Obama's Executive Incompetence On Display Again!

From a friend and fellow memo reader: "Since General McChrystal has more expertise in his job than the President, perhaps Obama should resign!"
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Joe Klein on Gen. McChrystal. (See 1 below.)
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Jackson Diehl blames Obama for the incoherent war. (See 2 below.)
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Word is that McChrystal will submit his resignation. Question is can Obama afford to accept it.

What this episode demonstrates is that the administration is in disarray and when you fight a war setting a deadline is stupid. Once again Obama's executive incompetence is on display and it is little wonder those who are charged with fighting it are disheartened. McChrystal seems to have had a Patton moment. Many great generals explode when it comes to the crap they have to endure from inexperienced headline grabbing politicians and bureaucrats who don't know s--- from Shinola!

How many more wood shed 'pinata' moments must we endure? First it was GW for months on end, then Cheney, followed by Wall Street, Greedy Bankers, Capitalism, Insurance Cpompanies, Doctors, bible and gun toting Americans, Israel and Netanyahu, Fox News, Limbaugh, BP and now McChrystal.

Why would McChrystal want to keep his job other than because of loyalty to troops under his command?

That said, McChrystal and his staff's actions were not PC wise.(See 3 and 3a below.)
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America is having to fight in Afghanistan the way Israelis have had to fight terrorists who hide behind their own citizens etc. Israel has largely overcome the mission impediments but have failed to throw calming oil on the troubled bias of the press and media. McChrystal and our troops, I have no doubt, are doing the best they
can with all these imposed restraints and has to be frustrated by the administration's indecision and failure to back him to the hilt.

But poor thinking, bordering on insubordination, also carries consequences.
Making McChrystal eat crow and bow and scrape might assuage the feelings of those disparaged but what purpose will it serve in terms of winning the war? Maybe Obama has already decided he would rather leave in July 2011 than fight to win.
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Obama may not win in Afghanistan but perhaps he and his Attorney General can defeat Arizona.

Obama is suing Arizona for protecting its borders since the federal government has decided not to uphold its own responsibility. (See 4 below.)
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The Supreme Court's decision leaves me conflicted because I am a believer, as was Justice Black, constraints against free speech puts the Court on thin ice. (See 5 below.)
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We know the president has big ears. Richard Cohen thinks they are made of tin and still does not know who the man to whom they are attached. (See 6 below.)
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Iran getting paranoiac? (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)McChrystal
By Joe Klein Tuesday

Here is the Stanley McChrystal I know: A few months ago, he received an email from a soldier fighting in Kandahar Province. The soldier was frustrated--as most of his comrades are--with the very restrictive rules of engagement that the General had laid down to prevent civilian casualties. Rather than ignore the email or have the trooper reprimanded, McChrystal went to Kandahar and walked a patrol with the soldier's squad. Afterwards, he had a meal with the squad and explained the necessity for the new rules.

This is an extraordinary man, with the perfect skill set necessary for the mission in Afghanistan: a thorough knowledge of counterinsurgency and deep experience in special operations. But there is another side to McChrystal: he is so focused on his real job that he hasn't spent sufficient time learning how to play the public relations game. He speaks his mind; in private conversations, I've found, he is incapable of fudging the truth. This leads to a certain myopia, an innocence regarding the not-so-brave new world of the media. He spoke his mind during a question and answer session in London last autumn, expressing his skepticism about Vice President Biden's preference for a smaller force in Afghanistan, with a heavy emphasis on special operations. And now he has been caught by a Rolling Stone reporter, speaking his mind on a number of subjects.

The opinions he expresses are not surprising to those of us who have covered this war--although his statements about the President are at variance with things McChrystal has told me in the past. As I wrote last week, the backbiting has gotten very intense--on all sides--as the frustrations of the mission mount. What is surprising is his willingness to express these opinions on the record, and that he allows his staff to do the same. The lack of discipline and the disrespect he has shown his Commander-in-Chief are very much at odds with military tradition and practice.

I suppose he will have to be sacked now. He is not irreplaceable. There are more than a few fine generals in the Army, including Lt. General David Rodriguez, a McChrystal deputy with vast experience in Afghanistan. But it is a terrible setback, a diversion from the business hand at a crucial moment in the conflict. And it is a real tragedy, because Stanley McChrystal is precisely the sort of man who should be leading American troops in battle.
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2)Don't blame McChrystal, blame Obama
By Jackson Diehl

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration’s internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama.

For months Obama has tolerated deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last December. The divide has made it practically impossible to fashion a coherent politico-military plan, led to frequent disputes over tactics and contributed to a sharp deterioration in the administration’s relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The virtue of the Rolling Stone article is that Obama may finally have to confront the trouble. But the dismissal of McChrystal would be the wrong outcome. It could spell disaster for the military campaign he is now overseeing in southern Afghanistan, and it would reward those in the administration who have been trying to undermine him, including through media leaks of their own.


Rolling Stone portrays McChrystal as being sharply at odds with Vice President Biden, State Department Afghanistan envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Most of its incendiary quotes come not from the general, but his aides -- one of whom resigned Tuesday. McChrystal himself apologized for the article; he was reported to be returning to Washington for a White House meeting on Afghanistan Wednesday.

McChrystal’s enemies were quick to portray him as out of line and likely to be scolded, if not fired, by Obama. My colleague Jonathan Capehart said McChrystal should be ready to resign. But the tensions McChrystal disclosed were not news to anyone who has been following the Afghanistan mission in recent months; I first wrote about them more than a month ago.

Nor is McChrystal the only participant in the feuding who has gone public with his argument. A scathing memo by Eikenberry describing Karzai as an unreliable partner was leaked to the press last fall. At a White House press briefing during Karzai’s visit to Washington last month, the ambassador pointedly refused to endorse the Afghan leader he must work with.

Biden, for his part, gave an interview to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in which he said that in July of next year “you are going to see a whole lot of [U.S. troops] moving out.” Yet as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates tartly pointed out over the weekend, “that absolutely has not been decided.” Instead, Biden was pushing his personal version of the strategy Obama approved, which calls for the beginning of withdrawals next year, with the size and pace to be determined by conditions at that time.

The real trouble is that Obama never resolved the dispute within his administration over Afghanistan strategy. With the backing of Gates and the Pentagon’s top generals, McChrystal sought to apply to Afghanistan the counterinsurgency approach that succeeded over the last three years in Iraq, an option requiring the deployment of tens of thousands more troops. Biden opposed sending most of the reinforcements and argued for a “counterterrorism plus” strategy centered on preventing al-Qaeda from establishing another refuge.

In the end, Obama adopted what is beginning to look like a bad compromise. He approved most of the additional troops that McChrystal sought, but attached the July, 2011 deadline for beginning withdrawals. Since then both sides have been arguing their cases, in private and in public, to the press and to members of Congress.

McChrystal may be at fault for expressing his frustrations to Rolling Stone. He is not at fault for the lack of coherence in the Afghan campaign or the continued feuding over strategy. That is Obama’s responsibility.
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3)What's behind McChrystal Obama 'Rolling Stone' row?
By Mark Urban

General Stanley McChrystal has been summoned back to Washington for a face-to-face meeting with his Commander in Chief. The cause of this recall, which will be widely seen as a carpeting, is not the rising toll of NATO casualties in Afghanistan or tensions with Afghan leaders, but a profile in Rolling Stone magazine that has angered the White House.

The magazine reports critical remarks - particularly by the general's staff - about the president and other senior members of the Administration. National Security Adviser Gen James Jones is lampooned as 'a clown' by one, Vice President Biden as 'Bite me' by another.

Perhaps the most sensitive passage is one in which one of Gen McChrystal's aides describes a meeting between commander and CinC one year ago: "Obama clearly didn't know anything about [McChrystal], who he was... he didn't seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed."

General and president have had their differences before. Mr Obama admonished McChrystal after a speech in London last October. The president thought his Afghan commander was lobbying too hard and too publicly.

Now the Rolling Stone profile, titled "Runaway General" has caused fresh tension.

The general himself is not quoted being critical of the president. His gaffes (as opposed to those of his staff) consist of saying - possibly joking - that he couldn't bear to open an e-mail from Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke and a criticism of the US ambassador in Kabul.

McChrystal has apologised for the article, implying that he should never have gone along with it. One of his press aides has resigned.

This spat has echoes of another two years ago when Admiral William Fallon, then head of Central Command, cooperated with a profile for Esquire magazine, and ended up having to quit. The admiral considered that the writer had misrepresented his views about possible military action against Iran but resigned anyway on a point of honour.

If McChrystal is to be criticised it should be for allowing similar access to someone who was bound to quote selectively (as all journalists do...), and for allowing a frat party atmosphere among his staff.

