Political issues that need to be debated, and to this date, have been avoided are:
a) What do we do about the Social Security debacle down the road? Bush offered a plan that was a start, it was quickly shot down and nothing offered by way of a replacement. I Give him credit for touching the third rail at least.
b) What do we do about Iran. Nothing has been forthcoming and the current administration is seeking more inadequate sanctions and seemingly has been crippled by the NIE Report from taking stronger action.
c) If we bring the troops home how much of a dividend will actually happen if, at the same, time, we expand our military force structure and replace equipment? A good bit of any continuing cost relates to troops pay etc. The Cold War Dividend was largely wasted and spent before it was ever pocketed.
d) How do you grow the economy by raising taxes and re-distributing wealth? Never has worked in the past.
e) How do you maintain a strong dollar in the face of increasing trades deficits, domestic budget imbalances and low interest rates? The Fed was created so Congress could continue to spend and offload its profligacy onto another agency. Do we really need the Fed anymore? If we do, are Fed tools inadequate considering the Fed can no longer control long rates?
f) How does America control atmospheric conditions at a cost that is not crippling when other emerging nations continue to pollute?
g) How do national campaigners avoid pandering when they have to appeal to voters in 50 states which have different issues and needs? Ohio is trying to save industrial jobs while Georgia is actually expanding, for instance.
h) If government is inefficient and cannot control its own appetite why do we constantly seek government solutions to problems? Is not government much of the problem and if so why do we believe more government is better?
i) Why do we care about being loved and respected when Socialist European nations, that are on the outs with us, are sinking into their own Muslim mudslide, are unwilling to send troops to Afghanistan to flesh our their NATO commitments and both Germany and France have recently begun to swing back around to embrace us?
j) Carry "i" one step further and I pose, do we want to be loved and respected by the U.N.? If so, what radical changes would we have to make? Do our principles of freedom, capitalism and voting accord with those nations that control virtually all of the U.N.'s various missions and departments?
k) What is a balanced approach towards thwarting radical Islamists? Should we simply hunker down and become isolationists - Pax Americana? Does it really matter whether we maintain any world influence since the cost of doing so is enormous, causes great angst at home and lives lost overseas and what can we point to to as justification?
I have heard the argument that we should have stayed in Afghanistan and not gone into Iraq. Had we done so would the media have relented on their continuous casualty count? I doubt it. Most media elites are apologists and,like Michelle Obama, are not particularly proud of our nation as evidenced by their slanted reporting.
I do not believe it takes a rocket scientist to ask these questions but it sure takes a genius to solve them and I doubt any of the major candidates could be classified as geniuses. If that is a reasonable statement then where does Obama come up with all this "hope" and "we can" stuff? Where does Hillary come up with all the money to do what she promises to do? Where does McCain even begin to have any clout in a Pelosi- Reid controlled Congress?
Except for the saying "hope springs eternal" why should one, thinking rationally, be overly upbeat until they hear some hard answers to some serious questions and a plan for approaching them is offered that holds water?
Have I gone overly "water-boarding?" Tom Purcell even has some reservations of his own. (See 1 below.)
Has a lone Brit Diplomat come up with something we overlooked? (See 2 below.)
Palestinian Education Minister submits his resignation because of the complications of presiding over a schism. He said nothing about the caliber of lies his department feeds their children every day in their school texts and classrooms. (See 3 below.)
Abbas seeks more help from the U.S. so he does not have to make concessions which he could not enforce. And so it goes!(See 4 below.)
Dick
1) For the love of Obama
By Tom Purcell
I was so overcome with emotion, I nearly passed out.
Passed out? What are you talking about?
The wife and I have been following Barack Obama around the country at various campaign appearances. Every time he enters a room, the wife collapses into my arms. I have to use smelling salts to bring her out of it.
I see.
He's quite a presence, that Obama. As president, he's not only going to change America -- he's going to change the world!
Change? What kind of change?
The kind of change in which he's going to do things differently -- differently than they've ever been done before. There'll be no more same old same old with Obama.
What will his change accomplish?
It will give us hope -- lots and lots of hope.
Hope is good. But what will this hope accomplish?
Haven't you been paying attention? It will help us believe in change! Obama wants us to believe in our own ability to bring about change.
But if you already believe in your own ability to bring about change, why do you need Obama?
Because of the future! Obama is going to make the future bright -- he won't fail as our past leaders have.
Look, it's true that Obama has charisma and charm. He's an articulate fellow and he gives an inspiring speech. But before you elect him president, may I ask you some hypothetical questions?
Bring it on.
Would you rather have a president who believes that individuals will drive America 's success or one who puts all of his hope in the government?
That's easy. Individual Americans are the reason we've got where we are.
Would you prefer a candidate who promises to initiate several new government programs or one who promises to restrain government growth?
That's easy, too. If our government keeps growing, we'll end up with more regulations and higher taxes and our economy will become as stagnant as the one in France .
Very good. Would you prefer a president who will lower taxes for everyone or a president who says he will raise income and capital-gains taxes?
I'd go with the low-tax guy. Isn't it obvious by now that low taxes unleash investment and economic growth, which is good for all income levels?
Congratulations. You just voted AGAINST Barack Obama.
I did?
Look, Obama has been getting a free pass on his policies. Nobody seems to care what they are, but when they are examined in detail, the picture is not very pretty.
It's not?
All you have to do is go to Obama's Web site BarackObama.com to see what he is promising to do. Take global warming. Obama believes man is the cause of it and he's got a host of ambitious programs he will push if he becomes president.
He does?
As for taxes, he says he'll lower them for working families but that he'll raise them on the "rich." The unfortunate reality, however, is that the "rich" are the ones who invest in new businesses. By raising their taxes, he will impede investment and impede growth.
He will?
Go ahead and visit his Web site and you'll see the word "expand" all over the place. He wants to expand numerous government programs and create several more.
I didn't know that.
There are some who are saying Obama is an empty suit -- a relatively young fellow whose work history has mostly been as a politician. But the truth of the matter is that he's not an empty suit at all.
What is he?
He's somebody who, if elected president, will have the power to turn America back to policies that just don't work. I really wish the press would focus on his ideas instead of his charisma. So do you still want to vote for Obama for president?
But he's tall and witty and dresses so well. He'll make a fine president.
2) U.K. diplomat: Iran may have continued nuclear arms work after 2003
A senior British diplomat says Iran may have continued work on nuclear weapons past 2003, the year U.S. intelligence says such activities stopped.
Simon Smith, the chief British delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, commented after an IAEA presentation of documentation that - if accurate - would strongly back U.S. claims that Iran at one point worked on programs linked to attempts to make nuclear weapons.
That assertion was also made by a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, summarized and made public late last year said. That report also said, however, that the Iranians froze such work in 2003.
Asked whether the information presented to the IAEA's 35 board member nations indicated that Tehran continued such activities past that date, Smith said: "Certainly some of the dates ... went beyond 2003."
He did not elaborate. Another diplomat at the presentation, who asked for anonymity because the IAEA meeting was closed, said some of the documentation focused on a 2004 Iranian report on alleged weapons activities. But she said it was unclear whether the project was being actively worked on then.
A senior diplomat inside the meeting said that among the material shown was an Iranian video depicting mock-ups of a missile re-entry vehicle. He said IAEA Director General Oli Heinonen suggested the component - which brings missiles back from the stratosphere - was configured in a way that strongly suggests it was meant to carry a nuclear warhead.
Smith and the senior diplomat both said the material shown to the board members came from a multitude of sources, including information gathered by the agency and intelligence provided by the members themselves.
IAEA, the UN nuclear monitor, released a report last week saying that suspicions about most past Iranian nuclear activities had eased or been laid to rest.
But the report also noted that Iran had rejected documents that link it to missile and explosives experiments and other work connected to a possible nuclear weapons program, calling the information false and irrelevant.
The report called weaponization "the one major ... unsolved issue relevant to the nature of Iran's nuclear program."
Most of the material shown to Iran by the IAEA on alleged attempts to make nuclear arms came from Washington, though some was provided by U.S. allies, diplomats told the AP. The agency shared it with Tehran only after the nations gave their permission.
3) Palestinian education minister resigns
The Palestinian education minister in the Ramallah-based
caretaker government, Ibrahim Al-Abrash, told Ma'an on Monday that he
submitted his resignation to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas two weeks
ago.
He said that he has not yet received the president's response.
Al-Abrash said his resignation was related to what he views as a dire
situation in the Palestinian society arena in light of the political
separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as absence of
any hope for a peaceful settlement with Israel.
He said his resignation had nothing to do with rumored adjustments and
changes in the caretaker cabinet headed by Salam Fayyad,
There have been suggestions recently that the caretaker government will
become a permanent government after having a shuffling of cabinet ministers.
Abbas appointed the present government after firing the Hamas-Fatah unity
government in the wake of Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
The president extended the term of the emergency cabinet after its one-month
term expired, calling it a caretaker government.
4) Abbas: If peace not achieved in 2008, it will never happen
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged the US on Monday to make good on its promise to work for a Middle East peace settlement by the end of the year, warning that there would not be any future chances.
Abbas spoke following a closed door meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah in the Jordanian capital of Amman and warned that if the Bush administration didn't make good on its pledge to "make 2008 the year to broker peace, then there will never be any future chances to achieve this goal."
The Palestinians and Israelis are negotiating a final peace settlement, which the Bush administration hopes would lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state later this year.
The US "must understand it is to play an active role, not just as a supervisor, by intervening directly to help make peace," Abbas told reporters. He also urged Israel "to stop escalating the situation in the Palestinian territories and stop all attacks in the Gaza Strip, including firing missiles there."
For his part, Abdullah expressed dismay over the rapidly deteriorating living conditions in Gaza and called for end to the economic blockade imposed there, according to a royal palace statement.
The king emphasized that Jordan refused any partial solution or unilateral actions on the Palestinian issue which would create "real obstacles to achieving tangible progress in the peace process," the statement said.
Gaza's battered economy has nearly collapsed under the weight of the closure and basic services to 1.4 million Palestinians - such as water, sewerage, medical care and education - have been crippled. "Gaza is on the edge of an explosion," Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, warned Monday.
A separate palace statement announced that Abdullah and his Palestinian-born wife Queen Rania will visit the United States later this month for meetings with President George W. Bush and other administration officials on Mideast peacemaking. The statement did not give a specific date for the meeting with Bush, but said the visit would start Feb. 28
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Who cares where Obama leads as long as "We Can!"
Click and you will get a idea of what many have been suggesting. (See 1 below.)
Hamas is planning a tactical move to bring condemnation upon Israel as it seeks to protect its borders from a possible invasion of as many as 40,000 Palestinians - many shielding terrorists etc. Is this the initial phase of the two front war being planned by Hamas and Hezballah?
Olmert leaves for Japan just as this crisis with Hamas looms. The visit was planned months ago and could produce positive results between the two nations but it could also prove to be unwise in view of Hamas' plans. (See 2 and 3 below.)
Modest progress on less contentious issues claimed to have been made between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. (See 4 below.)
Frank Rich offers his thoughts on why Hillary's strategy imploded. (See 5 below.)
