Recently in Iran Category

"The world" will not wait for Red Barry to get up to speed:

Iran said it successfully test-fired a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missile on Wednesday — one that could easily strike as far away as southeastern Europe with greater precision than earlier models.

The Sajjil is a solid fuel high-speed missile with a range of about 1,200 miles, Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar said on state television. At that range, it could easily strike Iran's arch-foe Israel and go as far as southeastern Europe.

Solid-fuel missiles are more accurate than the liquid fuel missiles of similar range currently possessed by Iran. The country has had a solid-fuel missile with a shorter range — the Fateh, able to fly 120 miles — for several years.

The Islamic Republic News Agency said the test was conducted Wednesday, and television showed the missile being fired from a desert launching pad.

Looks like False Messiah had better be scheduling his group-hug pilgrimmage to Tehran sooner rather than later.  Either that or ask Zell Miller to make him an arsenal of spitball missile interceptors.  Maybe Czar Vladimir would be cool with those.

It's an eminently fair question to ask of any presidential candidate.  Yet, interestingly, the closer Barack Hoover Obama has gotten to Election Day, the less eager he has grown to candidly answer that question.  Months ago he spoke openly of massive tax increases; now all he can talk about is how he's going to "cut taxes for 95% of Americans" - including the more than half of Americans who aren't even ON the tax rolls.  Over a year ago he told us he would meet "unconditionally" with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim jong-Il, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Bashir Assad; now he says he wouldn't - not without the "normal advance low-level preparations," anyway.  And, of course, he was proud of his radical associations with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, et al, but has since either minimized or thrown all of them under the temporary bus.

But you know what Bruce Wayne said in Batman Begins: "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."  The Biblical corallary is: "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man."

So if he becomes president, what will Obama do?

Well, it appears that he'll be late a lot:

This may seem petty at first glance.  And yes, Bill Clinton also had a self-involved penchant for serial tardiness, and he served two terms without (quite) getting the country destroyed, though the families of 9/11 victims might have a few things to say about that.

But it does speak to the character, or lack thereof, of False Messiah.  When you can't be on time for anything, it bespeaks a self-centeredness, an egocentrism that everything is not only all about you, but that it SHOULD be all about you, that you being at the center of the universe is the natural order of things.  It suggests that you don't think anybody or anything else matters.  It implies that nobody and nothing else is important.  It indicates that you consider yourself to be bigger than the office you seek, and bigger than the country you lustfully want to rule .

It screams that you are highly unlikely to listen to anybody else's advice and counsel, PARTICULARLY if it differs from your "judgment".  And that you would be contemptuous of dissent, and seek to suppress it wherever it arose.

Now, to be "fair," there is another old saying, made famous by one-time pro wrestler Ken Patera: "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."  But in the case of this man who is a strange hybrid of Peter Pan and Satan, he's no longer playing in the proverbial sandbox, or even in the back-bencher minor leagues.  Unlike an unearned junior senate seat, one cannot treat the presidency like a hobby; whatever your "judgment" may be, experience - and the humble willingness to accept advice and counsel in lieu of it - is not optional, it is MANDATORY if you actually take being entrusted with the highest office in the land as the sacred trust and ultimate responsibility that it is.

Of all the images that Barack Hoover Obama has projected in this campaign, humility is most definitely NOT one of them.  Which leads to the meat of this RNC spot:

"Can we afford to wait while Barack Obama learns?"  It's an entirely fair question.  I would follow it up with an even more sinus-clearing, deodorant-testing query: Where is the evidence over the course of his adult life that Barack Hoover Obama is CAPABLE of learning?  Not in terms of assimilating information, but in terms of learning from his mistakes?  Learning from HISTORY? 

Socialism has been tried.  All over the world.  Repeatedly.  And it has ALWAYS failed.  The result has ALWAYS been poverty, disease, oppression, and death.  Foreign policy pacifism has been tried.  All over the world.  Repeatedly.  And it has ALWAYS resulted in bigger, bloodier wars.  Neville Chamberlain's and Eduard Daladier's appeasement of Adolph Hitler produced what is, to date, the biggest, bloodiest global conflagration in human history.  Jimmy Carter's appeasement of the old Soviet Union nearly got the U.S. "finlandized," conquered, and/or destroyed, and his sterling "judgment" turned Iran into an enemy that is now on the brink of going nuclear.