Even if other reporters might not have quoted critical remarks about administration officials verbatim, it is hard to imagine that any honest writer could have ignored the critical comments made by the Kabul headquarters team.

The critical difference between this and the case of Adm Fallon though is that Gen McChrystal has not himself been quoted being critical of the president or his policies. And while criticism of the Commander in Chief is a serious misdemeanour in the American set up, the general cannot fairly be accused of doing that.

So why such a tough reaction from the White House? It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the president would like to keep his commander in Afghanistan on the back foot. The latest carpeting, just like last October's may well be designed to stop McChrystal from becoming too assertive in public about the future direction of Afghan strategy.

These tensions are bound to increase as the president's deadline for starting a withdrawal of US forces (July 2011) approaches. Senior Nato officers have been privately critical of the deadline, arguing that it gives them too little time to demonstrate success, and causes influential Afghans to doubt the future US commitment to their country.

If my suspicions are correct about the motives for summoning his general back to Washington, then it is quite possible that Gen McChrystal will offer his resignation.

He may consider it a point of honour to take responsibility for his staff, or he may just wish to deny his president the psychological leverage he seeks to gain by this recall.

That the two men may go to the brink over such an apparently trivial issue is, however, symptomatic of the increasingly fraught differences over Afghan policy, particularly the president's timetable for withdrawal.

3a)Is Gen. Stanley McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?
By Greg Jaffe and Ernesto Londoño

Is Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?


Even some of McChrystal's staunchest backers in Afghanistan said the derisive comments the general and his staff made about the Obama administration to a Rolling Stone reporter leave him open to dismissal.

"I say this as someone who admired and respects Stan McChrystal enormously. The country doesn't know how much good he's done. But this is a firing offense," said Eliot A. Cohen, who served as a counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the latter days of the Bush administration.

The sentiment that McChrystal and his staff had crossed an almost sacred line in criticizing the civilian chain of command was almost universal. McChrystal quickly apologized for his remarks and was summoned to Washington to further explain them. "This is clearly a firing offense," said Peter Feaver, a former official in the Bush White House and strong backer of a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.


But relieving McChrystal of his command on the eve of a major offensive in Kandahar, which White House and Pentagon officials have said is the most critical of the war, would be a major blow to the war effort, said military experts. The president has set a July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, creating massive pressure on the military and McChrystal to make progress in stabilizing Afghanistan this summer and fall when troop levels are at their peak.

"My advice is to call him back to Washington, publicly chastise him and then make it clear that there is something greater at stake here," said Nathaniel Fick, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now chief executive of the Center for a New American Security. "It takes time for anyone to get up to speed, and right now time is our most precious commodity in Afghanistan." If Obama believes the current counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan is the right one, then he cannot afford to jettison McChrystal, Fick said.

Much of McChrystal's career was spent in the military's secretive special operations community, which has little experience dealing with the press and often views outsiders -- even those within the military -- with suspicion. Some of the most damaging statements in the Rolling Stone article were from McChrystal's staff officers, who are also drawn heavily from the special operations community.

The general's relationship with the press contrasts significantly with that of Gen. David Petraeus, who spent a far larger segment of his career in Washington and is far more practiced in dealing with reporters and the civilian leadership. Petraeus's staff officers also tended to have extensive Washington experience, as well as background fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Petraeus and his staff would never put itself in this situation," said Cohen.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a statement saying that McChrystal made "a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment" in the Rolling Stone profile. It was Gates's decision to recall McChrystal to Washington to discuss the incident with him, according to the statement. The general is also expected to be summoned to the White House.

One big question will be whether the current team in Afghanistan, which includes Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and special representative Richard Holbrooke, can continue to function as a team. There have been repeated reports of tension among the three men going back to last year's review of the war strategy.

The statements by McChrystal criticizing both Eikenberry and Holbrooke could make the relationship difficult to repair. "I think the administration really needs to think about the whole team they have got," Cohen said. "It is a dysfunctional team."

If White House officials are contemplating ousting McChrystal, they are likely to consider the damage that would do to the relationships McChrystal has built with senior Afghan and Pakistani officials. In Kabul, McChrystal has earned a reputation for his candid, unscripted style and a strong work ethic; Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday issued a statement in support of the general.

Meanwhile, a strong working relationship with the top U.S. general and Islamabad is seen as a central part of the war strategy.

A senior Pakistani government official said Monday that many in Pakistan already believe the Americans lack a long-term strategy in Afghanistan. The possibility of McChrystal's being removed only deepens Pakistan's skepticism about chances for a U.S. victory in Afghanistan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive policy assessment.

"Now, the person who helped craft that strategy, if he's not on the scene, how will you take this process forward?" the official added.

The statements by McChrystal and the reaction from the White House also reflect a deeper tension between the civilians and the military that dates back to last fall. Recently those tensions were revisited in a book, by Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter, in which senior administration officials seemed to question the military's tactics in boxing in the civilian leadership. "It was a foolish interview that McChrystal gave," Feaver said. "But this is the umpteenth round going back and forth."

The tension isn't unique to the Obama administration. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also faced criticism from uniformed military and retired generals who called for Rumsfeld's ouster in 2006. Some military analysts said that the increasing politicization of the military is a product of the fact that such a small portion of the force is being summoned for repeat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The strain has created a sense of entitlement and frustration with a civilian world that hasn't made significant sacrifices.

"A lot of the blame falls on the military," Fick said. "The military has been too willing to look the other way when officers make political statements
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4)Amid crises, Obama declares war -- on Arizona
By: Byron York


The Obama administration has a lot of fights on its hands. Putting aside real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there's the battle against leaking oil in the Gulf, the struggle against 9.7 percent unemployment across the country, and clashes over the president's agenda on Capitol Hill. Despite all that, the White House has found time to issue a new declaration of war, this time against an unlikely enemy: the state of Arizona.

The Justice Department is preparing to sue Arizona over its new immigration law. The president has stiffed Gov. Jan Brewer's call for meaningful assistance in efforts to secure the border. And the White House has accused Arizona's junior senator, Republican Jon Kyl, of lying about an Oval Office discussion with the president over comprehensive immigration reform. Put them all together, and you have an ugly state of affairs that's getting uglier by the day.

First, the lawsuit. Last week, Brewer was appalled to learn the Justice Department's intentions not from the Justice Department but from an interview done by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with an Ecuadorian TV outlet. "It would seem to me that if they were going to file suit against us," Brewer told Fox News' Greta van Susteren last week, "they definitely would have contacted us first and informed us before they informed citizens ... of another nation."

But they didn't.

"There certainly seems to be an underlying disrespect for the state of Arizona," says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush administration Justice Department official who helped draft the Arizona law. Kobach points out that during the Bush years, several states openly flouted federal immigration law on issues like sanctuary cities and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Respecting the doctrines of comity and federalism, the Bush administration didn't sue. Now, when Arizona passes a measure that is fully consistent with federal law, the Obama administration, says Kobach, "goes sprinting to the courthouse door."

Then there is the matter of the White House's assistance, or nonassistance, in Arizona's border-security efforts. On June 3, the president, under criticism for refusing to meet or even talk to Brewer, reluctantly granted her an audience in the Oval Office. After the meeting, Brewer told reporters Obama pledged that administration officials would come to Arizona within two weeks with details of plans to secure the border.

June 17 marked two weeks, and there were no administration officials and no plans. There still aren't. "What a disappointment," Brewer told van Susteren. "You know, when you hear from the president of the United States and he gives you a commitment, you would think that they would stand up and stand by their word. It is totally disappointing."

And now, there's the Kyl controversy. On June 18, Kyl told a town meeting in North Phoenix that Obama personally told him the administration will not secure the U.S.-Mexico border because doing so would make it politically difficult to pass comprehensive immigration reform. "I met with the president in the Oval Office, just the two of us," Kyl said. "Here's what the president said. The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform."

"In other words," Kyl continued, "they're holding it hostage. They don't want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform."

After Kyl's statement went viral on the Internet, the White House issued a sharp denial. "The president didn't say that and Senator Kyl knows it," communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog. "There are more resources dedicated toward border security today than ever before, but, as the president has made clear, truly securing the border will require a comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system."

Kyl is not backing down. "What I said occurred, did occur," he told an Arizona radio station. "Some spokesman down at the White House said no, that isn't what happened at all, and then proceeded to say we need comprehensive immigration reform to secure the border. That is their position, and all I was doing was explaining why, from a conversation with the president, why it appears that that's their position."

