause and effect simply do not matter as the nattering fools of the mainstream media. No one will connect the dots back to Teflon-coated Obama and his rather masterful machinations of the past two terms.
Natan Sharansky, former political prisoner of the Soviet Union, writes "the real reason for the U.S. stance [with Iran] is not its assessment, however incorrect, of the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral self-confidence." In the past "U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology."
Obama does not believe in the "superiority of liberal democracy." His core belief is to degrade America and American law in every way possible
Thus, there has been no surrender on the part of Obama because what is happening is what he always wanted to have happen.
2a) Who authorized Obama to kick over the nuclear balance?
The whole world now understands President Obama’s caudillo style, his autocratic style of governance. We know about the abuse of the IRS, the Department of Justice and our immigration system. We see his contempt for the constitutional powers of Congress. Yet even the US Supreme Court has ducked any chance to restrain him.
American presidents have a lot more free rein in foreign affairs compared to the domestic side, and here Obama has done his worst. When NATO assaulted Libya in 2011 without provocation, Obama was asked whether Congress shouldn’t have a role under the War Powers Act. He just laughed.
As a result, we are now viewed with suspicion by our allies, and we’re laughed at by our enemies. Obama shows no compassion at all --- especially to Muslims, who have died by the tens and hundreds of thousands in Syria, Libya, Egypt and now Yemen, following actions by this president. Al Qaida is stronger than ever, and ISIS receives direct support from Obama’s “friends” in Turkey and Qatar.
George W. Bush was witch-hunted for years by the media after the Iraq invasion, but no liberal newspaper can be heard complaining about Obama’s reckless interventions in the Middle East. There are no constraints on Obama.
Still his most dangerous move has been to kick over the nuclear balance in the Middle East.
I’ve never met a liberal who understood how the balance of nuclear power kept the Cold War cold for six decades. The same balance of terror kept the peace between India and Pakistan after the 1970s, when both countries exploded nukes. In the Middle East, Israel’s never-used nuclear weapons helped to sustain the forty-year Peace Treaty with Egypt, because both sides knew that Israel would never be the first to use nuclear weapons. Before Obama, the United States also kept things under control in close coordination with our allies.
From Truman to Bush we had allies who understood and supported us to protect themselves. Today they are frantically arming up, because we have destroyed their trust. Obama has made the world more dangerous.
We are no longer the good cop in the Middle East. Iran’s proxies now control nearly all of Lebanon, much of Iraq and Syria, and most recently Yemen. The mullahs have systematically driven a strategic pincer around Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Yemen has closed the trap.
Liberals never seem to understand two basic points about nukes.
- Rational powers never use nukes aggressively, for fear of being destroyed by a nuclear opponent. After Stalin’s death, the USSR became increasingly rational. China, Britain and France have had nuclear weapons without ever using them. The United States used nuclear weapons only once, against a non-nuclear Japan, to put an end to the Second World War. Since then no rational nation has ever used a nuclear weapon.
- Irrational powers are completely different. The Kim dynasty in Pyongyang and the Armageddon priesthood in Tehran can’t be relied on to play it safe. They sound delighted to use nuclear weapons even at mortal risk to themselves. It’s impossible to know if they are lying or not. Nobody knows, including the rogues themselves.
Every single day the mullahs make their school children and Basiji thugs chant Death to Israel! Death to America! The whole purpose of that exercise in fanatical hatred is to scare the world. Like the Kims of North Korea, the mullahs get off on sounding crazy about nukes.
Which is why Obama’s surrender to the mullahs does not mean peace in our time. It could mean the opposite. As Churchill said to Chamberlain, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war." In the following year, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and Churchill’s prediction came true.
Obama is now openly letting the mullahs threaten genocide against Israel and the Sunni Arabs. Iran is Shi’ite, and the Sunni Arabs are apostates. They deserve death. Israel is also subject to Armageddon. (So are Europe and America, unless we surrender first.)
Neither the Saudis nor the Israelis take the threat lightly, and if necessary they will strike first.