An editorial which asks a simple question- Where will Obama lead us should he become president? Few really seem to have a clue and even more seem not to care because "we can" conveys such a powerful message. (See 6 below.)
Dick
1)http://www.barelypolitical.com/bp-music-videos/episode/Crush_on_Obama
2)Palestinians plan mass rush on Gazan-Israeli border Monday
Palestinians, swarmed across breached border to Sinai Jan. 23, plan to batter Israeli border Feb. 25
Beefed-up Israeli military and security forces prepared to repulse thousands of Palestinians planning to crash the full length of the Gazan-Israeli border and its crossings at 10:00 a.m. IT Monday, Feb. 25.
Military sources report Hamas is engineering a “popular” protest to be much more violent than the Jan. 23 Palestinian surge into Egypt through the border wall smashed by its bulldozers.
Behind the human shield of women, children and elderly leading the assault on Monday, Hamas, Jihad Islami and Fatah are expected to shoot, send in suicide bombers and unleash a Qassam barrage. If Israeli forces are goaded into opening fire, civilian casualties may be heavy enough to draw international condemnation. If they hold back, the Palestinian terrorists will capture the border fence and knock it over.
By preventing a full-scale military operation against the Palestinian missile and terror campaign from Gaza and imposing a siege instead, prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak have left the initiative with Hamas which exploits it to the hilt.
Human chains which will “demonstrate” along the border from the Rafah terminal in the south to Erez in the north is organized by the Committee for Breaking the Israeli Siege headed by Hamas, although the terrorist group’s spokesmen claimed it is a “spontaneous” protest against the Israeli blockade.
Israel’s military and security chiefs are conferring urgently Sunday night with chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem told reporters that non-lethal measures for dispersing crowds are ready to ward off the massive assault on the border fence in an effort to avoid civilian casualties.
After weeks, Egypt finally cracked down on the Palestinian invasion of Sinai when its foreign minister threatened to “break the arms and legs” of infiltrators. Even then, they were defied by the Palestinian invaders.
It looks now as though the long-delayed big confrontation between the IDF and Hamas will not take place inside the Gaza Strip but on Israeli soil.
3)Prime Minister Olmert Leaves for Japan
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Japan was planned well in advance; he
has accepted invitations that he received last year both from current
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, as well as from the latter's
predecessor, Shinzo Abe. No Israeli Prime Minister has visited Japan since
then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit in 1997, despite the
deepening of bilateral relations and Japan's great importance as an economic
superpower with global influence.
Prime Minister Olmert's current visit has two main aspects - diplomatic and
economic.
In the diplomatic sphere, Japan has shown great interest in the diplomatic
process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and is even prepared to invest considerable funds in strengthening the PA's economic infrastructure, out of recognition that economic stability would ensure both political stability and the
ability to advance the process. In this context, Japan is focusing most of
its efforts on a large-scale economic project - "Corridor for Peace and
Prosperity". This initiative concerns the building of joint Israeli, Jordanian and PA factories and projects in the Jericho area, which will ensure thousands of jobs and a source of livelihood, mainly for the Palestinian people. Prime Minister Olmert fully
recognizes the importance of economics as a lever for the diplomatic process, and also supports the project that Japan is trying to promote. During the visit, both nations will make a genuine effort to advance the project. Similarly, the Prime Minister will update Japanese leaders on the progress, developments and difficulties in the diplomatic process, especially the problem of terrorism, based both in the Gaza Strip and in Judea and Samaria.
Another diplomatic issue that Prime Minister Olmert intends to raise in his
talks is Iran's aspiration to equip itself with nuclear weapons. Following
the publication of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, which raised additional question marks about Iran's actions and policies and provided very few unequivocal facts in this context. The Prime Minister intends to discuss with his hosts the need for the international community to act forthwith in order to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. Israel believes that the way to do this at the
present is via economic and diplomatic sanctions. To this end, an additional meeting of the UN Security Council is required in order to discuss a third round of sanctions against a country that does not hesitate to continuously threaten the destruction of Israel. These threats are being made without any provocation by Israel and in the absence of any bilateral conflict.
These threats are - to Israel's regret - fed by an irrational hatred. Prime
Minister Olmert believes that countries such as Japan, the United States,
Germany, France and the United Kingdom have the ability to also take
additional measures on their own, regardless of UN Security Council
sanctions, in order to restrict trade with Iran. These countries, if they
choose to act with determination in this context, could cause the extremist
regime in Iran to retreat from its intentions to arm itself with nuclear
weapons. Japan has already begun to enact a responsible policy in this
regard and has taken upon itself to restrict Japanese companies' trade with
Iran; this effort must be continued.
In addition to the diplomatic issues, Prime Minister Olmert will also focus
on the development of economic ties. Prior to the visit, his bureau
contacted the Japanese government and inquired regarding those areas in
which it was possible to strengthen bilateral cooperation. According to the
issues that were suggested, a list was formulated - in cooperation with the
Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry's Foreign Trade Administration and Export and International Cooperation Institute - of approximately 20 leading
Israeli industrialists and businesspeople, who would join the Prime Minister
during his visit. During his visit, Prime Minister Olmert will hold a joint
seminar for the Israeli business people and their Japanese counterparts and
will brief them on the economic situation in Israel. The Prime Minister will also meet with Japanese economic leaders and will visit a leading Japanese industrial
plant, which also exports to Israel. He hopes to increase Israeli exports
to Japan, which are currently approximately one-third of imports. More jobs
will thus be created in Israel and unemployment will continue to decline.
4) Negotiations begin to make progress
The chief Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Sunday launched joint working committees to seek agreement on some of the less contentious issues between them, an Israeli official said, in a first sign of progress in the relaunched talks.
The new teams will work on common concerns about water, the environment, economic and judicial matters, while leaving the tough subjects of borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem to the political negotiators, said Arye Mekel, spokesman for chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, who is Israel's foreign minister.
Officials on both sides were careful not to trumpet the appointment of the committees as a breakthrough in the talks, but the top Palestinian negotiator, ex-premier Ahmed Qureia, has said in the past that the committees would not be named until there was enough progress to warrant that.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that while the sides met Sunday, no committees were formally launched.
"(Qureia) and I met with Minister Livni today and it was decided that whenever a subject arises that needs some experts we will bring them," he said. "But I cannot say that we launched anything today."
Peace talks were frozen for seven years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Relaunching them at a high profile Mideast conference in November hosted by US President George W. Bush, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to will strive to reach a peace deal this year. They are under international pressure to show progress, but little has been visible so far.
The main issues facing the negotiators have stymied decades of peace efforts. Arguably the touchiest is Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want to create a capital in the eastern sector. But both sides lay claim to the explosive joint holy site in the Old City, where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound sits atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples.
No less volatile is the future of Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation. With their descendants, they number in the millions. Palestinians insist they have a right to return to their original homes in Israel, while Israel demands that they be resettled in the new Palestinian state. Other major issues are final borders and the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. No progress is reported in any of those areas.
Livni and Qureia met for 90 minutes Sunday at a Jerusalem hotel, along with about 10 experts from each side who will work on the technical questions - but not the "core issues," Mekel told The Associated Press.
Another Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said that because the committees would not deal with the main issues, it was doubtful that their appointment marked real progress.
Abbas and Olmert held their latest summit Tuesday, and officials on both sides warned that stalling the talks could endanger prospects for a treaty this year and foster more violence.
5) The Audacity of Hopelessness
By FRANK RICH
WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.
It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.
The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.
That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.
Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.
But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.
The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.
In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.
This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.
Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.
As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.
Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy.
The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.
If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.
The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.
There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.
In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.
What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.
6) The Obama Enigma. Where would he lead America?
THE NATIONAL Journal magazine recently ranked Barack Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007 -- an assessment that is subject to legitimate quibbling but will no doubt be featured by Republicans if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination for president. Democratic voters in a Pew Research Center poll last month put Mr. Obama to their left ideologically, Hillary Rodham Clinton to their right. Are these analyses accurate? When the Illinois Democrat talks about bringing together red and blue America, does he mean that he will persuade the red (Republican) part to come around to blue (Democratic) policies -- or does he mean that he will forge a new, centrist answer that will bridge the red-blue divide? Is he a liberal at heart who tacks occasionally to the center or more of a centrist capable of suppressing leftist instincts when political circumstances demand?
It's telling, at this relatively late stage in the nominating process, that the answers are not clear -- at least not to us. Granted, broad terms such as "liberal" or "conservative" can be more misleading than informative. Mr. Obama himself disparages such labeling as a simplistic enterprise, writing to the liberal Web site Daily Kos that "the whole 'centrist' versus 'liberal' labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark." University of Chicago law professor Cass R. Sunstein, an informal adviser to Mr. Obama, places the candidate not at a particular spot along the ideological continuum but as a "visionary minimalist," willing "to think big and to endorse significant departures from the status quo -- but [preferring] to do so after accommodating, learning from, and bringing on board a variety of different perspectives."
Yes, but where is Mr. Obama most comfortable himself? Where would he strive to take the country? It is possible to draw conflicting lessons from his record. As New York Times columnist David Brooks has pointed out, Mr. Obama was not part of the bipartisan Gang of 14 that tried to avert a showdown on judicial filibusters; he was not among the 68 senators voting for a bipartisan agreement on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; he dissented from the part of the bipartisan immigration deal that displeased unions. His campaign platform is orthodox liberal Democratic fare. So is Mr. Obama a standard liberal clad in the soothing language of inclusiveness?
Perhaps, but one could read the record and arrive at a different conclusion. Mr. Obama not only declined to filibuster Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.; he was initially inclined to vote for him, according to The Post's Perry Bacon Jr. Even in the heat of a primary campaign, he has shown some brief glimmers of divergence from the party line: He dared to mention the notion of "merit pay" in an appearance before the teachers union, and he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board that, although he is a "skeptic" about school vouchers, "I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn" if research shows that they work. His book "The Audacity of Hope" is laced with hints of a more complex Obama than the campaign trail version -- more conflicted, for instance, about the benefits of free trade than the campaign trail's NAFTA-basher. "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean," Larissa McFarquhar wrote in the New Yorker last year.
The closing weeks of a primary campaign aren't especially conducive to thoughtful discussions of political philosophy. But if not now, when? Mr. Obama's rhetoric about bridging partisan differences has been inspiring, his personal story is moving and his qualities of leadership are undoubted. But do voters understand where, exactly, he would like to lead them?
Hamas is planning a tactical move to bring condemnation upon Israel as it seeks to protect its borders from a possible invasion of as many as 40,000 Palestinians - many shielding terrorists etc. Is this the initial phase of the two front war being planned by Hamas and Hezballah?
Olmert leaves for Japan just as this crisis with Hamas looms. The visit was planned months ago and could produce positive results between the two nations but it could also prove to be unwise in view of Hamas' plans. (See 2 and 3 below.)
Modest progress on less contentious issues claimed to have been made between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. (See 4 below.)
Frank Rich offers his thoughts on why Hillary's strategy imploded. (See 5 below.)
An editorial which asks a simple question- Where will Obama lead us should he become president? Few really seem to have a clue and even more seem not to care because "we can" conveys such a powerful message. (See 6 below.)