Which segues into this devastating McCain ad:

A cardinal rule of negotiating is that the side that can afford to wait the longest usually wins.  A corallary of that rule is that the side that needs the negotiations the least always comes to the table with the upper hand.  This is precisely why Euro-American diplomatic efforts to de-nuclearize Iran over the past several years have produced absolutely nothing.  The West very much wants these negotiations because they so very much do NOT want the alternative of military action to disarm the mullahgarchy.  The Iranians, on the other hand, have no desire to genuinely negotiate, and have therefore used the conspicuous Western "deal-cutting" eagerness to keep the diplodiddling going as a cover and time-buyer for their nuclear weapons program.  Once they conduct their first nuclear test - whether at a test range in their own territory or smack in the middle of Tel Aviv - the de-nuclearization negotiations will be over, and the "Get out of the Middle East or we'll nuke you" negotiations will begin.

Put Barry O in the White House, though, and the mullahs won't even need to prove their entrance into the nuclear club.  Why?  Because he'll be even more conspicuously eager to negotiate with the Iranians than the Bushies have been, and will lack by design the deterrence factor of being perceived as willing to restort to military options if sufficiently provoked.

Appeasers want agreements.  They want that piece of paper to wave around while grinningly proclaiming "peace in our time".  They don't want to think about the possibility that they got taken, and that their "partners in peace" may not share their idealism, may have other objectives, may have ulterior motives, and may not share their commitment to abiding by its sparkling, "world transforming" terms.  To question their own "judgment" is not just anathema to them, it NEVER OCCURS to them.  It is blind ideological faith.  It is the conductor's creed:

1) The conductor is never wrong.

2) If the conductor ever is wrong, refer to (1).

This is what makes the McCain ad, and the spectre of an Obama presidency, so chilling: History - RECENT history - has already proven him wrong across the issue board.  His adult lifetime began with the election of Ronald Reagan twenty-eight years ago; Reaganian ideals of small government, low taxes, individual freedom, and strong national defense and foreign policy has made not just America, but the entire planet freer, more peaceful, and more prosperous than at any time in human history.  And yet Barack Hoover Obama has learned NOTHING from it.  Ronald Reagan ALREADY "changed the world," and it is B.O. who wants to roll all of that back, not to Carter's late-'70s malaise, not to JFK's early-'60s "Camelot," but all the way back to what, for an Orthodox Marxist, is the golden age: the 1930s, when the entire world was in the throes of economic misery, burgeoning global war, and communism was "the wave of the future" even in the U.S. of A.

Yes, we know what Obama would do.  He wants that piece of paper; he wants that grinning photo-op with Adolph; so he'll give the mullahs everything they want.  The result will be at least regional Armageddon (because Israel isn't just going to sit there and wait to be annihilated), nuclear blackmail, skyrocketing oil prices, economic depression and renewed al Qaeda offensives here at home.

At worst, the result will be a global nuclear holocaust.  Because without the United States's benevolent global economic and military hegemony, the entire planet will destablize as the "bad guys" (Russia, Red China, the "rogues" gallery), no longer checked by Uncle Sam, will make their bids for the global power they seek.

It happened once before; history refers to it as "World War II".  The saving grace then was that (1) there wasn't yet the means for mass destruction on a planetary scale and (2) the United States was on the rise as a superpower.  The former long since ceased to be true, and if Barack Obama wins on Tuesday, the latter will go away as well.

The short answer to "What would Obama do?":  He'd get us all killed.

I don't like John McCain.  But I believe that, as Zell Miller said of President Bush four years ago, that he'll do everything in his power to keep my most precious possession - my family - safe.  And that's because he knows WHAT to do to do that.

Every four years the presidential election is shrilly and hyperbollically called "the most important in our lifetimes!"  This time it isn't just actually true - it's a matter of life and death.

The French, they are a funny race, parlez vou (via Newsmax Insider):

France is willing to help Venezuela develop a civilian [heh] nuclear energy program, the two countries’ foreign ministers announced.

Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro told reporters in Paris on Thursday that humanity’s future depended, in part, on nuclear energy, The Guardian in Britain reported.

France’s Bernard Kouchner also said France would like to use Venezuela — a staunch critic of the U.S. — as a go-between with Iran in discussions about its nuclear program, but Iran had so far proved unreceptive.

Venezuela is a major petroleum exporter, while France is home to nuclear giant Areva and is a leading exporter of nuclear technology.