Even if it didn't have so many other fights on its hands, it would be unusual for an administration to align itself against an American state. But that's precisely what has happened. Soon it will be up to the courts and voters to decide whether Obama's campaign against Arizona will succeed or fail.
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5)Terror and free speech: The Supreme Court's ruling that advising terrorist groups to pursue their goals peacefully is 'material support' of their violent activities is wrongheaded.

Disregarding the dictionary as well as the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that advising foreign terrorist groups to pursue their objectives peacefully amounts to "material support" of their violent activities. The 6-3 ruling blurs a distinction that Congress needs to sharpen in the interest of free speech.

The ruling is a defeat for two groups of activists that want to engage in so-called peace building. One is a collection of organizations supportive of the humanitarian and political activities of Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka. The other, headed by USC professor Ralph Fertig, wants to advise the Kurdistan Workers' Party on how to take its grievances against Turkey to the United Nations.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. concluded that such efforts violate a law making it a crime to "knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization" designated by the State Department. But that is an unconvincing reading of the statute, and one that offends the Constitution.

"Knowingly" in this context can be read in two ways, but one is truer to the 1st Amendment — namely that the advisor knows not only that a group he is dealing with is a terrorist organization but that his involvement will further acts of terrorism. As for "material support," the law contains several common-sense definitions including financial assistance, explosives, lodging, communications equipment and "expert advice or assistance."

The Obama administration, however, interpreted the last term to encompass the sort of advocacy the plaintiffs in this case wanted to engage in. Roberts endorsed that interpretation and said that providing even "seemingly benign services" to a terrorist organization "bolsters the terrorist activities of that organization" by making it easier for the group to recruit members and raise funds.

A sounder interpretation was offered by Justice Stephen G. Breyer in his dissenting opinion. Because all of the activities planned by the plaintiffs involved the communication of ideas and lawful political change, he wrote, the law should be interpreted as criminalizing speech and association otherwise protected by the 1st Amendment "only when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization's unlawful terrorist actions."

Congress should make it clear that it agrees.
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6)President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
By Richard Cohen

It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges -- of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama's approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.
For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs? The president himself is no help on this score. When it comes to his own image, he has a tin ear. He hugely misunderstood what some people were saying when they demanded that he get angry over the gulf oil catastrophe and the insult-to-injury statements of BP chief executive Tony Hayward. (Wayward Hayward, he should be called.)

What these people were seeking was not an eruption of anger, not a tantrum and not a full-scale denunciation of an oil company. What they wanted instead was a sign that this catastrophe meant something to Obama, that it was not merely another problem that had crossed his desk -- and this time just wouldn't budge. He showed not the slightest sign in the idiom that really counts in a media age -- body language -- that he gave a damn. He could see your pain, he could talk about your pain, but he gave no indication that he felt it.

One can understand. Obama's father deserted the family and afterward visited his son only once. He twice was separated from his mother, who lived in Indonesia without him. He was partially raised by his grandparents -- an elderly white couple. If the president is what the shrinks call "well-defended," who can blame him? It's ironic that Oprah Winfrey was maybe Obama's most significant early backer when the man himself is so un-Oprah. He cannot emote.

The consequences are unfortunate. Obama's opaqueness has enabled his enemies -- they are not mere critics -- to define him as they choose. He becomes a socialist, which he is not, or a Muslim, which he also is not. Even his allies are confused. The left thought he was a leftie. He's not. The right, too, thought he was a leftie. He is, above all, a pragmatist. This makes it a lot easier to say what he is not than what he is.

Fortune has not smiled on Obama's presidency. His one uncontested attribute -- a shimmering intellect -- has become suspect. A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (" 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun").
The oil industry is full of smart people, and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous -- threatening, scary, virtually un-American. This is why a succession of archconservative eccentrics have succeeded. Their values are obvious, often shockingly so. We know what they want, just not how they are ever going to get it. Experience has become a handicap and inexperience a virtue. Smart is out. Dumb is in.

Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree -- the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better -- but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It's okay to trade with China. It's okay to hate it, too.
Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.
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7)Iran on war alert over "US and Israeli concentrations" in Azerbaijan

In a rare move, Iran has declared a state of war on its northwestern border, military and Iranian sources report. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps men and equipment units are being massed in the Caspian Sea region against what Tehran claims are US and Israeli forces concentrated in army and air bases in Azerbaijan ready to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.

The announcement came on Tuesday, June 22 from Brig.-Gen Mehdi Moini of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), commander of the forces tasked with "repelling" this American-Israeli offensive. He said: "The mobilization is due to the presence of American and Israeli forces on the western border," adding, "Reinforcements are being dispatched to West Azerbaijan Province because some western countries are fueling ethnic conflicts to destabilize the situation in the region."

In the past, Iranian officials have spoken of US and Israel attacks in general terms. Iranian sources note that this is the first time that a specific location was mentioned and large reinforcements dispatched to give the threat substance.

Other Iranian sources report that in the last few days, Israel has secretly transferred a large number of bomber jets to bases in Azerbaijan, via Georgia, and that American special forces are also concentrated in Azerbaijan in preparation for a strike.

No comment has come from Azerbaijan about any of these reports. Iranian Azerbaijan, the destination of the Revolutionary Guards forces reinforcements, borders on Turkey, Iraq and Armenia. Witnesses say long IRGC convoys of tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft units and infantry are seen heading up the main highways to Azerbaijan and then further north to the Caspian Sea.

On Tuesday, June 22, Dr. Uzi Arad, head of Israel's National Security Council and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest adviser, said "The latest round of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran is inadequate for thwarting its nuclear progress. A preemptive military strike might eventually be necessary."

Intelligence and Iranian sources point to three other developments as setting off Iran's war alert:

1. A certain (limited) reinforcement of American and Israeli forces has taken place in Azerbaijan. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem has ever acknowledged a military presence in this country that borders on Iran, but Western intelligence sources say that both keep a wary eye on the goings-on inside Iran from electronic surveillance bases in that country.

2. Iran feels moved to respond to certain US steps: The arrival of the USS Harry S. Truman Strike Group in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea and its war games with France and Israel, which included live-fire bombing practices against targets in Iran.

3. The execution of Abdolmalek Rigi, head of the Sunni Baluchi rebel organization (including the Iranian Baluchis), on June 20 was intended as a deterrent for Iran's other minorities. Instead, they are more restive than ever. Several Azeri breakaway movements operate in Iranian Azerbaijan in combination with their brethren across the border. Tehran decided a substantial buildup in the province would serve as a timely measure against possible upheavals.
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Easier To Change A Diaper Than The World!

A long but absolutely brilliant analysis of Obama and where we are with all his rhetoric about change.

Perhaps Obama has learned it is easier to change a diaper than the world .

However, since Obama continues to remain unsure of the use of power and America's greatness, I remain sure matters will deteriorate.

By now his self-confidence should be waning but I doubt he even associates events with his own actions and/or inactions. After all, GW remains a convenient blame target. (See 1 below.)
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Mort Zuckerman continues to hammer away at Obama's lack of leadership. Good intentions won't cut it. (See 2 below.)
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It is all in the eye of the beholder and the biased feckless. (See 3 below.)
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John Mauldin - economic outlook. Cutting deficit in relationship to GDP should begin now before bond market forces it upon us and will entail some pain. (See 4 below.)
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The fact that Palestinians are worried about Hamas becoming more and more legitimate in eyes of the world etc. is a little known fact and not generally reported.

Until Palestinians quit hating each other it is not logical to expect any meaningful peace with Israel to occur unless you are a dreamer like Carter and Obama. (See 5 below.)
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Interesting take on Greenspan and Ayn Rand's influence. (See 6 below.)
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A novel idea? Actually not. Just another recitation about our empirical president whose sole goal seems to be an attack on and the Europeanization of our nation. (See 7 below.)

This from another 'et tu Brute' writer from the New York Times? Blow writes about the long knives that are out as disappointment with Obama rises. Blow, who is black, writes in a balanced manner and suggests Obama must embrace his own word - change. (See 7a below.)

Now comes Susan Estrich with her hammer. (See 7b below.)

Mortal after all according to Rich Lowry. (See 7c below.)

But,Jane Walsh thinks otherwise and says Obama had a great week last week.

Perhaps Ms. Walsh needs to visit an optician but she is entitled to her view and that is why I am posting her comments.(See 7d below.)

As for myself, I recently noted that with all the pounding our thin skinned president was getting it might begin to sink in and cause him to rethink and mend his ways. However, a conservative friend disagreed. He believes Obama is ideologically trapped by his elite education and his "worldly" experience and that he will simply dig his heels in further.