Dick
1)http://www.barelypolitical.com/bp-music-videos/episode/Crush_on_Obama
2)Palestinians plan mass rush on Gazan-Israeli border Monday
Palestinians, swarmed across breached border to Sinai Jan. 23, plan to batter Israeli border Feb. 25
Beefed-up Israeli military and security forces prepared to repulse thousands of Palestinians planning to crash the full length of the Gazan-Israeli border and its crossings at 10:00 a.m. IT Monday, Feb. 25.
Military sources report Hamas is engineering a “popular” protest to be much more violent than the Jan. 23 Palestinian surge into Egypt through the border wall smashed by its bulldozers.
Behind the human shield of women, children and elderly leading the assault on Monday, Hamas, Jihad Islami and Fatah are expected to shoot, send in suicide bombers and unleash a Qassam barrage. If Israeli forces are goaded into opening fire, civilian casualties may be heavy enough to draw international condemnation. If they hold back, the Palestinian terrorists will capture the border fence and knock it over.
By preventing a full-scale military operation against the Palestinian missile and terror campaign from Gaza and imposing a siege instead, prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak have left the initiative with Hamas which exploits it to the hilt.
Human chains which will “demonstrate” along the border from the Rafah terminal in the south to Erez in the north is organized by the Committee for Breaking the Israeli Siege headed by Hamas, although the terrorist group’s spokesmen claimed it is a “spontaneous” protest against the Israeli blockade.
Israel’s military and security chiefs are conferring urgently Sunday night with chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem told reporters that non-lethal measures for dispersing crowds are ready to ward off the massive assault on the border fence in an effort to avoid civilian casualties.
After weeks, Egypt finally cracked down on the Palestinian invasion of Sinai when its foreign minister threatened to “break the arms and legs” of infiltrators. Even then, they were defied by the Palestinian invaders.
It looks now as though the long-delayed big confrontation between the IDF and Hamas will not take place inside the Gaza Strip but on Israeli soil.
3)Prime Minister Olmert Leaves for Japan
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Japan was planned well in advance; he
has accepted invitations that he received last year both from current
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, as well as from the latter's
predecessor, Shinzo Abe. No Israeli Prime Minister has visited Japan since
then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit in 1997, despite the
deepening of bilateral relations and Japan's great importance as an economic
superpower with global influence.
Prime Minister Olmert's current visit has two main aspects - diplomatic and
economic.
In the diplomatic sphere, Japan has shown great interest in the diplomatic
process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and is even prepared to invest considerable funds in strengthening the PA's economic infrastructure, out of recognition that economic stability would ensure both political stability and the
ability to advance the process. In this context, Japan is focusing most of
its efforts on a large-scale economic project - "Corridor for Peace and
Prosperity". This initiative concerns the building of joint Israeli, Jordanian and PA factories and projects in the Jericho area, which will ensure thousands of jobs and a source of livelihood, mainly for the Palestinian people. Prime Minister Olmert fully
recognizes the importance of economics as a lever for the diplomatic process, and also supports the project that Japan is trying to promote. During the visit, both nations will make a genuine effort to advance the project. Similarly, the Prime Minister will update Japanese leaders on the progress, developments and difficulties in the diplomatic process, especially the problem of terrorism, based both in the Gaza Strip and in Judea and Samaria.
Another diplomatic issue that Prime Minister Olmert intends to raise in his
talks is Iran's aspiration to equip itself with nuclear weapons. Following
the publication of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, which raised additional question marks about Iran's actions and policies and provided very few unequivocal facts in this context. The Prime Minister intends to discuss with his hosts the need for the international community to act forthwith in order to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. Israel believes that the way to do this at the
present is via economic and diplomatic sanctions. To this end, an additional meeting of the UN Security Council is required in order to discuss a third round of sanctions against a country that does not hesitate to continuously threaten the destruction of Israel. These threats are being made without any provocation by Israel and in the absence of any bilateral conflict.
These threats are - to Israel's regret - fed by an irrational hatred. Prime
Minister Olmert believes that countries such as Japan, the United States,
Germany, France and the United Kingdom have the ability to also take
additional measures on their own, regardless of UN Security Council
sanctions, in order to restrict trade with Iran. These countries, if they
choose to act with determination in this context, could cause the extremist
regime in Iran to retreat from its intentions to arm itself with nuclear
weapons. Japan has already begun to enact a responsible policy in this
regard and has taken upon itself to restrict Japanese companies' trade with
Iran; this effort must be continued.
In addition to the diplomatic issues, Prime Minister Olmert will also focus
on the development of economic ties. Prior to the visit, his bureau
contacted the Japanese government and inquired regarding those areas in
which it was possible to strengthen bilateral cooperation. According to the
issues that were suggested, a list was formulated - in cooperation with the
Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry's Foreign Trade Administration and Export and International Cooperation Institute - of approximately 20 leading
Israeli industrialists and businesspeople, who would join the Prime Minister
during his visit. During his visit, Prime Minister Olmert will hold a joint
seminar for the Israeli business people and their Japanese counterparts and
will brief them on the economic situation in Israel. The Prime Minister will also meet with Japanese economic leaders and will visit a leading Japanese industrial
plant, which also exports to Israel. He hopes to increase Israeli exports
to Japan, which are currently approximately one-third of imports. More jobs
will thus be created in Israel and unemployment will continue to decline.
4) Negotiations begin to make progress
The chief Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Sunday launched joint working committees to seek agreement on some of the less contentious issues between them, an Israeli official said, in a first sign of progress in the relaunched talks.
The new teams will work on common concerns about water, the environment, economic and judicial matters, while leaving the tough subjects of borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem to the political negotiators, said Arye Mekel, spokesman for chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, who is Israel's foreign minister.
Officials on both sides were careful not to trumpet the appointment of the committees as a breakthrough in the talks, but the top Palestinian negotiator, ex-premier Ahmed Qureia, has said in the past that the committees would not be named until there was enough progress to warrant that.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that while the sides met Sunday, no committees were formally launched.
"(Qureia) and I met with Minister Livni today and it was decided that whenever a subject arises that needs some experts we will bring them," he said. "But I cannot say that we launched anything today."
Peace talks were frozen for seven years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Relaunching them at a high profile Mideast conference in November hosted by US President George W. Bush, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to will strive to reach a peace deal this year. They are under international pressure to show progress, but little has been visible so far.
The main issues facing the negotiators have stymied decades of peace efforts. Arguably the touchiest is Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want to create a capital in the eastern sector. But both sides lay claim to the explosive joint holy site in the Old City, where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound sits atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples.
No less volatile is the future of Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation. With their descendants, they number in the millions. Palestinians insist they have a right to return to their original homes in Israel, while Israel demands that they be resettled in the new Palestinian state. Other major issues are final borders and the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. No progress is reported in any of those areas.
Livni and Qureia met for 90 minutes Sunday at a Jerusalem hotel, along with about 10 experts from each side who will work on the technical questions - but not the "core issues," Mekel told The Associated Press.
Another Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said that because the committees would not deal with the main issues, it was doubtful that their appointment marked real progress.
Abbas and Olmert held their latest summit Tuesday, and officials on both sides warned that stalling the talks could endanger prospects for a treaty this year and foster more violence.
5) The Audacity of Hopelessness
By FRANK RICH
WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.
It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.
The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.
That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.
Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.
But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.
The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.
In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.
This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.
Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.
As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.
Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy.
The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.
If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.
The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.
There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.
In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.
What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.
6) The Obama Enigma. Where would he lead America?
THE NATIONAL Journal magazine recently ranked Barack Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007 -- an assessment that is subject to legitimate quibbling but will no doubt be featured by Republicans if Mr. Obama wins the Democratic nomination for president. Democratic voters in a Pew Research Center poll last month put Mr. Obama to their left ideologically, Hillary Rodham Clinton to their right. Are these analyses accurate? When the Illinois Democrat talks about bringing together red and blue America, does he mean that he will persuade the red (Republican) part to come around to blue (Democratic) policies -- or does he mean that he will forge a new, centrist answer that will bridge the red-blue divide? Is he a liberal at heart who tacks occasionally to the center or more of a centrist capable of suppressing leftist instincts when political circumstances demand?
It's telling, at this relatively late stage in the nominating process, that the answers are not clear -- at least not to us. Granted, broad terms such as "liberal" or "conservative" can be more misleading than informative. Mr. Obama himself disparages such labeling as a simplistic enterprise, writing to the liberal Web site Daily Kos that "the whole 'centrist' versus 'liberal' labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark." University of Chicago law professor Cass R. Sunstein, an informal adviser to Mr. Obama, places the candidate not at a particular spot along the ideological continuum but as a "visionary minimalist," willing "to think big and to endorse significant departures from the status quo -- but [preferring] to do so after accommodating, learning from, and bringing on board a variety of different perspectives."
Yes, but where is Mr. Obama most comfortable himself? Where would he strive to take the country? It is possible to draw conflicting lessons from his record. As New York Times columnist David Brooks has pointed out, Mr. Obama was not part of the bipartisan Gang of 14 that tried to avert a showdown on judicial filibusters; he was not among the 68 senators voting for a bipartisan agreement on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; he dissented from the part of the bipartisan immigration deal that displeased unions. His campaign platform is orthodox liberal Democratic fare. So is Mr. Obama a standard liberal clad in the soothing language of inclusiveness?
Perhaps, but one could read the record and arrive at a different conclusion. Mr. Obama not only declined to filibuster Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.; he was initially inclined to vote for him, according to The Post's Perry Bacon Jr. Even in the heat of a primary campaign, he has shown some brief glimmers of divergence from the party line: He dared to mention the notion of "merit pay" in an appearance before the teachers union, and he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board that, although he is a "skeptic" about school vouchers, "I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn" if research shows that they work. His book "The Audacity of Hope" is laced with hints of a more complex Obama than the campaign trail version -- more conflicted, for instance, about the benefits of free trade than the campaign trail's NAFTA-basher. "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean," Larissa McFarquhar wrote in the New Yorker last year.
The closing weeks of a primary campaign aren't especially conducive to thoughtful discussions of political philosophy. But if not now, when? Mr. Obama's rhetoric about bridging partisan differences has been inspiring, his personal story is moving and his qualities of leadership are undoubted. But do voters understand where, exactly, he would like to lead them?
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Michelle Meant Every Word - Camelot 2!
Mughniyeh's assassination attributed to Palestinians who tipped off Mossad by Hezballah report. (See 1 below.)
Illegals claiming they are seeking work could bring about the end of secure borders for all nations with strong economies and reshape the politics and security of those nations and eventually the world. (See 2 below.)
Olmert tells those under attack to wait til 2010. (See 3 below.)
Livni wants to add a third leg to Israel's diplomatic and economic stool - closer ties with the EU. Livni also believes as Europe becomes more "Muslimized" it will also be critical for Israel to seek greater understanding and contacts within Europe's Muslim community.
I believe Livni raises some important issues and the most important is the one of elevating contact between radically different societies and whether accommodations between the two can be achieved without significant directional concessions. In other words, can a Westernized nation with political institutions based on individual freedoms achieved and maintained through the ballot box accommodate relations with societies opposed to the same and bent on their destruction or radically altering them. Can there be peace without trying, can their be peace through trying, what is lost in the process and is it worth the effort?