So let's tally this up: Bill Clinton helped North Korea go nuclear in the '90s, the Russians are helping Iran go nuclear now, and the supposedly "pro-American" French government of Nicholas Sarkozy wants to help Hugo Chavez go nuclear tomorrow?  Is anybody on this planet even paying external lip service to the concept of nuclear non-proliferation any more?

Speaking of Iran, here's more "rhetoric of peace and friendship" from the man all-but-President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama just can't wait to break bread with:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched new verbal attacks against Israel, saying Zionist leaders are “germs of corruption” who will be wiped “off the face of the earth.”

Ahmadinejad’s recent comments on the Iranian News Channel were translated and released by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Thursday.

"The Zionists are crooks,” the Iranian leader declared.

“A small handful of Zionists, with a very intricate organization, have taken over the power centers of the world. According to our estimates, the main cadre of the Zionists consists of 2,000 individuals at most, and they have another 8,000 activists. In addition, they have several informants, who spy and provide them with intelligence information.”

This “cadre” controls the world’s financial centers and news and propaganda agencies, and spreads “propaganda as if they were the entire world, as if all the peoples supported them, and as if they were the majority ruling the world,” Ahmadinejad asserted.

"That is a great lie — just like their Jewishness is a great lie. They have no religion whatsoever. They are a handful of lying, power-greedy people who have no religion, who only want to take over all the peoples and countries, and to trample the rights of the peoples . . . 

"A Zionist organization with 2,000 [members] and with 7,000 or 8,000 activists has brought the world to a state of confusion. Let me tell them that if they themselves do not wrap up Zionism, the strong arm of the peoples will wipe these germs of corruption off the face of Earth."

Ahmadinejad also claimed that that Zionists “kidnap oppressed, destitute, ignorant people from other countries, and bring them to the occupied lands to serve as human shields."

I guess that "strong arm" will now include the newest member of the Axis of Evil to our south, where, if memory serves, we have no defenses against incoming missiles, nuclear-tipped or otherwise.

"Merci bo coup," indeed.

Two words, three letters - Iran and EMP:

Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon that could cripple the United States “in a blink of an eye,” says Frank Gaffney, a leading expert on U.S. national security....

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Gaffney warned that Iran’s nuclear program has progressed much further than most officials believe. The Islamic republic could attain a nuclear weapon “any day,” he said.

A single nuclear weapon exploded at the proper altitude would create a wave of energy sufficient to wipe out the entire U.S. electrical grid, causing “catastrophic disaster,” Gaffney said.

In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors global nuclear activities provided intelligence to diplomats indicating that Iran is trying to refit a long-distance missile so that it can carry a nuclear warhead.

“The missing piece as far as we know is the nuclear weapon, and they’re busily working to acquire that,” Gaffney told Newsmax. “And I am afraid they could at any day have the ability not only to obtain that nuclear weapon, but to mate it with a ballistic missile, and God forbid, use it.”

Experts agree that a nuclear detonation at a high altitude would generate an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would destroy most electrical systems. Gaffney predicts it would plunge the entire country into conditions similar to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The resulting social breakdown could ultimately lead to millions of American deaths from various causes, he said.

“Such an attack could really cripple our 21st-century society, and I would suggest sort of push us back into preindustrial society in the blink of an eye,” Gaffney said. “It would translate over time — not immediately but over time — into the deaths of perhaps as many as nine out of ten Americans, because our society simply can’t be sustained without electricity and all of the infrastructure that supports our urban settings.” [emphases added]

I was trying to explain this to my daughter yesterday, not because I thought I'd be able to convey the true horror of the implications, but as a test of a psychology theory I have of the uncommunicability of mortal national security threats.  My theory was borne out, not surprisingly.  But then it is difficult for even me to imagine the immensity of a successful EMP attack on the United States.

The best I can do is to ask you to imagine all the ways your life would change if there were no electricity.  All the applicances in your home, the lights, the heat, would be gone.  All the food in your fridge would spoil.  You couldn't go to the grocery store to replace it because your car wouldn't start, and even if it did, you couldn't refill the gas tank because the pumps at the local filling station wouldn't run, and the tanker trucks couldn't get to the filling station to delivery more gasoline - nor could eighteen wheelers deliver more groceries to the grocery store.  You might have a home generator for just such emergencies, except that they run on gas or kerosene or diesel fuel and that would dry up just like the gas for your car.

