Six Days Of Hell

Here's the mess President George W. Bush REALLY failed to clean up.  And now the Israelis, as always, are going to have to take matters into their own hands (via Newsmax Insider):

Four recent developments have pushed Israel closer to a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear weapons program — and that could have dire consequences for an already beleaguered U.S. economy, according to best-selling author Edwin Black.

Black, an investigative journalist whose books include, The Plan: How to Save America When the Oil Stops, cited the four developments in an Op-Ed piece for the Jerusalem Post:

• Iran successfully launched a satellite into outer space on February 2 and plans three more satellites this year, creating “an easily weaponized space net that worries American military planners.”
  
• The International Atomic Energy Agency admitted in mid-February that it had underestimated Iran’s nuclear stockpile by about one-third, and now confirms that Iran has enough nuclear material to build at least one bomb.
  
• Iran has stepped up its uranium enrichment program with thousands of highly advanced centrifuges, and is now near its goal of 6,000 centrifuges. “American policy-makers are now convinced that Iran, despite all protests and charades, is in a mad dash to create a deliverable nuclear weapon,” Black disclosed.
  
• Benjamin Netanyahu has just become the prime minister-designate of Israel, and he is determined to take action against Iran before it can deliver a nuclear weapon to the nation that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said should be “wiped off the map.”

Also, Russia is in the process of delivering an advanced air defense system that can shoot down Israeli aircraft and drones. But the system will not be fully operational for several months, “creating a narrow window for Israel to act,” Black observes.

The author points out that Iran has repeatedly vowed that if attacked by Israel, it will close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and attack the Saudi Arabian oil facilities at Ras Tanura and Abqaiq.

“Any one of these military options, let alone all three, would immediately shut off 40% of all seaborne oil . . . and some 20% of America’s daily consumption,” Black writes.

Such an interruption in oil supplies, he warns, would likely push gasoline prices in the U.S. to $20 per gallon.

However, let the Iranians simply get confirmed possession of nuclear weapons and they will dominate the entire Middle East and hold that 40% of all seaborne oil hostage anyway via nuclear blackmail against the Gulf states, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.  And, you know, wipe Israel off the map and bring America to its knees.

How did we get into this perilous predicament where the Jews have to attack first in order to have a prayer of pulling their, um, bacon out of the nuclear fire (not to mention our own)?  Because we squandered years upon years in which we could have been aiding the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahgarchy.  Then President Bush wasted his entire second term on worthless multilateral diplomacy with Tehran that provided the Islamic regime with all the time it needed to put all the pieces of an indigenous warhead assembly line into place instead of pushing ahead with Operation Iranian Freedom.  A sad and tragic omission given his one-time promise to not "let the world's most dangerous regimes gain possession of the world's most destructive weapons".

Now it's too late.  And by my worst-case estimate, the mullahs could already have two nuclear warheads, and be nearing completion of a third.

It's never failed to astonish me how history repeats itself.  In the 1930s there were several points at which Adolph Hitler's race towards plunging the planet into all-out war could have been thwarted for so much less cost in blood and treasure.  But the natural Western inclination towards retreat into comforting disbelief and self-delusion versus hardheadedly accepting and acting upon reality said no.  Mein Kampf was silly bombast that Hitler didn't really mean, and would never REALLY try to carry out.  He was a reasonable man with whom we could do business.  Diplomacy uber alles, diplomacy uber alles!

But he wasn't a reasonable man.  Diplomacy only weakened the Western democracies and hastened Hitler's rush towards global war.  And sixty million people, a tenth of them [*AHEM*] Jews had to pay the price for the blindness, failures, and cowardice of men like Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier.

Now we behold another fascist dictatorship with dreams of global conquest and eradicating world Jewry, only this one is building an arsenal of nuclear weapons and ICBMs and already controls a world-wide terrorist network.  And whom do we have stalwartly defending us?

Barack Hussein Obama.  You know, the man who wants to appease every enemy at once.  And the man who is already wreaking havoc on our domestic economy in advance of this looming, catastrophic oil supply shock.

Remember VP Rogaine's warning about a foreign crisis in Red Barry's first six months?  You're looking at it, folks.

Pity your eyes weren't this open four months ago.