The basic "what if" is whether Muslims are so radicalized or fearful they are incapable of accommodating the philosophy, religion, life style of others? As the radical Islamists are now it is impossible because more "moderate" Muslims amongst them seem totally cowered. Where are the "moderate voices" is a legitimate question. Ask Solomon Rushdie - in hiding! Ask the young Dutch Legislator who fled to our nation, the Danish cartoonists living under police protection, those living in Sderot or the families of 9/11 victims.
If you cannot meet radical Islamists on some common ground, then what is the solution? I have begun reading Martin Van Creveld's: " The Transformation of War." Perhaps he has some answers as to how to eliminate the more radical Islamists so the more enlightened among them can breathe and allow those in the West to do so as well.
Does the fuzzy thinking of Sderot's Mayor point the way or is it a signal of what is to come? (See 4 and 5 below.)
There has been a lot of controversy over Michelle Obama's remarks about not being proud of her country and her own efforts at back tracking. In my opinion she meant every word of it and it fits the mentality of so many Democrats , Left Wing elites in academia and the media who find nothing good about our nation and feel compelled to be apologists for our "expansive" foreign policy. Their hatred of GW, Gingrich and the Far Right reaches pathological proportions and like the New York Times will over-reach to prove their petty points.
Perhaps Obama's empty message of hope will transcend and those who are caught up in its messianic thrust will not realize how apart they really are from the Obama philosophy of Socialism until they have anointed him king of Camelot 2. Perhaps, being the rookie candidate that he is, Obama's true feelings and views will be smoked out by a hard charging, tough and grizzled McCain, and people will come to a clearer understanding of where the Obama train plans to carry our nation and begin to exit its various cars. Time will tell.
Krauthammer has his thoughts. (See 6 below.)
Tony Cordesman sees both sides having just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. (See 7 below.)
Dick
1) Hizballah probe claims Israel used Palestinian contacts for Mughniyeh hit
Intelligence report discloses findings of a special inquiry launched by Hizballah to solve the mystery of who killed the master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh and how.
Counter-terror sources stress, above all, Hizballah was keen to clear itself of suspicion that Mughniyeh was betrayed by an insider planted by Mossad, and this report points at Palestinians who are accused of giving him away.
Their investigators claim Israeli Mossad tracked him down through Palestinian operatives with whom he recently rendezvoused in Beirut and Damascus to coordinate a new wave of terror against Israel.
The Palestinians he met did not know his real identity, they claim. He posed as a senior Iranian intelligence officer called Hajj Radwan, based inside the Hizballah command.
This information was leaked to the Mossad networks said to be working under cover in Beirut and Damascus, who then tipped Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv. They too did not immediately identify Mughniyeh, say the Hizballah investigators – until a description was built up of his habits and connections. One of these was Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal. The Israeli agents then put two and two together and came up with the dangerous terrorist Israel and the US had been hunting for two and a half decades.
Two pieces of information clinched the fix, says the Hizballah report.
One was the type of terror operations he discussed with his Palestinian colleagues: “Hajj Radwan” laid before Palestinian terror planners mass high-quality attacks inside Israel in conjunction with Iran and Hizballah. They talked about scale, targets, funding, weapons and manpower.
No one but Imad Mughniyeh was believed to have the breadth and skill to put together a complex Palestinian operation of this type and its detailed cooperation with Tehran and Beirut.
The other clincher was the fact that the “Iranian officer” turned up for all his meetings without bodyguards. In this Mughniyeh was unique. No other Middle East terror chief moves without bodyguards, but the Lebanese terror mastermind trusted nothing and no one but total secrecy. For the Mossad, his lone wolf habits were a telltale trademark.
The Shiite group’s investigators went on to claim when Mossad realized Mughniyeh was within their grasp, they ordered two hit teams waiting in West Europe to set out for Damascus and Beirut.
The Hizballah finds support for its conclusion in the resemblance between the alleged Mossad modus operandi for killing Mughniyeh and the way Ali Hassan Daib in 1999, Ali Hussein Salah in 2003 and Ghalb Alawi in 2004, were killed. All three were Hizballah liaison men who collaborated with Palestinian terror groups on joint attacks against Israel.
2) Barak opposes PM bid to step up measures against infiltrators
By Barak Ravid
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday spoke out against the prime minister's instructions to relax Israel's policy on attempted infiltrators to make it easier for border troops to open fire on people trying to cross into Israel illegally.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ordered the defense establishment to step up efforts to prevent the illegal infiltration of job-seeking Africans into Israel through the border with Egypt.
"Wake up," Olmert reprimanded Defense Ministry officials and Israel Defense Forces representatives, "We can no longer continue in this way, not stopping the border infiltrators," he said.
Israel estimates that 7,400 people - mostly from Africa - have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt in recent years, searching for jobs. The number shot up last summer, apparently as word spread of job opportunities in Israel and a more lenient policy toward refugees.
As many as 50 people arrived each day in June, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The prime minister instructed all the different defense bodies to act in a more decisive and aggressive way to both prevent the entry of African job seekers, as well as their deportation in case of illegal entry.
He also proposed that weapons normally used to disperse large crowds be used to deter refugees from crossing the border into Israel.
Olmert told the Foreign Ministry to set up immediate contacts with various African governments to coordinate the Africans' deportation back to their home countries.
Finally, the prime minister instructed the Public Security Ministry and the Interior Ministry to make the deportation process more efficient, and to that end he ordered the appointment of 30 additional officials to determine among the infiltrators which is a legitimate refugee and which is only looking for work.
The Israel Prisons Service was instructed to jail all infiltrators not classified as refugees. "We mustn't agree to a situation in which they remain free," Olmert said.
During the discussion, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said that the problem stems for inaction by the IDF and that it is the military's responsibility to stop the infiltrators at the border. "Our problem is that we deal with them once they're already inside, and then an immediate return becomes impossible," Dichter said.
Dichter said that 5,000 infiltrators were caught in 2007.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that "a distinction must be made between refugees and job seekers. Against the latter we must employ harsh measures at the border initially, and later at the detention facilities. We mustn't provide solutions for people who come here seeking work."
3) PM: We absolutely won't fortify every building in Gaza area
By Barak Ravid
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday during the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel will not undertake a fortification project that will protect all Gaza-area homes from Qassam rocket attacks.
Olmert stressed that Israel had "absolutely no intention of fortifying every building in the Gaza-area or in Sderot."
Later in the meeting, the cabinet approved a previously proposed plan to build a 'safe room' measuring 9 square meters in each residential building within 4.5 kilometers from the Gaza border. The plan had already been approved by a special ministerial committee last week.
The Cabinet allotted a NIS 327 million budget to the fortification project.
The prime minister added that by the year 2010 Israel will be in possession of a multi-layer anti-missile defense system.
Olmert said the protection of Gaza-area communities will include a combination of solutions such as the Iron Dome defense system, an early-warning system, new school buildings in addition to the partial fortification of homes.
Hundreds of projectiles have been launched this year at Israeli towns and villages adjacent to the Strip. Residents of the southern city of Sderot, which lies about two kilometers east of Gaza and has borne the brunt of the rocket attacks, have demonstrated in Jerusalem, and set up a protest tent in a central Tel Aviv square, to draw attention to their plight.
4) Israel begins overhaul of EU relations
By AMIR MIZROCH
The Foreign Ministry has begun a strategic overhaul of relations with the EU and its member nations, increasingly "plugging into" EU institutions and, in turn, allowing Europe to play a greater role in Israeli diplomatic and economic processes, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
So central has Europe become to Israel's well-being, diplomatic officials have told the Post, that the Foreign Ministry believes it is time to reassess the Jewish state's traditional reliance on "two pillars" for Israeli survival: a strong IDF and an unbreakable alliance with America. Given the growing importance of the European Union in world events, and in the Middle East particularly, the officials said, a third pillar has become necessary: deepening ties to Europe.
"Increasingly, Europe is involved in everything that touches us: trade, the Palestinians, Iran, UNIFIL in Lebanon," said a senior Israeli diplomatic source. "They are in the [Middle East] Quartet, and central in many other areas. Developing a strong relationship with Europe is becoming the third pillar safeguarding Israel's survival."
Jerusalem's new strategy is to enhance cooperation with Europe in a variety of fields and to demonstrate that Israel can help with some of the EU's many interests in the region. To that end, Israel has in the past few weeks sent a detailed proposal to the European Union for negotiations on "significant" Israeli involvement with Europe in nine fields, including finance, education, environment, youth development, law enforcement, security cooperation and scientific research collaboration.
The plan comes on top of existing Israel-EU cooperation forums such as the Barcelona Process (established in 1995 to foster dialogue among EU member-states and countries on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean), the European Neighborhood Policy (which aims to offer deeper political relationships and economic integration between EU members and their immediate neighbors), the Galileo space program, and bilateral ties.
The EU is studying the new Israeli proposal and has promised to give Israel a preliminary answer by mid-March. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to meet with her European counterparts in June to try to finalize an agreement on the enhanced partnerships, the Post has learned.
Jerusalem is also seeking to deepen contact with Europe's growing Muslim communities - a source of hostility to Israel, but also, the Foreign Ministry believes, a potential bridge to better Jewish-Islamic relations and understanding. "Europe is becoming more and more Muslim, and we have identified a need to reach out to these populations," the diplomatic official said.
Israeli officials cite a change in relations with Europe following the 9/11 attacks, which "opened European eyes to the threats emanating from this region. They realized they had vital interests in this region, which is essentially their backyard."
Traditionally, Israel has relied overwhelmingly on its alliance with the US on questions of security and diplomacy, and officials stressed that the centrality of this relationship had not changed. Traditionally, too, Israel had been wary of over-involving Europe in fundamental survival issues. The relative marginalization of the EU, for instance, is emblemized by the fact that no serving Israeli prime minister has ever visited EU headquarters in Brussels on a formal diplomatic mission. "It's just never worked out," the diplomatic source said.
The reliance on Washington, indeed, has always been a strategic imperative, and has only grown more manifest as Israel and the Palestinians try to advance on the Annapolis-road map path to a permanent accord. Currently, as first reported by the Post, America, Israel and the Palestinians are working to formulate a plan under which NATO peacekeepers could be deployed in the West Bank if an agreement is reached and an Israeli withdrawal cannot otherwise be facilitated because of the inadequacy of the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.
But Europe's role would be vital here, too: With NATO forces already deployed in areas such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, and with the bulk of US armed forces concentrated in Iraq, Europe would likely be asked to fill the ranks should a NATO-West Bank deployment materialize.
European troops are already deployed in the post-Second Lebanon War beefed-up UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon and have no immediate plans to end their mission. Last week, Spain dismissed a report in the Post in which Israeli defense officials expressed concern over Spain's commitment to UNIFIL ahead of the Spanish elections, pointing to the precedent of the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq following the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the subsequent change of government there. Nevertheless, there remains a widespread sense within the Israeli diplomatic establishment that UNIFIL's strength and commitment would not withstand a serious challenge from Hizbullah.
Europe is also playing a role in efforts to bolster the PA's security capabilities. Alongside US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton's military advisers, who are playing the primary training role, 33 Canadian and European police advisers have recently started training their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank.