In essence he believes our youthful president likes drinking his own bathwater.
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Erdogan explains his country's position and it too is not novel. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)The New Map
By LEON WIESELTIER



THERE ARE FIGURES in history who wish to leave behind what Malraux called "a scar on the map," but it was Barack Obama's desire to leave behind a new map, and one without scars. His promise of global transformation was outrageously genuine, underwritten by an invincible belief in his own unprecedentedness and in his own magic; and it now looks like a personal delusion enlarged by political excitement into a popular delusion. He really did think that the world would change when he summoned it to change, as if its dangerous and miserable state was the result merely of misunderstandings and the failure of an adequately illuminated leader to manifest himself. Olam keminhago noheg, the Talmud says: the world acts according toits custom.

Such a view is not "conservatism" or "realism," but something more fundamental--the condition of all responsible thinking a bo ut change, which is, after all, also a regular feature of the world; and of course a warning about counterfeit salvations. There are realms in which the character of the inherited world is even a warrant for hope. But not for Obama. "He's been bored to death his whole life," Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick, in one of the most unwittingly damning remarks any body ever heard. The poor man: he should come in, the water's fine--and it's our water, the water we have. Jarrett added that "he's just too talented to do what ordinary people do." So the overman, whose admirers like to disdain his predecessor for hubris, set out to start everything over. In some ways, this marked a welcome introduction of the critical spirit; in other ways, it was an expression of a kind of lack of ontological respect, of ahistorical thinking disguised as a new idea of history, of the blindness caused by a certainty of vision. We exchanged an experiment in national greatness conservatism for an experiment in personal greatness liberalism. And in the spring of 2010, Obama got his global reformation, his new map.

A MOMENTOUS re-alignment is occurring abroad, and it is not the one that Obama envisaged. He came into office believing that the two most significant strategic challenges for U.S. foreign policy were China and "the Muslim world"; everything else, including human rights, seemed like survivals of an earlier era, and therefore tedious. But now there has emerged an unforeseen strategic challenge in the form of a new non-aligned movement, an informal and increasingly substantial association among Putin, Ahmadinejad, Erdogan, Lula, and Chavez. The states they lead are not weak. There are days when Karzai, too, looks like a member of this company; and such tendencies are to be found also in the Pakistani leadership. All this is the strategic equivalent of a vast oil spill. The new non-alignment is of course highly aligned. The old one, of the 1950s and 1960s, could pretend to a neutral course between the United States and the Soviet Union; but in the absence of the Soviet Union, non-alignment means only one thing, and it is alignment against the United States . These new allies are not the middle, they are the other side. The ideological objective of the new non-alignment is to keep alive the specter of the American hegemon. Its practical purpose is the thwarting of American intentions around the world. The immediate focus of the obstructionism is the American campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons: to run interference for Ahmadinejad and the illegitimate regime in Tehran . But the implications of their collaboration go beyond the Iran question. The new orientation of Turkey , a member of NATO, situated at one of the world's seams, represents a dreadful setback for the United States . (The eruption in the political culture of Turkey can hardly be imputed to the Mavi Marmara.) What we are witnessing is the anti-Americanism of the Obama era, which is the anti-Americanism that could never come to pass. The Obama turn in American foreign policy is looking more and more like what Bellow used to call the Good Intentions Paving Company.

CAN HOSTILITY to American power be strongly addressed by a president who is skeptical of American power? This is not an irony, it is a problem. It is true that Obama is a war president, but he is an anti-war war president, which is either the best kind or the worst kind; and it is now clear that Obama's loud insistence upon his timetable for de-escalation and withdrawal in Afghanistan has shaken the Afghans and prompted the ignoble Karzai to contemplate an entente with the Taliban and maybe even with Pakistan. It is in his policy toward Iran that Obama's discomfort with American power, his haunting by the goblins of the American left, is most apparent. He, too, is worried a bo ut the American hegemon. Among the hundreds of complacent pages in Jonathan Alter's account of Obama's first year in office, there is a complacent page a bo ut the rebellion in Iran a year ago and the president's frigid response to it. "He argued plausibly," Alter writes, "that given the history of U.S. meddling in Iran , loud support for the protesters would just give Ahmadinejad and the mullahs a propaganda tool." And "it made sense," Alter emptily adds. Indeed, "the demonstrators seemed to agree and expressed no concern about the American president's tardiness in speaking out." That is false, though I expect the White House believes it. An Iranian friend recently told me about a letter he received from Tehran complaining that the most damaging American intervention in Iran since the overthrow of Mossadegh was Obama's non-intervention against Ahmadinejad's brutal repression. Last week the National Endowment for Democracy, may its tribe increase, gave an award to the Green Movement on the anniversary of its uprising. Obama sent a message to the ceremony in which he did not mention the Green Movement. Instead he "look[ed] forward to the day when Iranians will be able to speak freely," rather as one looks forward to the day when the sun will come out. He even trotted out his old crap about "bend[ing] the arc of history in the direction of justice," which was an insult both to the dissidents and to Martin Luther King Jr., whose grand image Obama has reduced to the rhetoric of abstention. Morally and strategically, for the purpose of nuclear peace and for the purpose of freedom, there is no more urgent task for the president of the United States than to place this country on the side of the Iranian resistance. It is very twentieth century, I know; but there is nothing boring about it.
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2)Mort Zuckerman: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur: The president is well-intentioned but can't walk the walk on the world stage
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman

President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president. Why? Because the United States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another, so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional threats.


Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism, corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for.

The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.

Even in Britain, for decades our closest ally, the talk in the press—supported by polls—is about the end of the "special relationship" with America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama's speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry. Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama's visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start with the president's poorly-organized visit to China, where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people. The Chinese behavior was unprecedented when compared to visits by other U.S. presidents.

Obama's policy on Afghanistan—supporting a surge in troops, but setting a date next year when they will begin to withdraw—not only gave a mixed signal, but provided an incentive for the Taliban just to wait us out. The withdrawal part of the policy was meant to satisfy a domestic constituency, but succeeded in upsetting all of our allies in the region. Further anxiety was provoked by Obama's severe public criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his coterie of family and friends for their lackluster leadership, followed by a reversal of sorts regarding the same leaders.

Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things "must be done" and "should be done" and that "it is time" to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is "the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy." Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an "NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches." In other words, he talks the talk but doesn't know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.

In his Cairo speech about America and the Muslim world, Obama managed to sway Arab public opinion but was unable to budge any Arab leader. Even the king of Saudi Arabia, a country that depends on America for its survival, reacted with disappointment and dismay. Obama's meeting with the king was widely described as a disaster. This is but one example of an absence of the personal chemistry that characterized the relationships that Presidents Clinton and Bush had with world leaders. This is a serious matter because foreign policy entails an understanding of the personal and political circumstances of the leaders as well as the cultural and historical factors of the countries we deal with.

Les Gelb wrote of Obama, "He is so self-confident that he believes he can make decisions on the most complicated of issues after only hours of discussion." Strategic decisions go well beyond being smart, which Obama certainly is. They must be based on experience that discerns what works, what doesn't—and why. This requires experienced staffing, which Obama and his top appointees simply do not seem to have. Or as one Middle East commentator put it, "There are always two chess games going on. One is on the top of the table, the other is below the table. The latter is the one that counts, but the Americans don't know how to play that game."

Recent U.S. attempts to introduce more meaningful sanctions against Iran produced a U.N. resolution that is way less than the "crippling" sanctions the administration promised. The United States even failed to achieve the political benefit of a unanimous Security Council vote. Turkey, the Muslim anchor of NATO for almost 60 years, and Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, voted against our resolution. Could it be that these long-standing U.S. allies, who gave cover to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's nuclear ambitions, have decided that there is no cost in lining up with America's most serious enemies and no gain in lining up with this administration?

The end result is that a critical mass of influential people in world affairs who once held high hopes for the president have begun to wonder whether they misjudged the man. They are no longer dazzled by his rock star personality and there is a sense that there is something amateurish and even incompetent about how Obama is managing U.S. power. For example, Obama has asserted that America is not at war with the Muslim world. The problem is that parts of the Muslim world are at war with America and the West. Obama feels, fairly enough, that America must be contrite in its dealings with the Muslim world. But he has failed to address the religious intolerance, failing economies, tribalism, and gender apartheid that together contribute to jihadist extremism. This was startling and clear when he chose not to publicly support the Iranians who went to the streets in opposition to their oppressive government, based on a judgment that our support might be counterproductive. Yet, he reaches out instead to the likes of Bashar Assad of Syria, Iran's agent in the Arab world, sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it continues to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon and expands its role in the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance.