Freezing to death.  Starvation.  Chaos.  Let your imagination run wild from there.

The end result?  America would cease to exist as a coherent continental nation because it is simply too big to remain intact without an interconnected modern infrastructure to sustain it.  Civil order would break down.  The law of the jungle would return.  Most of us, rendered decedantly fat, dumb, and happy as the citizens of the late, great global hegomon, wouldn't have a clue as to what to do so survive in such dire circumstances.  Maybe the "over time" death toll wouldn't be quite as high as 90%, but it would be staggering nonetheless.  And there would be no FEMA to ride to the rescue, competently or otherwise, and certainly no international assistance coming our way.

That, of course, assumes that there wouldn't be any follow up from our enemies, whether that was via land invasion or simply nuking our crippled, defenseless homeland to irradiated oblivion.

But again, that hasn't happened - yet.  And because it hasn't happened, it's difficult to see through the prosperous normalcy of life in these United States to recognize the danger of it happening in the very near future.

It's base human nature.  People don't want to confront threats if doing so involves a signficant cost, even if the cost of not confronting them will be inestimably worse.  Far easier to convince yourself that gambling on the latter is the safer bet.  A psychological phenomenon colloquially known as "wishful thinking."

Wishful thinking dominated the foreign policy of the Western democracies in the 1930s even as Adolph Hitler was following his published blueprint for anti-Semitic genocide and world conquest to the letter.  There is arguably no war in human history that was more preventable than World War II, and yet Western leaders refused to believe the evidence of their eyes and ears and instead took comfort in self-generated pacifistic myths and delusions, no more infamously exemplified than the "tough direct diplomacy" that Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier undertook at Munich with Herr Hitler.  Until, of course, the German tanks rolled across Poland, and then France and Holland and Belgium, and then German bombers started raining fire down on London, six million Jews perished, and fifty-four million other human lives joined them, all because Western leaders didn't have the courage to recognize the futility of "diplomacy" and act pre-emptively against Hitler while they had the opportunity.

Happily for the world, the United States was there to (belatedly) intervene and eventually turn the tide against the Nazis.  Which, of course, leads inexorably to the question of who is going to bail out America after it has been decimated by a long-proclaimed EMP attack from the Islamist theocrats in Tehran whose enmity against the United States has been proclaimed non-stop for the past thirty years.  Once again we face an enemy that has told us they are going to bring us to our knees, told us how they're going to do it, and that they will not and cannot be talked out of doing it.  And once again we - and I mean the bipartisan "we" - are refusing to believe the evidence of our eyes and ears and instead are taking comfort in self-generated pacifistic myths and delusions, so much as that we are about to elect as our next president a man who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill.

I have said throughout this campaign that the reason above all others why I deathly fear a Barack Obama presidency is that he is going to get us all killed.  Frank Gaffney says B.O. won't get ALL of us killed, just "as many as ninety percent" of us.  Who'd have ever thought that the former Reagan Admistration official would have turned out to be such a wild-eyed optimist?

Do you care much about Adolph Ahmadinejad's annual harangue to the UN and touring of his country's future conquered estates?  I don't either.  His stuff ("He’s forever threading the needle between … psychopathic Islamist designs on Israel and the sort of squishy brotherhood nonsense that buys him legitimacy with the international community on which he depends") is pretty much rehashed from year to year, and not all that original in the first place.

Two ancillary items do merit mention, though.

1) Why would ANY American "journalist" of any stripe want to conduct a prime time interview with the Geico Caveman?  Do either CNN (natch - I guess Keith Olbermann must still be indisposed) or Lucky Larry really value 'dolph's take on our presidential campaign?  Don't they already know that the mullahgarchy is openly slavering at the prospect of President Hussein?  Or do they just wish to give him an opportunity to propagandize the American viewing public at our own expense, like the dhimmis they are?

2) Evidently somebody at Team Messiah was concerned about it, what with the foreign policy presidential debate only days away:

“I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad’s outrageous remarks at the United Nations, and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views. The threat from Iran’s nuclear program is grave. Now is the time for Americans to unite on behalf of the strong sanctions that are needed to increase pressure on the Iranian regime.

“Once again, I call upon Senator McCain to join me in supporting a bipartisan bill to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by allowing states and private companies to divest from companies doing business in Iran. The security of our ally Israel is too important to play partisan politics, and it is deeply disappointing that Senator McCain and a few of his allies in Congress feel otherwise,” said Senator Barack Obama.