This new batch of advisers follows the European border monitors who were deployed at the Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza, but who retired to an Ashkelon hotel after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June. The monitors' mandate has not officially been repealed and they could be recalled to duty should Hamas allow their deployment in a deal between the PA and the Quartet. Their withdrawal when the situation deteriorated, however, underlined Israel's concerns about placing its security in the hands of international forces.
Jerusalem also believes stronger ties with Europe are important in mobilizing economic and diplomatic pressure on Teheran to thwart its nuclear drive. European politicians, especially those in Germany, Austria and Italy, were having a hard time convincing their businessmen and industrialists to sever or downgrade their economic ties with Teheran, the diplomatic source said, and Israel was consistently monitoring these efforts and pushing for their intensification.
"Many in those countries are still doing business with Iran, as evidenced by the latest OMV deal. Despite this, we are seeing some successes," the source said, adding that lobbying European politicians to pressure their industrialists to sanction Iran was "Israel's daily work." France and Britain were leading the diplomatic campaign against Iran, the official added. OMV is a large Austrian oil company, partially state-owned, which has entered into a $32 billion oil-rights deal with Iran.
Part of Israel's strategy to strengthen relations with Europe involves de-linking those ties from the vicissitudes of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Israeli-European ties have tended to fluctuate parallel to progress, or the lack thereof, in negotiations with the Palestinians.
"The Europeans are, in general, not pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli; they are pro-peace process. Progress with the Palestinians has meant better relations with Europe," the Israeli diplomatic source said.
Finally, Israeli officials are upbeat about the prospects for economic and environmental reforms here should the country reach agreement on deepened cooperation with European agencies. "Important reform programs tied to increased global access are easier to sell than homegrown reforms, which are always mired in local political considerations," the source said.
5)Are you crazy? Sderot mayor’s willingness to talk to Hamas compromises our firm stance.
By Iki Elner
The thought of granting legitimacy to a terror organization that has no other intention except for eliminating Israel contradicts the position of the government, the Israeli public, and even the international system.
Israel has undertaken great efforts in order to convince the international community to boycott Hamas. The Jewish state works tirelessly in order to reinforce this commitment, even when occasional calls to end the siege on Gaza are made. Yet Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal, who expressed his willingness to negotiate with Hamas, undermines our stubborn stance vis-à-vis the terrorists.
Imagine the mayor of Haifa, in the midst of the Lebanon war, declaring that he is willing to immediately travel to Damascus for talks with terrorist leader Nasrallah in order to end the rocket fire on his city and save lives. I find it hard to imagine any public reaction to this that would be short of immediate expulsion from Haifa.
Fortunately, Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav does not only possess great wisdom, but also genuine commitment to his post. Instead of providing the government with a plethora of strategic and security tips, he dedicated his energy to boosting the spirits of city residents, preparing bomb shelters, maintaining restraint, and encouraging a firm stance under fire.
One clear thing emerges from the comparison: Moyal must not talk to Hamas. He should learn from Yahav about the issues a mayor should be dealing with. If the mayor wishes to save lives in Sderot, there are many things he could do before he volunteers to hold talks with Hamas, such as demanding to fortify town homes and boost other defense means.
I’m not known as a follower of the Greater Israel vision, and I still believe that one of these days it would be proper to grant the Palestinians political independence. Yet when it comes to standing firm against our worst enemies, I am unwilling to recognize even a trace of justification for their existence or to talk to them. In my view, a terrorist who wishes to kill us should be pursued mercilessly until he is eliminated.
Any attempt to justify talks with Hamas may also lead to justifying talks with the patron that arms them, Ahmadinejad, with Islamic Jihad, and ultimately with al-Qaeda. That would be a grave blow to the righteousness of our path and the demand to recognize our right to live safely in our own country.
I also object to Moyal’s mad proposal for reasons of supporting a future peace deal. Dividing the country and the establishment of a Palestinian state would only become possible when the Palestinians are led by a stable, peace-seeking government. As long as the Hamas organization exists, and heaven forbid if it should enjoy political recognition because of the eagerness of an Israeli mayor, such government cannot be formed among the Palestinians.
I cannot trust a peace treaty where a neighboring country is home to a murderous terror group that operates in broad daylight and may eliminate the regime (as it has done in Gaza) and fire from its independent territory at Israel’s citizens.
We must not talk with Hamas – nobody is allowed to do it, and certainly not someone who himself claims that “he was not elected to manage Israel’s security policy.”
Hamas deserves death: It is the source of regional instability, an obstacle to peace, and the true reason for the Palestinian disaster. Those who are willing to turn their back on the government and the public, which oppose any dialogue with Hamas, show that respecting the consensus of the vast majority of Israel’s citizens means nothing to them.
6) The Audacity of Selling Hope
By Charles Krauthammer
There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns — boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.
This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."
"We are the hope of the future," sayeth Obama. We can "remake this world as it should be." Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."
And believe they do. After eight straight victories — and two more (Hawaii and Wisconsin) almost certain to follow — Obama is near to rendering moot all the post-Super Tuesday fretting about a deadlocked convention with unelected superdelegates deciding the nominee. Unless Hillary Clinton can somehow do in Ohio and Texas on March 4 what Rudy Giuliani proved is almost impossible to do — maintain a big-state firewall after an unrelenting string of smaller defeats — the superdelegates will flock to Obama. Hope will have carried the day.
Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.
ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience — to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."
That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."
You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times's Paul Krugman that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."
I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.
But even there the object of his countrymen's unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country.
Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war — with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.
Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.
7)Two Winnable Wars
Iraqi supporters bearing a likeness of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rally in Baghdad Thursday, the day before he extended his militia's cease-fire six months.
Iraqi supporters bearing a likeness of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rally in Baghdad Thursday, the day before he extended his militia's cease-fire six months. (By Wathiq Khuzaie -- Getty Images)
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By Anthony H. Cordesman
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page B07
No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.
These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.
The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.
Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south.
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.
If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.
The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.
Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.
Illegals claiming they are seeking work could bring about the end of secure borders for all nations with strong economies and reshape the politics and security of those nations and eventually the world. (See 2 below.)
Olmert tells those under attack to wait til 2010. (See 3 below.)
Livni wants to add a third leg to Israel's diplomatic and economic stool - closer ties with the EU. Livni also believes as Europe becomes more "Muslimized" it will also be critical for Israel to seek greater understanding and contacts within Europe's Muslim community.
I believe Livni raises some important issues and the most important is the one of elevating contact between radically different societies and whether accommodations between the two can be achieved without significant directional concessions. In other words, can a Westernized nation with political institutions based on individual freedoms achieved and maintained through the ballot box accommodate relations with societies opposed to the same and bent on their destruction or radically altering them. Can there be peace without trying, can their be peace through trying, what is lost in the process and is it worth the effort?
The basic "what if" is whether Muslims are so radicalized or fearful they are incapable of accommodating the philosophy, religion, life style of others? As the radical Islamists are now it is impossible because more "moderate" Muslims amongst them seem totally cowered. Where are the "moderate voices" is a legitimate question. Ask Solomon Rushdie - in hiding! Ask the young Dutch Legislator who fled to our nation, the Danish cartoonists living under police protection, those living in Sderot or the families of 9/11 victims.
If you cannot meet radical Islamists on some common ground, then what is the solution? I have begun reading Martin Van Creveld's: " The Transformation of War." Perhaps he has some answers as to how to eliminate the more radical Islamists so the more enlightened among them can breathe and allow those in the West to do so as well.
Does the fuzzy thinking of Sderot's Mayor point the way or is it a signal of what is to come? (See 4 and 5 below.)
There has been a lot of controversy over Michelle Obama's remarks about not being proud of her country and her own efforts at back tracking. In my opinion she meant every word of it and it fits the mentality of so many Democrats , Left Wing elites in academia and the media who find nothing good about our nation and feel compelled to be apologists for our "expansive" foreign policy. Their hatred of GW, Gingrich and the Far Right reaches pathological proportions and like the New York Times will over-reach to prove their petty points.
Perhaps Obama's empty message of hope will transcend and those who are caught up in its messianic thrust will not realize how apart they really are from the Obama philosophy of Socialism until they have anointed him king of Camelot 2. Perhaps, being the rookie candidate that he is, Obama's true feelings and views will be smoked out by a hard charging, tough and grizzled McCain, and people will come to a clearer understanding of where the Obama train plans to carry our nation and begin to exit its various cars. Time will tell.
Krauthammer has his thoughts. (See 6 below.)
Tony Cordesman sees both sides having just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. (See 7 below.)
Dick
1) Hizballah probe claims Israel used Palestinian contacts for Mughniyeh hit
Intelligence report discloses findings of a special inquiry launched by Hizballah to solve the mystery of who killed the master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh and how.
Counter-terror sources stress, above all, Hizballah was keen to clear itself of suspicion that Mughniyeh was betrayed by an insider planted by Mossad, and this report points at Palestinians who are accused of giving him away.
Their investigators claim Israeli Mossad tracked him down through Palestinian operatives with whom he recently rendezvoused in Beirut and Damascus to coordinate a new wave of terror against Israel.
The Palestinians he met did not know his real identity, they claim. He posed as a senior Iranian intelligence officer called Hajj Radwan, based inside the Hizballah command.
This information was leaked to the Mossad networks said to be working under cover in Beirut and Damascus, who then tipped Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv. They too did not immediately identify Mughniyeh, say the Hizballah investigators – until a description was built up of his habits and connections. One of these was Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal. The Israeli agents then put two and two together and came up with the dangerous terrorist Israel and the US had been hunting for two and a half decades.
Two pieces of information clinched the fix, says the Hizballah report.
One was the type of terror operations he discussed with his Palestinian colleagues: “Hajj Radwan” laid before Palestinian terror planners mass high-quality attacks inside Israel in conjunction with Iran and Hizballah. They talked about scale, targets, funding, weapons and manpower.
No one but Imad Mughniyeh was believed to have the breadth and skill to put together a complex Palestinian operation of this type and its detailed cooperation with Tehran and Beirut.
The other clincher was the fact that the “Iranian officer” turned up for all his meetings without bodyguards. In this Mughniyeh was unique. No other Middle East terror chief moves without bodyguards, but the Lebanese terror mastermind trusted nothing and no one but total secrecy. For the Mossad, his lone wolf habits were a telltale trademark.
The Shiite group’s investigators went on to claim when Mossad realized Mughniyeh was within their grasp, they ordered two hit teams waiting in West Europe to set out for Damascus and Beirut.
The Hizballah finds support for its conclusion in the resemblance between the alleged Mossad modus operandi for killing Mughniyeh and the way Ali Hassan Daib in 1999, Ali Hussein Salah in 2003 and Ghalb Alawi in 2004, were killed. All three were Hizballah liaison men who collaborated with Palestinian terror groups on joint attacks against Israel.
2) Barak opposes PM bid to step up measures against infiltrators
By Barak Ravid
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday spoke out against the prime minister's instructions to relax Israel's policy on attempted infiltrators to make it easier for border troops to open fire on people trying to cross into Israel illegally.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ordered the defense establishment to step up efforts to prevent the illegal infiltration of job-seeking Africans into Israel through the border with Egypt.
"Wake up," Olmert reprimanded Defense Ministry officials and Israel Defense Forces representatives, "We can no longer continue in this way, not stopping the border infiltrators," he said.