The underlying issue is that the Arab world has different estimates on how to deal with an aggressive, expansionist Iran. The Arabs believe you do not deal with Iran with the open hand of a handshake but with the clenched fist of power. Arab leaders fear an Iran proceeding full steam with its nuclear weapons program on top of its programs to develop intermediate-range ballistic missiles. All the while centrifuges keep spinning in Iran, and Arab leaders ask whether Iran will be emboldened by what they interpret as American weakness and faltering willpower. They did not see Obama or his administration as understanding the region, where naiveté is interpreted as a weakness of character, as amateurism, and as proof of the absence of the tough stuff of which leaders are made. (That's why many Arab leaders were appalled at the decision to have a civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York. After 9/11, many of them had engaged in secret counterterrorism activities under the umbrella of an American promise that these activities would never be made public; now they feared that this would be the exact consequence of an open trial.)

America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, "We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends."

The United States for 60 years has met its responsibilities as the leader and the defender of the democracies of the free world. We have policed the sea lanes, protected the air and space domains, countered terrorism, responded to genocide, and been the bulwark against rogue states engaging in aggression. The world now senses, in the context of the erosion of America's economic power and the pressures of our budget deficits, that we will compress our commitments. But the world needs the vision, idealism, and strong leadership that America brings to international affairs. This can be done and must be done. But we are the only ones who can do it.
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3)The dominant religion in Kyrgyzstan is Muslim (Sunni) ; the dominant religion of Uzbeks is Muslim (Sunni).
They have just killed (around 2500 people), burned, raped, removed 400,000 people in only four days.
Do you see the World on the "barricades" ?
Do you see Edrogan on the barricades?
Do you see the "Humanitarian" Europeans, Palestinians, Arabs on the barricades?
Do you see Obama on the barricades?
Do you see anybody protesting?
.


BUT....................... Do you all remember the Flotilla Incident?
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4)Be Careful What You Wish For
by John Mauldin

"Everyone" is upset with the level of fiscal deficits being run by nearly every developed country. And with much justification. The levels of fiscal deficits are unsustainable and threaten to bring many countries to the desperate situation that Greece now finds itself in. We must balance the budget is the cry of fiscal conservatives. But there are unseen consequences in moving both too fast or too slow in the effort to get the deficits under control. Today we look at them as we explore what a fine mess we have gotten ourselves into. (I am working without internet today so the letter will be shorter with fewer references than normal.)

GDP = C + I + G + (X-M)
We have discussed the above equation before, but let's look at it again from a different angle. Basically, the equation is another accounting identity. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for a given country is the total of Consumption (personal and business) plus Investments plus Government spending plus exports minus imports.

The Keynesians argue that when there is a drop in C due to a recession that the G must rise to offset the drop. That was at the heart of the argument for stimulus packages in so many countries. And there is no doubt that stimulus did help keep a very deep recession from turning into an even deeper depression. One can legitimately argue about the size of the stimulus, or about the nature of the spending, but it is difficult to argue that it did not have an effect.

Now, of course, the hope is that a recovery will allow C to begin to rise so that there is no more need for government deficits. Keynes argued that governments should run surpluses in good times, which is conveniently forgotten by most government spending types. The problem is that we are still running massive deficits. Tax receipts are way down (10% unemployment will do that to you!) and show no sign of turning back up soon all over the developed world.

If you reduce government spending, that also has a negative effect on GDP in the short run. But in past recoveries the growth of the private sector has overcome that negative effect. Normally at this time in a recovery growth is in the 7% range. This is a very tepid recovery in the US and the developed world.

There are loud calls in the US and elsewhere for more fiscal constraints. I am part of that call. Fiscal deficits of 10% of GDP is a prescription for disaster. As we have discussed in previous letters, the book by Rogoff and Reinhart (This Time is Different) clearly shows that at some point, bond investors start to ask for higher rates and then the interest rate becomes a spiral. Think of Greece. So, not dealing with the deficit is simply creating a future crisis even worse than the one we just had.

But cutting the deficit too fast could also throw the country back in a recession. There has to be a balance.

Greece has promised to cut its deficit by around 4% a year for 3 years. Spain is also making deep cuts. But the danger is that you could create a nasty spiral.

That deficit reduction will also reduce GDP. That means you collect less taxes which makes the deficits worse which means you have to make more cuts than planned which means lower tax receipts which means etc. Ireland is working hard to reduce its deficits but their GDP has dropped by almost 20%! Latvia and Estonia have seen their nominal GDP drop by almost 30%! That can only be characterized as a depression for them.

If you are in a country which cannot print its own currency as Greece or Ireland, the only way you can get back to competitiveness is to increase your competitiveness by decreasing your costs of production. And that is not just goods. It is a lot of labor cost. But if you reduce labor costs, you get less tax receipts. It is a very painful path, but once you get to the end game, the only choices you have are painful.

Britain is now running about 5% inflation. Let's say real (after inflation) growth could be 3% for a total of nominal growth of 8%. If Britain can get their deficit to GDP down to 6%, then they would actually be seeing the relative size of their debt being reduced. Debt is not adjusted for inflation (what that does to bond investors is another story) and so a country can run a deficit that is less than nominal GDP essentially forever. That may not be wise, but it is not a course for disaster.

But countries like Greece which cannot print their own currency don't have the inflation option. They are stuck with the low inflation of Europe. So if their economy is shrinking by 3% that means their debt to GDP level is rising even if they were not borrowing any more money. And trying to reduce "G" by large amounts insures that their GDP will shrink even more. Essentially they have to deflate their economy to make themselves more competitive. It is not going to be easy.

Those calling for countries to quickly cut their deficits are essentially telling them they must enter into a serious recession for some time in order to get the ECB to buy their bonds. And what choice do they have? If they do not make the cuts, the bond market will simply dry up and their interest rates will sky-rocket, which will force more cuts that will be deeper and sooner. There are not good options, only painful ones.

By the way, as countries go into recession, they will buy fewer goods. That cannot be good for exporting countries like Germany and China.

Be Careful for What You Wish
In the US, we must start to get our fiscal house in order. But if we cut the deficit by 2% of GDP a year, that is going to be a drag on growth in what I think is going to be a slow growth environment to begin with. If you raise taxes by 1% combined with 1% cuts (of GDP) that will have a minimum effect of reducing GDP by around 2% initially. And when you combine those cuts at the national level with tax increases and spending cuts of more than 1% of GDP at state and local levels you have even further drags on growth.

We need to cut our fiscal deficits. We need to reduce the size of governments. But let's make no mistake that it will be painless. It is necessary that we begin as soon as possible so that we can do it at a reasonable pace before the bond markets force us to move at a pace which will be even more painful. Be careful what you wish for.

I still maintain that we have better than a 50% chance of a recession in 2011. I wish it were otherwise.

The View From Europe
A few observations from my European trip (I am now in Paris). There seems to be a sense that Europe will fall into a recession later this year from those I talk with and read. That will be a drag on growth everywhere, and only make their situation worse.

No one seems too worried about the recent fall in the euro. Calls for the euro to go to parity with the dollar are everywhere. That echoes Martin Wolf's call a few weeks ago that Britain should allow the pound to fall further.

One of our guides in Italy, a very educated and sophisticated young lady of 40, said she plans to work and save for another ten years then move to Brazil or Chile and open a gelateria. "The government will never be able to pay my pension or health care. I must take care of myself."

Everyone wants to run a trade surplus, but everyone can't. Someone has to buy.

The feeling seems to be that the euro will survive. As one bond trader told me, the euro is not an economic currency. It is a political currency, and there is political will for it to survive.

When the euro was created, the Germans got a Mediterranean currency and the Mediterranean countries got German interest rates.

John Mauldin
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5)PA Alarmed Over Hamas Gaining Legitimacy

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials in the West Bank voiced deep concern over what they described as attempts to "legitimize" Hamas' 2007 "coup" in the Gaza Strip, The Jerusalem Post reported. Earlier this week, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa visited Gaza. "This visit legitimizes the Hamas coup," said a PA official. "We need to remind the Arab world and the international community that Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip through a bloody and violent coup." PA President Mahmoud Abbas also reportedly expressed his outrage over the increased international support for the Iranian-backed terror group in a meeting with Moussa and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt has played a central role in mediating reconciliation negotiations between Hamas and the PA, while also enforcing a blockade on the coastal region since 2007.
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6)HER MAN IN WASHINGTON
By Howard Gold

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In one of the most dramatic moments in the global
financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before
Congress in October 2008, just weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers spread
fear and panic around the world.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) bluntly asked him, "Were you wrong?"

"Partially," replied the humbled Greenspan, who once sat at the commanding heights
of the world's economy.

"Yes, I found a flaw..., [a] flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical
functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak."