Obama has therefore significantly increased the risk of nuclear war. So much for that old Nobel Peace Prize.
A Sunni-Israel alliance is emerging. The Saudis are allied with Egypt, and Israel is secretly cooperating with them against the Iranian threat.
When the cop on the beat gets drunk, the neighborhood doesn’t suddenly become safer. Instead, the crooks take over, like some Chicago neighborhoods.
Obama’s has promised that Iran can now act like “a regional power,” and the United States won’t intervene. But Iran doesn’t want to be a regional power. Islam is a world-conquering faith, and they want it all.
The Jesuits used to say “give me a boy before he is seven, and we will have him for life.” Obama went to an Indonesian madrassa between age six and ten. Obama knows about jihad.
The mullahs have already used Hezb’allah to infiltrate South America. They have deep tentacles into Argentina. On the other extreme, ISIS was just reported to be running a training camp in Mexico, just 8 miles from the Texas border.
As bad as Obama is domestically, in foreign policy he is downright dangerous. That’s what happens when the Left falls in love with a radical leftist with lifelong anger problems.
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3)The case for a national Powder Room Initiative
By Kathleen Parker
Here we go. If you’re a woman who might prefer someone other thanHillary Clinton as the next president of the United States, you’re a self-loathing, anti-woman traitor.
Already, women I know report that they’re feeling the heat from their more-liberal friends. Not a Democrat for Hillary? Good luck leaning forward, at least in this town. I’ve heard from a few readers along the same lines
Here’s a bracing sample from a reader named Kathryn: “If you cannot see the merits of a distaff leader, perhaps you should trade your ovaries for testicles. You are trying so hard to be open-minded that you’re in danger of becoming a hypocrite. For shame.”
Actually, I do see the merits of a distaff leader, assuming she’s the candidate who most closely represents what’s best for the country. Her ovaries matter no more to me than another’s testicles, if we must stoop to such symbolism.
But the sole fact of a candidate’s sex doesn’t move me much. Would I like to see a woman president? Absolutely. Would I vote for a woman instead of a better-qualified man just for the pleasure of experiencing a first-woman presidency? Nope.
And, neither, one hopes, would any other responsible, thinking voter.
For the record, which I realize is annoying when outrage is so much more convenient, my ovaries and I have written several favorable columns about Clinton through the years, especially concerning her contributions to women’s empowerment around the world.
Beginning with her 1995 declaration in Beijing at the Fourth World Conference on Women that “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” and through her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton’s pro-woman efforts rank among the most powerful diplomatic accomplishments in recent history.
Social science confirms and popular consensus affirms that women’s equality is every nation’s greatest asset — and the world’s best hope for security and peace. Give women jobs, and their children receive better nutrition and education. Give women political strength, and they help guide policies that reflect a more egalitarian world.
These are not smallish things, and Hillary Clinton is the face of these achievements on a global scale.
But there’s a third plank to women’s empowerment, and herein lies the difficulty for many women in this country: reproductive autonomy. Although settled by law, there’s always the worry on the left that another Supreme Court seat or two could change all that. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states are tightening laws that make abortion less accessible.
Such is the unspoken context for a Clinton campaign. While abortion may not be foremost in voters’ minds, it still pervades debate among the political class.
Emily’s List, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and supportsonly pro-choice women, would never help a pro-life woman reach elective office. The ultimate test of a woman’s equality with men, after all, is to notbe burdened with pregnancy and an “unwanted” child.
The logic of this premise is unassailable, but only if you measure equality by men’s criteria — a discussion for a future column.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s challenge is how to position herself as The Woman Candidate — she who can finally crash through the ultimate glass ceiling to become the first woman president — when, plainly, only certain women qualify for sisterhood.
Rather than resting this burden solely on Hillary’s shoulders, perhaps women on the left and the right might consider dropping their weapons and sitting down to resolve the abortion issue among themselves. They would find, I suspect, far more in common with each other than with the stronger-torso set. Democrats might also find more willing interest from Republican women than they imagine.