Israel estimates that 7,400 people - mostly from Africa - have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt in recent years, searching for jobs. The number shot up last summer, apparently as word spread of job opportunities in Israel and a more lenient policy toward refugees.
As many as 50 people arrived each day in June, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The prime minister instructed all the different defense bodies to act in a more decisive and aggressive way to both prevent the entry of African job seekers, as well as their deportation in case of illegal entry.
He also proposed that weapons normally used to disperse large crowds be used to deter refugees from crossing the border into Israel.
Olmert told the Foreign Ministry to set up immediate contacts with various African governments to coordinate the Africans' deportation back to their home countries.
Finally, the prime minister instructed the Public Security Ministry and the Interior Ministry to make the deportation process more efficient, and to that end he ordered the appointment of 30 additional officials to determine among the infiltrators which is a legitimate refugee and which is only looking for work.
The Israel Prisons Service was instructed to jail all infiltrators not classified as refugees. "We mustn't agree to a situation in which they remain free," Olmert said.
During the discussion, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said that the problem stems for inaction by the IDF and that it is the military's responsibility to stop the infiltrators at the border. "Our problem is that we deal with them once they're already inside, and then an immediate return becomes impossible," Dichter said.
Dichter said that 5,000 infiltrators were caught in 2007.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that "a distinction must be made between refugees and job seekers. Against the latter we must employ harsh measures at the border initially, and later at the detention facilities. We mustn't provide solutions for people who come here seeking work."
3) PM: We absolutely won't fortify every building in Gaza area
By Barak Ravid
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday during the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel will not undertake a fortification project that will protect all Gaza-area homes from Qassam rocket attacks.
Olmert stressed that Israel had "absolutely no intention of fortifying every building in the Gaza-area or in Sderot."
Later in the meeting, the cabinet approved a previously proposed plan to build a 'safe room' measuring 9 square meters in each residential building within 4.5 kilometers from the Gaza border. The plan had already been approved by a special ministerial committee last week.
The Cabinet allotted a NIS 327 million budget to the fortification project.
The prime minister added that by the year 2010 Israel will be in possession of a multi-layer anti-missile defense system.
Olmert said the protection of Gaza-area communities will include a combination of solutions such as the Iron Dome defense system, an early-warning system, new school buildings in addition to the partial fortification of homes.
Hundreds of projectiles have been launched this year at Israeli towns and villages adjacent to the Strip. Residents of the southern city of Sderot, which lies about two kilometers east of Gaza and has borne the brunt of the rocket attacks, have demonstrated in Jerusalem, and set up a protest tent in a central Tel Aviv square, to draw attention to their plight.
4) Israel begins overhaul of EU relations
By AMIR MIZROCH
The Foreign Ministry has begun a strategic overhaul of relations with the EU and its member nations, increasingly "plugging into" EU institutions and, in turn, allowing Europe to play a greater role in Israeli diplomatic and economic processes, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
So central has Europe become to Israel's well-being, diplomatic officials have told the Post, that the Foreign Ministry believes it is time to reassess the Jewish state's traditional reliance on "two pillars" for Israeli survival: a strong IDF and an unbreakable alliance with America. Given the growing importance of the European Union in world events, and in the Middle East particularly, the officials said, a third pillar has become necessary: deepening ties to Europe.
"Increasingly, Europe is involved in everything that touches us: trade, the Palestinians, Iran, UNIFIL in Lebanon," said a senior Israeli diplomatic source. "They are in the [Middle East] Quartet, and central in many other areas. Developing a strong relationship with Europe is becoming the third pillar safeguarding Israel's survival."
Jerusalem's new strategy is to enhance cooperation with Europe in a variety of fields and to demonstrate that Israel can help with some of the EU's many interests in the region. To that end, Israel has in the past few weeks sent a detailed proposal to the European Union for negotiations on "significant" Israeli involvement with Europe in nine fields, including finance, education, environment, youth development, law enforcement, security cooperation and scientific research collaboration.
The plan comes on top of existing Israel-EU cooperation forums such as the Barcelona Process (established in 1995 to foster dialogue among EU member-states and countries on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean), the European Neighborhood Policy (which aims to offer deeper political relationships and economic integration between EU members and their immediate neighbors), the Galileo space program, and bilateral ties.
The EU is studying the new Israeli proposal and has promised to give Israel a preliminary answer by mid-March. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to meet with her European counterparts in June to try to finalize an agreement on the enhanced partnerships, the Post has learned.
Jerusalem is also seeking to deepen contact with Europe's growing Muslim communities - a source of hostility to Israel, but also, the Foreign Ministry believes, a potential bridge to better Jewish-Islamic relations and understanding. "Europe is becoming more and more Muslim, and we have identified a need to reach out to these populations," the diplomatic official said.
Israeli officials cite a change in relations with Europe following the 9/11 attacks, which "opened European eyes to the threats emanating from this region. They realized they had vital interests in this region, which is essentially their backyard."
Traditionally, Israel has relied overwhelmingly on its alliance with the US on questions of security and diplomacy, and officials stressed that the centrality of this relationship had not changed. Traditionally, too, Israel had been wary of over-involving Europe in fundamental survival issues. The relative marginalization of the EU, for instance, is emblemized by the fact that no serving Israeli prime minister has ever visited EU headquarters in Brussels on a formal diplomatic mission. "It's just never worked out," the diplomatic source said.
The reliance on Washington, indeed, has always been a strategic imperative, and has only grown more manifest as Israel and the Palestinians try to advance on the Annapolis-road map path to a permanent accord. Currently, as first reported by the Post, America, Israel and the Palestinians are working to formulate a plan under which NATO peacekeepers could be deployed in the West Bank if an agreement is reached and an Israeli withdrawal cannot otherwise be facilitated because of the inadequacy of the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.
But Europe's role would be vital here, too: With NATO forces already deployed in areas such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, and with the bulk of US armed forces concentrated in Iraq, Europe would likely be asked to fill the ranks should a NATO-West Bank deployment materialize.
European troops are already deployed in the post-Second Lebanon War beefed-up UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon and have no immediate plans to end their mission. Last week, Spain dismissed a report in the Post in which Israeli defense officials expressed concern over Spain's commitment to UNIFIL ahead of the Spanish elections, pointing to the precedent of the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq following the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the subsequent change of government there. Nevertheless, there remains a widespread sense within the Israeli diplomatic establishment that UNIFIL's strength and commitment would not withstand a serious challenge from Hizbullah.
Europe is also playing a role in efforts to bolster the PA's security capabilities. Alongside US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton's military advisers, who are playing the primary training role, 33 Canadian and European police advisers have recently started training their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank.
This new batch of advisers follows the European border monitors who were deployed at the Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza, but who retired to an Ashkelon hotel after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June. The monitors' mandate has not officially been repealed and they could be recalled to duty should Hamas allow their deployment in a deal between the PA and the Quartet. Their withdrawal when the situation deteriorated, however, underlined Israel's concerns about placing its security in the hands of international forces.
Jerusalem also believes stronger ties with Europe are important in mobilizing economic and diplomatic pressure on Teheran to thwart its nuclear drive. European politicians, especially those in Germany, Austria and Italy, were having a hard time convincing their businessmen and industrialists to sever or downgrade their economic ties with Teheran, the diplomatic source said, and Israel was consistently monitoring these efforts and pushing for their intensification.
"Many in those countries are still doing business with Iran, as evidenced by the latest OMV deal. Despite this, we are seeing some successes," the source said, adding that lobbying European politicians to pressure their industrialists to sanction Iran was "Israel's daily work." France and Britain were leading the diplomatic campaign against Iran, the official added. OMV is a large Austrian oil company, partially state-owned, which has entered into a $32 billion oil-rights deal with Iran.
Part of Israel's strategy to strengthen relations with Europe involves de-linking those ties from the vicissitudes of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Israeli-European ties have tended to fluctuate parallel to progress, or the lack thereof, in negotiations with the Palestinians.
"The Europeans are, in general, not pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli; they are pro-peace process. Progress with the Palestinians has meant better relations with Europe," the Israeli diplomatic source said.
Finally, Israeli officials are upbeat about the prospects for economic and environmental reforms here should the country reach agreement on deepened cooperation with European agencies. "Important reform programs tied to increased global access are easier to sell than homegrown reforms, which are always mired in local political considerations," the source said.
5)Are you crazy? Sderot mayor’s willingness to talk to Hamas compromises our firm stance.
By Iki Elner
The thought of granting legitimacy to a terror organization that has no other intention except for eliminating Israel contradicts the position of the government, the Israeli public, and even the international system.
Israel has undertaken great efforts in order to convince the international community to boycott Hamas. The Jewish state works tirelessly in order to reinforce this commitment, even when occasional calls to end the siege on Gaza are made. Yet Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal, who expressed his willingness to negotiate with Hamas, undermines our stubborn stance vis-à-vis the terrorists.
Imagine the mayor of Haifa, in the midst of the Lebanon war, declaring that he is willing to immediately travel to Damascus for talks with terrorist leader Nasrallah in order to end the rocket fire on his city and save lives. I find it hard to imagine any public reaction to this that would be short of immediate expulsion from Haifa.
Fortunately, Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav does not only possess great wisdom, but also genuine commitment to his post. Instead of providing the government with a plethora of strategic and security tips, he dedicated his energy to boosting the spirits of city residents, preparing bomb shelters, maintaining restraint, and encouraging a firm stance under fire.
One clear thing emerges from the comparison: Moyal must not talk to Hamas. He should learn from Yahav about the issues a mayor should be dealing with. If the mayor wishes to save lives in Sderot, there are many things he could do before he volunteers to hold talks with Hamas, such as demanding to fortify town homes and boost other defense means.
I’m not known as a follower of the Greater Israel vision, and I still believe that one of these days it would be proper to grant the Palestinians political independence. Yet when it comes to standing firm against our worst enemies, I am unwilling to recognize even a trace of justification for their existence or to talk to them. In my view, a terrorist who wishes to kill us should be pursued mercilessly until he is eliminated.
Any attempt to justify talks with Hamas may also lead to justifying talks with the patron that arms them, Ahmadinejad, with Islamic Jihad, and ultimately with al-Qaeda. That would be a grave blow to the righteousness of our path and the demand to recognize our right to live safely in our own country.
I also object to Moyal’s mad proposal for reasons of supporting a future peace deal. Dividing the country and the establishment of a Palestinian state would only become possible when the Palestinians are led by a stable, peace-seeking government. As long as the Hamas organization exists, and heaven forbid if it should enjoy political recognition because of the eagerness of an Israeli mayor, such government cannot be formed among the Palestinians.
I cannot trust a peace treaty where a neighboring country is home to a murderous terror group that operates in broad daylight and may eliminate the regime (as it has done in Gaza) and fire from its independent territory at Israel’s citizens.
We must not talk with Hamas – nobody is allowed to do it, and certainly not someone who himself claims that “he was not elected to manage Israel’s security policy.”
Hamas deserves death: It is the source of regional instability, an obstacle to peace, and the true reason for the Palestinian disaster. Those who are willing to turn their back on the government and the public, which oppose any dialogue with Hamas, show that respecting the consensus of the vast majority of Israel’s citizens means nothing to them.