What was that Sinaed O'Connor once said?  "Fight the real enemy!"  An appellation that most certainly does NOT apply to "President" Ahmadinejad in the mind of The One....

UPDATE: Want more proof?  His bundlers love 'dolph almost as much as they do him.

....a nuclear Iran (via Newsmax Insider):

President Bush will not launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving the White House, a former key national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney told the Jerusalem Post.

"No, Bush won't go," said David Wurmser, who served as Cheney's senior adviser on national security affairs from 2003 to 2007, specializing in the Middle East, terrorism, proliferation, and strategy.

Wurmser's comments came in Brussels during a conference on nuclear nonproliferation sponsored by the European Jewish Congress.

"Two things have to be in place for there to be an attack," Wurmser told the Post. "That time has run out, and that diplomacy has run out. The feeling to a large extent now is that diplomacy is working, that there is a trend in the regime toward moderation, that pressure is building on the regime."

According to Wurmser, the Bush Administration’s thinking has gone from advocating regime change to favoring Iranian "behavior modification."

The hope now is not to replace the rule of the ayatollahs, but rather that a leader might emerge in Iran who would substantially change the regime's polices from within, according to Wurmser.

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “the British, and others" believe that to a large extent, recent American successes in Iraq came about because "Iran has acquiesced" and is not as involved in Iraq as it was previously.

{*Sigh*}  How the Conquerer has shriveled.  I never would have believed that the same man who said on 9/11 itself, "Somebody's gonna pay!," the same man who promulgated the first Bush Doctrine that essentially declared, "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists, and if the latter, your asses are ours," the same man who refined it into pre-emptive self-defense with the words, "We will not wait while storms gather; we will not allow the world's most dangerous regimes to get their hands on the world's most destructive weapons," is now the, yes, wimp who has shrunk to the level of cowardice and idiocy that stakes the lives of millions of Americans on the corrupt, complacent fantasizing that is the stock in trade of Foggy Bottom.

Then, as if to preemptively pour salt into the coming radiation burns, Wurmser added this: 

He also asserted that Iran's military might, and its capacity to respond to any attack, was overblown.

Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, agreed with Wurmser that Iran's threat of a response to military action was exaggerated.

"Iranians are masters of bluff," he said during the conference, adding: "An Iranian response would not be as terrible as the reality which would ensue from an Iranian nuclear capability.”

Is that so?  Convenient that the Bushies reach that dismissive conclusion after deciding against the military action that remains the only means of preventing Iranian-administrated nuclear Armageddon.

It sure as hell, in other words, looks like the bluff worked.  So successfully that on Iran policy, there'll be more of a transition if McCain wins in November instead of Obama.

Remember this when the first American city goes up in irradiated flames: the blood of those countless thousands of Americans who perish will, at least in part, be traceable back to that ranch in Crawford, Texas.  As will the historical receipt for that little short of criminal dereliction of presidential duty.

Having been driven out of Iraq despite Barack Obama's heroic efforts on their behalf, al Qaeda's western wing (as opposed to the eastern wing in Pakistan) has found a new home - which they, er, christened with a bang:

Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

American intelligence officials believe that Osama bin Laden’s organization is regrouping in the governorates of Ma’rib, al-Jawf, and Hadhramaut along Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, and that Al Qaeda in Yemen is now being led by a former military aide to Mr. bin Laden, Nasir al-Wahishi.

“The foreign-fighter flow in Iraq has slowed down to a trickle,” a retired four-star general and adviser to Multi-National Force-Iraq, General Jack Keane, told the New York Sun. “They can’t get to their operational cells to be a bomber or a fighter, so some of them are going to other safe havens. A lot of this has to do with where they came from. But two of the places certainly are Pakistan and Yemen.”

That assessment was supported by two American intelligence officials whom the Sun contacted for comment on the bombing of the American Embassy yesterday in Sana’a. The attack killed sixteen Yemeni nationals but no Americans, the Associated Press reported, and the attackers included at least one suicide bomber, as well as gunmen wearing Yemeni military uniforms and armed with rocket-propelled grenades. One of the tasks of the FBI, which will investigate the attack, will be to determine whether members of Yemen’s armed forces participated in the attack.