"That's precisely the reason I was shocked," he continued, "because I had been going
for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working
exceptionally well."


More than three decades earlier, when Greenspan had been sworn in as chairman of
President Gerald R. Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, Ayn Rand herself witnessed
the ceremony in the Oval Office with her husband, Frank O'Connor, and Greenspan's
mother.

Rand brushed aside concerns Greenspan was "selling out" her anti-statist principles
by taking such a high government position.

"Alan is my disciple," she declared. "He's my man in Washington."

Somewhere, the Matriarch of Objectivism must be spinning in her grave.

Almost since his retirement as Fed chairman in 2006, Greenspan has faced intense
criticism that his actions helped cause the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

And his own longstanding ties to Rand have stirred new controversy over what role
her ideas might have played in the crisis, showing ironically how important a thinker
she remains, nearly three decades after her death. Read Moneyshow.com commentary on
Ayn Rand.

Greenspan's involvement with Objectivism dated back to the mid-1940s, when he was
enthralled by Rand's novel, "The Fountainhead." He later became a regular at her
Saturday night soirees in Manhattan and even sat in on Rand's readings of chapters
from the still-unpublished "Atlas Shrugged."

Rand dubbed Greenspan "the undertaker" for his somber mien. And he remained aloof,
harboring skepticism about her philosophy for quite a while.

She had doubts about him, too. "Rand worried that Greenspan was an opportunist or social climber," wrote Jerome Tuccille in his 2002 biography, "Alan Shrugged." But as asuccessful businessman (he co-founded his economic consulting firm in the 1950s),
"Alan was their only link to the real world outside Rand's living room -- outside
their own imagination," Tuccille observed. It turned out to be a Faustian bargain.

In his 2007 autobiography, "The Age of Turbulence," Greenspan called Rand "a
stabilizing force in my life...She introduced me to a vast realm from which I'd shut
myself off."

He showed his loyalty when he and three other prominent Objectivists signed an open
letter endorsing the expulsion of Nathaniel Branden and his wife Barbara from the
group in 1968. (Branden had been the much-older Rand's lover years before, but was
excommunicated after she learned of his extramarital affair with another woman.)

Greenspan also spelled out his evolving thoughts on free markets and the economy in
several articles he wrote in the 1960s (three of which are reprinted in Rand's book,
"Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal").

One is particularly relevant: "The Assault on Integrity," which condemns any
regulation or investor or consumer protection because, Greenspan argues, the
government cannot do as effective a job in policing business as the free market can.

"It is precisely the 'greed' of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit
seeking which is the unexpected protector of the consumer," he wrote. "It is in the
self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for integrity and a quality
product."

"A company cannot afford to risk its years of investment by letting down its
standards of quality for one moment or one inferior product; nor would it be tempted
by any potential 'quick killing,'" he asserted.

Hello, Goldman Sachs Group . Are you listening, BP PLC ?

How much did the naive sentiments expressed in that article color Greenspan's
decisions as Fed chairman?

I wanted to ask him, but Greenspan declined to be interviewed for this column.
Still, his actions speak for themselves.

Greenspan's Fed looked the other way while essentially unregulated mortgage brokers
churned out bad loans to dreamers, deadbeats, and suckers during the housing boom. No
"quick killing" for them!

And in the late 1990s, the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission,
Brooksley Born, warned of the growing danger of derivatives and pushed for more
oversight of derivatives trading.

But Greenspan, along with Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin and his deputy Lawrence
Summers, played hardball on Capitol Hill and shut Born down. The whole shameful story
is laid out in a PBS Frontline documentary, "The Warning."

Born, a prominent Washington attorney, told Stanford magazine about her first lunch
with Greenspan in 1996.

"Well, Brooksley, I guess you and I will never agree about fraud," she remembered
him saying. "You probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and
I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud."

Greenspan, Born said, believed the market would take care of itself.

The Fed chairman's hands-off stance helped the housing bubble morph into a
full-blown financial crisis when hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of
collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and other unregulated
derivatives -- backed by subprime mortgages and other dubious instruments -- went up
in smoke.

Highly leveraged banks that bet on those vehicles soon were insolvent, too, and the
Fed, the U.S. Treasury and, of course, taxpayers had to foot the bill. We're still
paying.

But this was not just a case of unregulated markets run amok. Government policies
clearly made things much worse -- and here, too, Greenspan was the culprit.

The Fed's manipulation of interest rates in the middle of the last decade laid the
groundwork for the most fevered stage of the housing bubble. To this day, Greenspan,
using heavy-duty statistical analysis, disputes the role his super-low federal funds
rate played in encouraging risky behavior in housing and capital markets.

But in his book, "Bailout Nation," commentator Barry Ritholtz persuasively pointed
out that the rock-bottom short-term rates engineered by Greenspan were unprecedented
and they remained low for longer than they ever had before, stoking the flames of
speculative fever. Meanwhile, Greenspan kept denying there was a housing bubble at
all. Read Moneyshow.com commentary "The Roots of a Bailout Nation."

So, we had too little regulation where it was needed and too much government
interference where it wasn't -- the worst of both worlds.

I think the prominent conservative federal judge Richard A. Posner, who also teaches
at the University of Chicago's law school, summed it up best.

"Rational maximization by businessmen and consumers, all pursuing their
self-interest more or less intelligently within a framework of property and contract
rights, can set the stage for an economic collapse," he wrote in his 2009 book, "A
Failure of Capitalism."

Although Posner believed that the Fed's low-rate policy and failure to deflate the
housing bubble in time were also major factors, he concluded:

"A profound failure of the market was abetted by governmental inaction...The
movement to deregulate the financial industry went too far by exaggerating the
resilience -- the self-healing powers -- of laissez-faire capitalism."

Rand would no doubt have vehemently disagreed. But her most famous follower -- in
both the breach of her ideas and their observance -- didn't do her legacy any favors.
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7)The Novel Presidency
By Lauri B. Regan

"I know there's been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax -- that is something that has worked for some countries. It's something that would be novel -- for the United States."
- President Barack Obama

As Obama ponders the title for his next memoir, he should consider calling it The Novel Presidency. Because as novel as the idea of exorbitantly high tax rates to address Obama's record-setting growth of government and spending would be to the American citizenry, it is Obama's entire ideologically driven policy agenda that is "novel -- for the United States." And it is Obama's perception that his socialized economic policies have "worked for some countries" that illustrates just how ignorant and out of touch this president is with reality.


Obama may be the first black president in the history of the U.S., but he will be remembered more for his policies that have initiated the decline of American's exceptional nature -- his stated goal, which was more than apparent a few months back when he announced that "whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower." Now that is a novel statement from the leader of the free world. Sadly, the president's obvious disdain for America's superpower status is not the only example of his novel ideas for America's future.


While those on the far left who support Obama's domestic policies enjoy comparing him to FDR, upon closer scrutiny, a more appropriate comparison would be Hugo Chávez or Vladimir Putin. His takeover of private enterprises such as General Motors, the student loan industry, the health care industry, and the financial sector are certainly novel for the world's oldest and most respected democracy and bastion of free enterprise and entrepreneurial success. His intimidation tactics that force business executives to give up paychecks, bonuses, and dividend payments to public shareholders, and his scapegoating of everyone from insurance companies to Wall Street executives, sound a lot like tactics employed more by dictators than by U.S. presidents. For it is clear that while Obama's domestic policies are unique to American values and will deter the country's future prosperity, they are certainly not new to socialist and totalitarian regimes, whose citizens fester under policies meant to keep them submissive, not equal.


Beginning with his petulant attacks on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, his assault on middle-class Americans and tea party protesters, and his rejection of any input on his health care legislation, Obama has acted more like a bully than a president. Obama promised to reach across the aisle as the first post-partisan president, yet he has shown complete intolerance and total contempt for dissenting opinions. In just eighteen months, he has divided the country in a way not seen since the Civil War.


Obama has usurped the Constitution, defied the will of the people, moved partisan politics into the back rooms of Chicago-style wheeling and dealing, and expanded government to levels never before seen in the history of the country. His socialist policies have failed across the globe, and yet he pursues them with zeal. And while the world's economies are failing and oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, causing environmental destruction at a disastrous rate, Obama has found an exorbitant amount of time to spend in indulging in dalliances and leisure activities on the taxpayers' dime, including concerts, date nights, and more rounds of golf in his first months in office than any of his predecessors during each of their respective terms.