6) The Audacity of Selling Hope
By Charles Krauthammer
There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns — boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.
This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."
"We are the hope of the future," sayeth Obama. We can "remake this world as it should be." Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."
And believe they do. After eight straight victories — and two more (Hawaii and Wisconsin) almost certain to follow — Obama is near to rendering moot all the post-Super Tuesday fretting about a deadlocked convention with unelected superdelegates deciding the nominee. Unless Hillary Clinton can somehow do in Ohio and Texas on March 4 what Rudy Giuliani proved is almost impossible to do — maintain a big-state firewall after an unrelenting string of smaller defeats — the superdelegates will flock to Obama. Hope will have carried the day.
Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.
ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience — to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."
That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."
You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times's Paul Krugman that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."
I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.
But even there the object of his countrymen's unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country.
Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war — with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.
Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.
7)Two Winnable Wars
Iraqi supporters bearing a likeness of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rally in Baghdad Thursday, the day before he extended his militia's cease-fire six months.
Iraqi supporters bearing a likeness of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rally in Baghdad Thursday, the day before he extended his militia's cease-fire six months. (By Wathiq Khuzaie -- Getty Images)
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By Anthony H. Cordesman
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page B07
No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.
These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.
The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.
Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south.
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.
If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.
The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.
Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Iran is Moving Forward! Will Israel Be Forced to Act?
From a fellow memo reader and Obama supporter. It's all in a day's fun and since experience does not matter who really cares!
Karl Rove hammered Obama pretty good in an op ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Obama's New Vulnerability." Rove pointed out, using Obama's own tactics of supporting every financial interest, most specifically the Unions, that his concept of change rings hollow when push comes to shove.
But perhaps the most interesting piece regarding Obama's responsibility was written by Daniel Henninger entitled "Obama and Race" and it also appeared in Thursday's Journal. Henninger pointed out Obama, because of his achievements, high profile must not cop out on his own people in a manner that reinforces the negative pathology of black males caught up in a destructive urban culture. Henninger views Obama through a Bill Cosby prism and asserts the issue is not his plagiarism because in politics that is an oxymoron. The problem is deeper and is about the potency of a media led anti-social, woman hating "gangsta rap" message that has immobilized so much of his own race's chances to escape and become productive members of society.
In essence, Henninger sees Obama not so much as a presidential candidate with human flaws but as a light for leading his people in the path of moving away from the negative aspects of an acquired urban culture which has stifled their mobility.
Meanwhile, I can see it coming. Whomever becomes president they will have a full plate of heaping problems because of mistakes made but also because Bush's hands have been tied by Congress, by our feckless friends, by Russia, China, The State Department, the U.N. and a whole host of dreamy Liberals, frightened Conservatives and most recently the NIE Report which the media turned into a migraine headache.
I will wager, if Obama becomes president and makes mistakes, as all presidents do, they will be blamed on Bush. Hell, liberals are still blaming Newt and he ain't been around for years. But blaming the past presidents is fair because many of the problems we face today were fathered during FDR's time.(See 1 below.)
Everything Iran does is a matter of serious concern to the IAEA but they sit deadpan. Rest assured, once Israel is convinced Iran has delivery capability and the rest of the world refuses to do anything other than talk, Israel will have no choice but to act and act they will.
Now there is talk of U.S. demands for further weak sanctions and the Iranians must be laughing all the way to their missile factories. (See 2 and 3 below.)
Caroline Glick writes Kosovo represents a warning. (See 4 below.)
Der Spiegel generally has accurate information. This reporter suggests the NIE Report has already been discredited by European simulation tests and Iran is much close to having a nuclear weapon than previously assumed. (See 5 below.)
Dick
1)A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT BY SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-ILL)
My fellow Identity-Americans:
As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their ...
well, support. Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of
any legislative achievement or my blatantly leftist voting
record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of
change.
I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal
behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of
claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a
beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.
I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of
me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK
started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a female employee he was having an
extra marital affair with who was pregnant with his child. And I'm not
going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.
And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of
meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the
White House.
Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or
achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes
some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.
I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything
because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have
meaning, then that means you have to think about them. Americans are
tired of thinking. It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the
heart.
So when you go to vote, remember don't think, just do.
And do it for me.
Thank You.
2)Iran’s “covert efforts to weaponize nuclear work" cited in new IAEA report
Iran was avoiding meaningful responses to intelligence pointing to covert efforts to "weaponize" nuclear work by linking uranium processing, high explosives tests and design work on a missile warhead, the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog said Friday, Feb. 22, in a report on which a decision on a third round of UN Security Council sanctions depends.
According to Reuters, the agency said the (weaponization) studies are a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran had shown new openness” about earlier nuclear advances, said the report, “but not enough to prove its program is not geared to making bombs.”
The report also confirmed Iran was testing technology that “could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster - in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.
Without some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponization) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections)…” there could be “no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program, the agency concludes.
Wednesday, Feb. 20, Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the exiled Iranian National Council of Resistance, warned that the Iranian regime had accelerated its nuclear weapons program, including the production of nuclear warheads. He told a news conference in Brussels that Tehran had established its first command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and was setting up a center to produce warheads southeast of the capital.
The council’s previous allegations of Iran’s covert nuclear activities, including the Natanz site, have been borne out.
3) 'New sanctions on Iran are imminent'
The latest UN report on Iran's nuclear program should pave the way for passage next week of a new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions on Teheran, the US ambassador to the UN said Friday.
The report released Friday by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the uranium centrifuge program, which could produce both civilian nuclear fuel and the material for a nuclear bomb.
"They're increasing their capabilities," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad noted. "Not only have the number of centrifuges increased, but they're working on a second-generation, if you like, a more capable centrifuge.
"Things are getting worse in terms of the enrichment part."
Britain and France introduced a council resolution on Thursday - with support from the United States, Russia, China and Germany - to expand and toughen travel bans and the freezing of assets for more Iranian officials linked to the nuclear effort.
For the first time it would also ban trade with Iran in so-called dual-use items, those with both nuclear and other applications, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.
Meeting with reporters over lunch at a Manhattan hotel, Khalilzad said the major Security Council powers planned early next week to discuss the resolution with four council members that have expressed reservations about further Iran sanctions - Libya, Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia.
Sounding confident of approval, he said a vote would be scheduled for next Friday.
He said he believed "some were hoping the IAEA report would eliminate the need for the next resolution" - by assessing Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog more positively.
"The IAEA report does give us very important points to make," Khalilzad said. "They (Iran) did not come clean."
He was referring to Teheran's dismissal of information supplied by the US and its allies said to show Iranian work on a missile re-entry vehicle, high explosives testing and conversion of uranium compounds, all of which might indicate nuclear weapons development.
The Iranians rejected the purported evidence as fabrications.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Iran failed to cooperate fully with UN investigators and left key questions about its nuclear past unanswered.
Burns said he will meet Monday with diplomats from world powers that have twice punished the oil-rich nation over its nuclear drive, and wants the UN Security Council to approve new penalties soon afterward.
"We find Iranian performance to be lacking," Burns told reporters at the State Department. "As a result of this it's our firm belief that there is all the more reason now for the Security Council to pass a third sanctions resolution."
The US wants the Security Council to begin debate next week. Burns would not predict how long debate would last, and would not rule out that the current package of proposed punishments could change. The proposed package slightly expands and strengthens previous penalties, but is weaker than the United States had wanted.
4) Kosovo's stark warning
By CAROLINE GLICK
Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.
States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for Kosovar independence from Serbia.
Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.
In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient."
The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."
Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."
The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.
According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.
In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."
Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."
Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48% of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78% of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.
In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.
The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.
By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."
That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.
The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the negotiations."
Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."
Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their refusal to recognize Hamas.
If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.
Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo to enable it to gain independence.
And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to establish a Palestinian state.
Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will fight Hamas for it.
If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza, Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its support for Palestinian statehood.
Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.
What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.
Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."
For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain, Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.
5) Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Bomb by Year's End
By Markus Becker
New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.
Iran successfully tested a rocket on Feb. 4.
Could Iran be building an atomic bomb? When the US released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) late last year, it seemed as though the danger of a mullah-bomb had passed. The report claimed to have information indicating that Tehran mothballed its nuclear weapons program as early as autumn 2003. The paper also said that it was "very unlikely" that Iran would have enough highly enriched uranium -- the primary ingredient in atomic bombs -- by 2009 to produce such a weapon. Rather, the NIE indicated "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough (highly enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe."
It didn't take long for experts to question the report's conclusion that Tehran was no longer interested in building the bomb. And now, a new computer simulation undertaken by European Union experts indicates that the NIE's time estimates might be dangerously inaccurate as well -- and that Iran might have enough fuel for a bomb much earlier than was previously thought.
As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.
For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency -- just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.
For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn't even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad's assertion in November.
Centrifuges from Pakistan
Another variable is the type of centrifuge Iran is using. For its simulations, the JRC assumed cascades using 2,952 P1 centrifuges -- the P stands for Pakistan, where the centrifuges were manufactured. But recent reports indicate that Iran might be in the process of installing so-called "IR2" centrifuges. These centrifuges -- the IR stands for Iran -- are made out of carbon-fiber instead of aluminium and are an estimated 2.5 times as powerful as the P1 devices.
It remains unclear, however, if the new centrifuges can be used in the same way as the old ones. Independent experts doubt whether Iran is able to produce the old-style aluminium centrifuges themselves. Given the strict embargo currently in place against Iran, it is possible that the centrifuges currently in use are still from the stock delivered to Iran by Pakistan. The Pakistani government admitted in March, 2005 that Abdul Qadir Khan, the scientist responsible for the Pakistani bomb, sold centrifuges to Iran.
Despite the uncertainties, however, the scientists at the Joint Research Centre are confident that their simulations are realistic. But, the group is quick to point out, they are theoretical. They don't make any claim to know whether Tehran is currently working toward the production of an atomic bomb.
Just why the new simulations came to such a different result than the National Intelligence Estimate issued by Washington is "a good question," a JRC expert told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The American government, he points out, wasn't clear about the technical details upon which its report was based.
Thin Line between Military and Civilian
Another possible reason for the differences could be the fact that the US intelligence report focused solely on uranium enrichment done in secret and on possible steps taken toward the production of a bomb -- but not on Tehran's claimed civilian nuclear power program. But the line between civilian and military nuclear programs is a thin one, as a number of states have demonstrated. The atomic weapons programs in Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and China all grew out of civilian nuclear programs.
There are a number of indications that Iran isn't just interested in civilian nuclear technology. Just on Wednesday, an exiled Iranian opposition group published satellite images it claims shows an Iranian atomic bomb-making facility. In January, physicist Richard Garwin, who is also a US government adviser, calculated that the Natanz facility -- even were it to reach its maximum capacity of 54,000 centrifuges -- could not produce enough low-enriched uranium for a nuclear power facility. But, he said, the 3,000 centrifuges currently in operation could be sufficient to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon.
Iran's successful launch of a ballistic "research rocket" into space at the beginning of the month is likely doing little to reduce concerns. A rocket that can carry a satellite into space, after all, could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead.