Here’s a glimpse of what I mean.
Last year, while appearing on a panel with two men and speaking to a Republican audience of mostly men, I suggested that the GOP divest itself of its pro-life platform — not to sacrifice principle but to broaden its appeal to women and perhaps as part of reimagining the issue. As far as I could tell, every woman in the room applauded; virtually none of the men did.
The truth is, the “war on women” has become an internecine battle among women, which I’ll concede takes testicles to say. But there’s another way, and women have to find it together. Maybe Clinton can take the lead? We could call it “The Powder Room Initiative: Women with Women for All Women.”
How do you like them ovaries?
3a) Clinton Trying to Recapture That Old New Hampshire Magic
Hillary Rodham Clinton will try to recapture the magic of her come-from-behind victory in the 2008 New Hampshire primary as she returns to the state that gave her first presidential campaign a second wind.
Clinton again arrives in New Hampshire as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. This time, she faces little opposition. Nevertheless, her campaign is determined to show early-state voters that Clinton is not taking that position for granted.
As she did in Iowa last week, Clinton plans to forgo the packed rallies that marked her previous campaign and focus on smaller round-table events with selected groups of supporters.
She'll speak with employees of Whitney Brothers Inc., a small business that makes wood furniture, in the liberal enclave of Keene on Monday and hold a round table with students and teachers at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord the next day.
New Hampshire has long been fertile ground for the Clinton family. In 1992, a second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary made Bill Clinton the "comeback kid," refueling his effort to capture the nomination and, eventually, the White House. Sixteen years later, a win in New Hampshire salvaged Hillary Clinton's campaign from a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses and propelled her into a months-long battle for the nomination finally won by then-Sen. Barack Obama.
Last year, when Clinton spoke to a rally in New Hampshire ahead of the midterm elections, she recalled the dark days of her 2008 campaign: "You lifted me up, you gave me my voice back, you taught me so much about grit and determination. And I will never forget that."
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4) Menachem Begin To Joe Biden: I Am Not A Jew With Trembling Knees
While the Obama Administration continues their pressure on Israel, for at least Vice President Joe Biden, it would not be the first time that there has been personal animosity with an Israeli leader. The reality is that while some of the names change, this conflict is about Israel’s refusal to surrender to a Palestinian Arab enemy who seeks to destroy them. The United States is wrong to pressure Israel – yet, this too shall pass.
History often repeats itself.
On June 22 1982, Joe Biden was a Senator from Delaware and confronted then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during his Senate Foreign Relations committee testimony, threatening to cut off aid to Israel. Begin forcefully responded, “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
As media reports that the United States Government continues to pressure Israel, the reality is that America must respect the will of the Israeli public, whom overwhelmingly re-elected a Netanyahu government. As a senior Israeli elected official noted, “Settlement building will be one of the basic guidelines of the next government and just as I don’t interfere in America if they build in Florida or California, they don’t need to interfere in building in Judea or Samaria.”
Senator Biden reportedly banged the table with his fist, and Begin retorted, “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.”
After the meeting, Sen. Moynihan approached Begin and praised him for his cutting reply. To which Begin answered with thanks, defining his stand against threats.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of the Revisionist movement, which both Begin & Netanyahu emanate from noted in 1940 that, “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree with it or not.”
World leaders would be apt to remember these words and times.
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5) Not only is the picture awesome but so are the statistics!
During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945,
"We the People of the U.S.A." produced the following:
22 aircraft carriers,
8 battleships,
48 cruisers,
349 destroyers,
420 destroyer escorts,
203 submarines,
34 million tons of merchant ships,
100,000 fighter aircraft,
98,000 bombers,
24,000 transport aircraft,
58,000 training aircraft,
93,000 tanks,
257,000 artillery pieces,
105,000 mortars,
3,000,000 machine guns, and
2,500,000 military trucks.
We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb, and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.
It's worth noting, that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama Administration couldn't even build a web site that worked.