On the foreign policy front, Obama's goal of reducing America's standing in the world as superpower, defender of human rights, and supporter of democracy and freedom is certainly novel. How many U.S. presidents have genuflected before the world's leading dictators and shunned the country's allies? How many U.S. presidents have been so obsessed with reversing course with their predecessors that they throw freedom-fighters, dissidents, dignitaries, and democratic leaders under the bus for the purpose of appeasing enemies and undermining well-established and accepted U.S. doctrines and principles? And how many U.S. presidents have traveled the globe on an apology tour promising that America's greatness will never again be something that the world will have to face?


Honduras, Poland, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, and Israel are at the top of the list of America's allies who have faced the wrath of Obama. Yet Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and Russia consistently face Obama's outstretched arms, notwithstanding the threats, intimidation, human rights abuses, and terrorism which pervade these countries' politics and which U.S. presidents have customarily shunned.


But the most harmful and long-lasting effects of Obama's novel foreign policy plans involve his isolation of, and turn against, Israel, America's strongest and most strategic ally in the Mideast -- the frontline of the War on Terror. For no other U.S. president has used the word "condemn" to admonish an ally for announcing the receipt of a building permit for the future development of housing units in its capital city. No other U.S. president has ever signed onto a U.N. resolution that condemns Israel or isolates it for doing what every sovereign nation has a right and an obligation to do -- defend its borders and its citizens. No other U.S. president has jumped on the never-ending international bandwagon of "Blame Israel" as Obama recently did in response to Israel's legal blockade of Gaza. And no other U.S. president has ever taken part in, let alone initiated and organized, an international meeting to "out" Israel's nuclear weapons and force it to give up its only real means of deterrence and defense that ensures its survival.


Perhaps the analogy to FDR is apt as we watch apathetic Americans, and in particular American Jews, quietly sit back without attempting to prevent the possibility of another Holocaust. However, FDR did not actively take steps to ensure the death of millions of Jews as Obama is now doing. As Obama likes to say, "The buck stops here." And when Iran goes nuclear and aims its weapons first at Israel, next at Europe, and lastly at the United States, it will certainly be a new feeling for Americans to realize that they could have prevented the catastrophe but chose instead to support the novel president and his policies based on hope and change.


Yes, these are certainly novel times for the United States. But they are also catastrophic. And if the American people do not prevent these policies from implementation, The Novel Presidency may top the New York Times bestseller list at some point in the future. However, American citizens may find themselves reading Obama's third memoir while sitting in a jail cell facing accusations of breaching Sharia law, standing in an unemployment line waiting for the latest government handout, lying in an emergency room in the hopes of seeing a doctor before an illness becomes untreatable, or sitting in a nuclear bunker awaiting the next Iranian attack.

7a)The Thrill Is Gone
By CHARLES M. BLOW

President Obama’s relationship with America, like many a young marriage, is growing sour.

That’s my surmise after reviewing recent polling and watching the carping that followed his Oval Office speech (which I thought was just fine, by the way).

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the magic has drained away. Even among his most ardent supporters, there now exists a certain frustration and disillusionment — not necessarily in the execution of his duties, but in his inability to seize moments, chart a course and navigate the choppy waters of public opinion.

What’s left for many is a big plume of disappointment and sadness lurking just beneath the surface.

Desperate to escape eight-years of an abusive relationship with a reckless cowboy and scared by a calculating John McCain who chose a feckless running mate, America was charmed by Obama’s supernal speeches and inspired by his vision of a happier ever after.

But once the marriage was official, reality set in and Obama tried to lower expectations. Life would not be lit by the soft glow of an eternal sunrise. Change would come slowly; pain would be felt presently; things would get worse before they got better.

In addition, he had to make tough choices (and not always the right ones) to steer us out of our darkest hour and secure a better future. He wasn’t always elegant in method or clear in message, and that allowed the more cynical side of America to find a footing and feed its fear.

This has left many on the left duking it out in a death match of finger-pointing, back-biting and navel-gazing. They have gone from applauding to defending, a turn many secretly resent and increasingly reject. A USA Today/Gallup poll released earlier this week found that 73 percent of Democrats thought that the president had not been tough enough in dealing with BP in regards to the oil spill. That was the same as the percentage of Republicans who thought so.

So this is where the rubber meets the road, for Obama and the country. Wooing and being wooed was the fun part. But everyone knows that maintaining a healthy and positive relationship always requires work.

The first step is acknowledgement: There is blame on both sides.

On one side is America — fickle and excitable, hotheaded and prone to overreaction, easily frightened and in constant need of reassurance.

On the other side stands Obama — solid and sober, rooted in the belief that his way is the right way and in no need of alteration. He’s the emotionally maimed type who lights up when he’s stroked and adored but shuts down in the face of acrimony. Other people’s anxieties are dismissed as irrational and unworthy of engagement or empathy. He seems quite comfortable with this aspect of his personality, even if few others are, and shows little desire to change it. It’s the height of irony: the presumed transformative president is stymied by his own unwillingness to be transformed. He would rather sacrifice the relationship than be altered by it.

Add to this tension the fact that conservative Blue Dog Democrats are doing everything they can to keep their jobs and Republicans are doing everything they can to make Obama lose his, and it only aggravates the situation.

As NPR’s Ron Elving wrote about a recent NPR poll that held a dire prediction for the Democrats in November: “The House Democratic majority is, as always, a struggle between the ‘sitting pretty’ faction that’s safe (this year as always) and the more fragile ‘scaredy cat’ faction that could be carried off by even the gentlest of anti-incumbent breezes.” The “scaredy cats” are the Blue Dogs.

In the Senate, Democrats are struggling to get Republicans to play ball. For instance, a Gallup poll released this week found that about 60 percent of Americans approve of Congress passing new legislation this year that would increase spending in order to create jobs and stimulate the economy. However, the same day that the president wrestled $20 billion from BP for a fund to be used to compensate those affected by the oil spill, Senate Democrats trimmed nearly $20 billion from the already-trimmed jobs bill in an effort to woo Republicans. Didn’t work. On Thursday, the Senate voted to block the bill.

The next step is compromise. Both sides will have to give a little.

America has to grow up and calm down. Expectations must be better managed. On balance, this president is doing a good job — not perfect, but good — particularly in light of the incredible mess he inherited. The Web site PolitiFact.com is tracking more than 500 promises Obama made on the campaign trail. Of the 168 promises where action has been completed, they judge Obama to have broken only 19. That’s not bad, and it must be acknowledged. We have to stop waiting for him to be great and allow him to be good.

For Obama’s part, he needs to forget about changing the culture and climate of American politics. That’s a lost cause. The Republicans and their Tea Party stepchildren are united in their thirst for his demise. Furthermore, a May Gallup report stated that Obama’s “first-year ratings were the most polarized for a president in Gallup history,” and his “approval ratings have become slightly more polarized thus far in his second year.” The U.S.S. Harmony has sailed. The president should instead re-evaluate the composition of his inner circle (which could use a shake-up) and the constitution of his inner self (which could use a wake-up). Allowing himself space to grow and change does not have to undermine his basic view of himself. There is a lot of space between a caricature and a man of character.

In other words, the president must accept the basic fact that he, as the agent of change, must himself be open to change.

7b)The Politics of Disaster
By Susan Estrich

When BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward went to Capitol Hill this week, he got beat up on by all sides.

When the president declared "war" from the Oval Office in response to the continuing spill, he, too, got beat up on by all sides.


Welcome to the politics of disaster.

What everyone wants, of course, is the one thing neither man can deliver anytime soon: a stop to the spill.

If they could do it, they would. If they could make it happen, they would. But for all the talk of war and funds and escrow, the reality is very simple: The oil is still spilling out, even more (big surprise) than they said before. The damage will be enormous, even with the secretary of the Navy in charge. The losses will be greater than what anyone forecasts, escrow fund or not.

Whatever they've done so far has been too little and too late.

The politics of disaster are difficult. That's why it's called a disaster. Not a good thing. Not easily addressed.

And yet, politically speaking, some people emerge from disasters looking better than others. George W. Bush came out of 9/11 a stronger and more popular president than he ever was, before or later. Johnson & Johnson came out of its first Tylenol disaster with a better reputation for quality and integrity than it had before someone tampered with its medicine. Public relations types, not to mention lawyers and politicos, get paid millions of dollars to manage disasters. And every once in a while they get it right.

The secret, as in all such things, is easier said than done. Managing disaster is all about taking responsibility and taking charge -- sooner not later. It's about being perceived as facing it, not downplaying it.

In the first days after the spill, BP did not take responsibility. They ran TV ads, which is altogether different. They downplayed the severity of the spill and became instantly unreliable. They sought to protect shareholder profits and were seen as being slow to put money on the table and as nickel and diming people who were suffering. All bad.