Roland Schenkel, the director-general of the JRC, says it is time for European politicians to re-evaluate. It is time, he said in Boston during a weekend meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for the world's atomic powers to allow inspections of their nuclear facilities and to take steps toward disarmament instead of modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Both the US and Great Britain have recently invested large amounts of money in their nuclear weapons caches.
Industrial Capacity
Schenkel would also like to see more competencies for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The IAEA needs a real weapons control program," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. As it stands now, the IAEA must focus solely on fissile material and on nuclear facilities. "The goal should be checks in the service of non-proliferation," Schenkel says. "The checks need to have more bite."
Many experts likewise believe that more checks need to be carried out in Iran itself -- a position that was not changed at all by the US intelligence report. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," the report reads. But it is not this conclusion that is the most decisive one in the report. Rather, it was the final sentence: "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."
Karl Rove hammered Obama pretty good in an op ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Obama's New Vulnerability." Rove pointed out, using Obama's own tactics of supporting every financial interest, most specifically the Unions, that his concept of change rings hollow when push comes to shove.
But perhaps the most interesting piece regarding Obama's responsibility was written by Daniel Henninger entitled "Obama and Race" and it also appeared in Thursday's Journal. Henninger pointed out Obama, because of his achievements, high profile must not cop out on his own people in a manner that reinforces the negative pathology of black males caught up in a destructive urban culture. Henninger views Obama through a Bill Cosby prism and asserts the issue is not his plagiarism because in politics that is an oxymoron. The problem is deeper and is about the potency of a media led anti-social, woman hating "gangsta rap" message that has immobilized so much of his own race's chances to escape and become productive members of society.
In essence, Henninger sees Obama not so much as a presidential candidate with human flaws but as a light for leading his people in the path of moving away from the negative aspects of an acquired urban culture which has stifled their mobility.
Meanwhile, I can see it coming. Whomever becomes president they will have a full plate of heaping problems because of mistakes made but also because Bush's hands have been tied by Congress, by our feckless friends, by Russia, China, The State Department, the U.N. and a whole host of dreamy Liberals, frightened Conservatives and most recently the NIE Report which the media turned into a migraine headache.
I will wager, if Obama becomes president and makes mistakes, as all presidents do, they will be blamed on Bush. Hell, liberals are still blaming Newt and he ain't been around for years. But blaming the past presidents is fair because many of the problems we face today were fathered during FDR's time.(See 1 below.)
Everything Iran does is a matter of serious concern to the IAEA but they sit deadpan. Rest assured, once Israel is convinced Iran has delivery capability and the rest of the world refuses to do anything other than talk, Israel will have no choice but to act and act they will.
Now there is talk of U.S. demands for further weak sanctions and the Iranians must be laughing all the way to their missile factories. (See 2 and 3 below.)
Caroline Glick writes Kosovo represents a warning. (See 4 below.)
Der Spiegel generally has accurate information. This reporter suggests the NIE Report has already been discredited by European simulation tests and Iran is much close to having a nuclear weapon than previously assumed. (See 5 below.)
Dick
1)A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT BY SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-ILL)
My fellow Identity-Americans:
As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their ...
well, support. Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of
any legislative achievement or my blatantly leftist voting
record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of
change.
I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal
behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of
claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a
beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.
I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of
me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK
started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a female employee he was having an
extra marital affair with who was pregnant with his child. And I'm not
going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.
And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of
meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the
White House.
Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or
achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes
some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.
I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything
because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have
meaning, then that means you have to think about them. Americans are
tired of thinking. It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the
heart.
So when you go to vote, remember don't think, just do.
And do it for me.
Thank You.
2)Iran’s “covert efforts to weaponize nuclear work" cited in new IAEA report
Iran was avoiding meaningful responses to intelligence pointing to covert efforts to "weaponize" nuclear work by linking uranium processing, high explosives tests and design work on a missile warhead, the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog said Friday, Feb. 22, in a report on which a decision on a third round of UN Security Council sanctions depends.
According to Reuters, the agency said the (weaponization) studies are a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran had shown new openness” about earlier nuclear advances, said the report, “but not enough to prove its program is not geared to making bombs.”
The report also confirmed Iran was testing technology that “could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster - in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.
Without some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponization) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections)…” there could be “no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program, the agency concludes.
Wednesday, Feb. 20, Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the exiled Iranian National Council of Resistance, warned that the Iranian regime had accelerated its nuclear weapons program, including the production of nuclear warheads. He told a news conference in Brussels that Tehran had established its first command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and was setting up a center to produce warheads southeast of the capital.
The council’s previous allegations of Iran’s covert nuclear activities, including the Natanz site, have been borne out.
3) 'New sanctions on Iran are imminent'
The latest UN report on Iran's nuclear program should pave the way for passage next week of a new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions on Teheran, the US ambassador to the UN said Friday.
The report released Friday by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the uranium centrifuge program, which could produce both civilian nuclear fuel and the material for a nuclear bomb.
"They're increasing their capabilities," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad noted. "Not only have the number of centrifuges increased, but they're working on a second-generation, if you like, a more capable centrifuge.
"Things are getting worse in terms of the enrichment part."
Britain and France introduced a council resolution on Thursday - with support from the United States, Russia, China and Germany - to expand and toughen travel bans and the freezing of assets for more Iranian officials linked to the nuclear effort.
For the first time it would also ban trade with Iran in so-called dual-use items, those with both nuclear and other applications, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.
Meeting with reporters over lunch at a Manhattan hotel, Khalilzad said the major Security Council powers planned early next week to discuss the resolution with four council members that have expressed reservations about further Iran sanctions - Libya, Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia.
Sounding confident of approval, he said a vote would be scheduled for next Friday.
He said he believed "some were hoping the IAEA report would eliminate the need for the next resolution" - by assessing Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog more positively.
"The IAEA report does give us very important points to make," Khalilzad said. "They (Iran) did not come clean."
He was referring to Teheran's dismissal of information supplied by the US and its allies said to show Iranian work on a missile re-entry vehicle, high explosives testing and conversion of uranium compounds, all of which might indicate nuclear weapons development.
The Iranians rejected the purported evidence as fabrications.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Iran failed to cooperate fully with UN investigators and left key questions about its nuclear past unanswered.
Burns said he will meet Monday with diplomats from world powers that have twice punished the oil-rich nation over its nuclear drive, and wants the UN Security Council to approve new penalties soon afterward.
"We find Iranian performance to be lacking," Burns told reporters at the State Department. "As a result of this it's our firm belief that there is all the more reason now for the Security Council to pass a third sanctions resolution."
The US wants the Security Council to begin debate next week. Burns would not predict how long debate would last, and would not rule out that the current package of proposed punishments could change. The proposed package slightly expands and strengthens previous penalties, but is weaker than the United States had wanted.
4) Kosovo's stark warning
By CAROLINE GLICK
Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.
States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for Kosovar independence from Serbia.
Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.
In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient."
The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."
Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."
The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.
According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.
In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."
Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."
Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48% of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78% of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.
In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.
The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.
By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."
That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.
The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the negotiations."
Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."
Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their refusal to recognize Hamas.
If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.
Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo to enable it to gain independence.
And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to establish a Palestinian state.
Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will fight Hamas for it.
If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza, Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its support for Palestinian statehood.
Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.
What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.
Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."
For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain, Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.
5) Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Bomb by Year's End
By Markus Becker
New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.
Iran successfully tested a rocket on Feb. 4.
Could Iran be building an atomic bomb? When the US released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) late last year, it seemed as though the danger of a mullah-bomb had passed. The report claimed to have information indicating that Tehran mothballed its nuclear weapons program as early as autumn 2003. The paper also said that it was "very unlikely" that Iran would have enough highly enriched uranium -- the primary ingredient in atomic bombs -- by 2009 to produce such a weapon. Rather, the NIE indicated "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough (highly enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe."
It didn't take long for experts to question the report's conclusion that Tehran was no longer interested in building the bomb. And now, a new computer simulation undertaken by European Union experts indicates that the NIE's time estimates might be dangerously inaccurate as well -- and that Iran might have enough fuel for a bomb much earlier than was previously thought.
As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.
For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency -- just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.
For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn't even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad's assertion in November.
Centrifuges from Pakistan
Another variable is the type of centrifuge Iran is using. For its simulations, the JRC assumed cascades using 2,952 P1 centrifuges -- the P stands for Pakistan, where the centrifuges were manufactured. But recent reports indicate that Iran might be in the process of installing so-called "IR2" centrifuges. These centrifuges -- the IR stands for Iran -- are made out of carbon-fiber instead of aluminium and are an estimated 2.5 times as powerful as the P1 devices.
It remains unclear, however, if the new centrifuges can be used in the same way as the old ones. Independent experts doubt whether Iran is able to produce the old-style aluminium centrifuges themselves. Given the strict embargo currently in place against Iran, it is possible that the centrifuges currently in use are still from the stock delivered to Iran by Pakistan. The Pakistani government admitted in March, 2005 that Abdul Qadir Khan, the scientist responsible for the Pakistani bomb, sold centrifuges to Iran.
Despite the uncertainties, however, the scientists at the Joint Research Centre are confident that their simulations are realistic. But, the group is quick to point out, they are theoretical. They don't make any claim to know whether Tehran is currently working toward the production of an atomic bomb.
Just why the new simulations came to such a different result than the National Intelligence Estimate issued by Washington is "a good question," a JRC expert told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The American government, he points out, wasn't clear about the technical details upon which its report was based.
Thin Line between Military and Civilian
Another possible reason for the differences could be the fact that the US intelligence report focused solely on uranium enrichment done in secret and on possible steps taken toward the production of a bomb -- but not on Tehran's claimed civilian nuclear power program. But the line between civilian and military nuclear programs is a thin one, as a number of states have demonstrated. The atomic weapons programs in Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and China all grew out of civilian nuclear programs.
There are a number of indications that Iran isn't just interested in civilian nuclear technology. Just on Wednesday, an exiled Iranian opposition group published satellite images it claims shows an Iranian atomic bomb-making facility. In January, physicist Richard Garwin, who is also a US government adviser, calculated that the Natanz facility -- even were it to reach its maximum capacity of 54,000 centrifuges -- could not produce enough low-enriched uranium for a nuclear power facility. But, he said, the 3,000 centrifuges currently in operation could be sufficient to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon.
Iran's successful launch of a ballistic "research rocket" into space at the beginning of the month is likely doing little to reduce concerns. A rocket that can carry a satellite into space, after all, could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead.
Roland Schenkel, the director-general of the JRC, says it is time for European politicians to re-evaluate. It is time, he said in Boston during a weekend meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for the world's atomic powers to allow inspections of their nuclear facilities and to take steps toward disarmament instead of modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Both the US and Great Britain have recently invested large amounts of money in their nuclear weapons caches.
Industrial Capacity
Schenkel would also like to see more competencies for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The IAEA needs a real weapons control program," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. As it stands now, the IAEA must focus solely on fissile material and on nuclear facilities. "The goal should be checks in the service of non-proliferation," Schenkel says. "The checks need to have more bite."
Many experts likewise believe that more checks need to be carried out in Iran itself -- a position that was not changed at all by the US intelligence report. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," the report reads. But it is not this conclusion that is the most decisive one in the report. Rather, it was the final sentence: "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."
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