Imagine if they had immediately called up Kenneth Feinberg, who has justifiably earned the reputation as disaster's go-to guy when it comes to fairly arranging compensation. Say they had put $10 billion in escrow and had given him the authority to start, right then, handing it out. It would have seemed like an amazing gesture. They could have said (to calm their screaming lawyers) that they were very hopeful that costs wouldn't reach nearly that much, but they wanted people to know they were putting their money where their mouths were.

Instead, they've now put twice that on the table, and nobody gives them an ounce of credit. As in relationships, timing is everything.

Imagine if the president, in the first days after the spill, had established a command center in the Gulf, complete with Rahm Emanuel in charge. Like him or hate him, if he's good enough to run the White House, why not put your top guy in charge of your biggest disaster? Pull out all the big shots. Set up the Gulf White House. Daily briefings by Rahm. The president wouldn't need to talk about "kicking ass" on television if Rahm were doing it every day.

Would the oil have stopped because Rahm told it to? Of course not. But would people feel like the president really did care, like they were the No. 1 priority, like heads would roll? Yes. You wouldn't need to talk about a war if you were seen putting everything you had into the fight.

No one wants to face disaster. In only that way, 9/11 was, if not easier, clearer. There was no denying what we were up against, no downplaying the tragedy.

The biggest obstacle to handling disasters is the desire of those facing them to believe it won't be so bad. When -- as usually happens -- it is even worse, they are blamed for not facing it sooner.

Had the president and BP stepped up and the oil been stopped, they would have been credited for stopping it. And when the disaster turned out to be a disaster (as disasters usually do), they would have been credited for stepping up and facing it, instead of being blamed for things they could never control.


7c)Mortal after all:Spill exposes truth about O
By Rich Lowry

The BP spill won't destroy Barack Obama's presi dency. It won't even signifi cantly dent his standing in polls, if current trends hold. But it should mark the end of a period of unbridled liberal presumption that began with his rise in 2007.

In his new book, "The Icarus Syndrome," Peter Beinart writes of "hubris bubbles" that infect American foreign policy after successes. In the domestic arena, liberalism has been riding its most expansive hubris bubble since Lyndon Johnson modestly declared on the cusp of the Great Society, "These are the most hopeful times since Christ was born."

Those millennial expectations returned with the honeyed words of Obama. He promised to heal the planet and turn back the tide of rising oceans, and liberals believed him. So when a mere 35,000-60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico produced a crisis beyond his control, they lashed out in frustration.

Obama had to get angry! He had to declare war -- and without UN authorization -- on the spill! He had to use the crisis to push through cap-and-trade! And when Obama followed all the stage directions set out for him by his formerly worshipful journalistic boosters, they still felt empty and unsatisfied because, well, there are really no presidential words or emotions that can make up for miles of soiled coastline.

Obama's much-touted Oval Office address on the Gulf got instantly panned by MSNBC's analysts in a shocker equivalent to Pravda's best pundits dismissing a Brezhnev five-year plan. They complained that the speech was trite and vague, as if that made it any different from most of Obama's gaseous oeuvre.

His call to arms on behalf of a new green economy was particularly tinny for two reasons.

One, Democrats have tapped out the public's appetite for expensive, impossibly complex new government programs. They forced their will on health-care reform, but it remains unpopular, and 21 House Democrats just voted with Republicans in an attempt to repeal a central provision, the individual mandate. No one believes Obama has the votes for a far-reaching plan to remake the energy economy, so he stuck to the same bromides repeated by every president since Jimmy Carter.

Two, the Gulf Coast is not a reassuring backdrop for a stirring summons to more government action. Obama cited the production of planes and tanks during World War II and the Apollo mission to the moon as evidence of government's awesome proficiency. But those were relatively straightforward feats in manufacturing and rocketry from 70 and 40 years ago, respectively.

If landing a man on the moon proves government can do practically anything, what does it prove that it can't get the right kind of boom to the right places and deploy it properly in the Gulf? What does it say that the Environmental Protection Agency couldn't get its story straight on what kind of dispersant BP could use on the oil? What does it show that it took weeks for the government to approve the building of protective sand berms by Louisiana?

That there are indeed challenges, in Obama's words, "too big and too difficult to meet." The largest spill in US history was going to be a chaotic mess regardless of who was president, because it was unprecedented, vast and complex.

The liberal chest-thumping about declaring "war," or even a "holy crusade," on the spill speaks to an impatience with the inevitable delays and inefficiencies of a government operating -- in league with a hated company -- in confusing circumstances. As The New York Times reports, "From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state, and local officials, as well as BP."

Welcome to soggy reality. The great liberal disenchantment is the realization that it's beyond Obama's powers to turn.

7d) Barack Obama's very good week
By JOan Walsh

Getting BP to cough up a $20 billion escrow fund paid off politically in more ways than one. Plus: Apologize to BP!

Talk about snakebit: Peggy Noonan chose Friday to publish a column writing off President Obama off as an unlucky president, comparing him to Jimmy Carter, just when his presidency has a little spring back in its step. Its title is luscious: "A Snakebit President: Americans want leaders on whom the sun shines."

The sun seemed to shine on Obama this week. It's true his Tuesday night speech wasn't his best, but that's because it lacked the news he was able to reveal Wednesday: That BP had agreed to create a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate the victims of its Gulf oil disaster, to have it administered by the tough Kenneth Feinberg of the 9/11 fund, and also to put off paying shareholder dividends through the end of the year.

And on Thursday, Obama got relief from the harsh, unnatural media glare in the wake of the disaster, which had landed upon him in the absence of any other visible hero or villain in the mess, when Tony Hayward testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Hayward's constant insistence that he either didn't know or couldn't recall ... virtually anything he was asked, finally made clear there is one leader whose lack of preparedness can be blamed for the crisis, and his name is Tony Hayward.

BP announced Friday that Hayward would be replaced as the man in charge of the spill response, though he'll remain as CEO.

Of course, things got even better for Obama when Rep. Joe Barton apologized to Hayward on Thursday, calling the escrow fund not only a "shakedown" but a "tragedy." Barton was then forced by a panicky GOP leadership to apologize for his apology, but the damage was done. Besides, from Barton to Michele Bachmann to the Republican Study Group to Rush Limbaugh, most of the party was ready to try out the shakedown, "share the wealth" criticism – until Barton went too far. Even today, Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul left his bunker to express sympathy for Barton, and for BP, too (remember, before he entered the witness-protection program, one of Paul's last utterances was to call Obama 's criticism of BP "un-American.")

Friday the GOP began trying out a new message. They've gone from calling Obama a Chicago thug who shakes down business to a guy who had nothing at all to do with BP's generous concession, but is now trying to claim credit for it. That was fast, even for Republican liars. Obama could still falter in his handling of the BP disaster, because the disaster is going to be with us for a very long time. But the president has mostly quieted critics who weren't sure he was doing enough on that front, for now.
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8)Erdogan: Turkey's problem with Israel's government, not its people

Turkey PM says the country will continue to fight Israel's 'piracy,' seek solutions to fight Gaza flotilla raid within international law.

Turkish Prime Minister Recap Tayyip Erdogan said that his country did not have a problem with Israel's people but rather with its government's policies, Turkish news agency Andolu reported Saturday.

The Turkish PM stressed that his country would continue to investigate Israel's attack on the Turkish-flagged aid flotilla the Mavi Marmara in which nine activists were killed.

"We have not remained silent against this piracy and injustice, and we will not do so, and we will seek solutions within the framework of international law," Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

Meanwhile United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to agree to an international investigation of its deadly commando raid on the Turkish ship trying to bring aid to Gaza and do "much more" to meet the needs of the Palestinians living there.

Ban said Friday that Israel's investigation of the May 31 flotilla raid is important but won't have "international credibility," which is why he is continuing to urge the Israeli government to agree to an international panel with Israeli and Turkish participation.

Last week Israel, under mounting international pressure, formed an internal five-person panel - including two foreign observers - to investigate events surrounding its May 31 interception of a six ship convoy heading to the Gaza Strip.


"Erdogan is the enemy, not Turkey"


Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov said on Saturday that while Turkey isn't the enemy, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is.

"The Turkish people aren't the enemy, but Erdogan is Israel's enemy," said Misezhnikov in response to the Turkish prime minister's comments that Turkey's problem is with the Israeli government, and not the Israeli people.

"This isn't a healthy situation, and unless he leaves office there is no room for optimism," Misezhnikov said during a cultural event in Bat Yam. He added that there are indications that Erdogan isn't speaking as a representative of the Turkish people and that the country is divided in its support for him.

The tourism minister also called on Israelis to heed the government's warnings and refrain from traveling to Turkey. The tourism ministry is due to meet on Sunday to discuss ways to draw travelers toward staying in Israel for their summer vacation.
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