Interesting, huh?  Not so much the embassy attack, which wasn't the first one even this year, but some of the attackers wearing Yemeni military uniforms.  Could the jihadis have pilfered them?  Sure, particularly given the all around indifference to and marked lack of enthusiasm for aiding us in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism.  But if those "gunmen" were Yemeni military, that means either that they went rogue, or their government is now in passive cahoots with AQ, not unlike the even more hair-raising state of affairs in Pakistan.

As Ensign Ed observed, by the terms of the original Bush Doctrine, this would bring the Yemeni regime into our crosshairs for punitive action free of the complications of Islamic nuclear arsenals and keeping them out of the wrong hands.  This would also be important in order to prevent a revival of the attempted Islamist takeover of Somalia that the Ethiopians crushed two years ago.  The imperative of the (original) Bush Doctrine was to pre-empt mass-casuality Islamist terrorism by denying the enemy state sanctuaries where they can headquarter, gather resources, train, and mount offensives against Western targets.  We've beaten them in Iraq (despite Barack Obama's heroic efforts), we could beat them in Afghanistan did they not have a state-allowed sanctuary in northwest Pakistan.  Gifting them much less isolated Yemen is a complacency we cannot afford.

Similarly, anybody who has consulted my thoughts on Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons knows that I have staunchly maintained since at least the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq over five years ago that Iran needs to be liberated by American military power even more urgently than Iraq did in order to avert the doomsday scenario of an irrational, theocratic, viciously anti-Semitic and anti-American Islamist regime launching a nuclear holocaust under the banner of a "holy" religious quest.  Throw in the revanchist neo-Cold War hostilities with Vladimir Putin's Russia and the ever-arming, ever-scheming Red Chinese and the picture of the world that the next president is going to inherit is one of a world that will spin into bloody chaos in the absence of firm American leadership backed by unchallengable American power.

John Sith McCain, whatever his myriad other perfidious faults, would provide such leadership on the world stage.  This, on the other hand, exemplifies the leadership vacuum in store if the voters throw caution, prudence, and sanity to the four winds and opt to "make history" instead:

“We are pleased to inform you that the keynote speakers at the “Stop Iran. Now!” Rally are confirmed to be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Governor Sarah Palin and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel,” read an e-mail from a leader of a Jewish group planning the event.

But the curtain came down on the comedy sketch-turned-reality before the duo ever hit the stage: Clinton officials soon said they had not been told Palin would be on hand — and that her presence, which made the event a political one, would mean the absence of the New York senator.

The McCain-Palin campaign has not yet said whether Palin herself will still be attending the event, but released a statement criticizing Clinton’s withdrawal. “Governor Palin believes that the danger of a nuclear Iran is greater than party or politics,” said spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. “She hopes that all parties can rally together in opposition to this grave threat.”

Feel free to jump in at any time here if you think I'm in desperate need of advice, but wouldn't the presence of ANY politician make this event "political," by that broad a definition?  Indeed, wouldn't having a prominent member of BOTH parties present balance out the rostrum and drain the program of any partisan perceptions?  AP correctly argues that Her Majesty's fleeing Palinmania is what brought politics into this equation.  What possible harm could come from Mrs. Clinton and Barracuda speaking jointly or severally on behalf of a cause that no truly "patriotic" American can possibly oppose?

Answer: None, if your top priority is protecting our country and its allies from mortal threats; is avoiding the horrific spectre of American and/or European and/or Israeli civilian death tolls in the tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions; is doing everything possible to avoid one city after another going up in hellish mushroom-shaped pyres of atomic conflagration.

But if your top priority is to diminish the United States as a world power, is an incurable neurosis of post-modernist guilt and multicultural self-loathing, is the at-all-costs furtherance of suicidal pacifism, and most immediately is to keep your party's neoBolshevik crazoid base from mutinying in a geyser of utter, shrieking rage, then letting Hillary Clinton even be in the same zip code at Sarah Palin is an act of fratricide that you dare not contemplate.

I tend to think, though, that snubbing the cause of denying the mullahgarchy nuclear weapons was secondary; after all, the Dems know that the window of gumption for a Bush strike against Iran has long-since closed, and Darth Queeg isn't about to suggest re-opening it.  Hell, the Bushies won't even let the Israelis do it for them.  They've been cowed and browbeaten and all but physically bludgeoned into submission, and are doing what Dubya once vowed he would never do: punt the issue to the next administration.  Besides which, the Dems are convinced that False Messiah will "judge between the nations and settle disputes for many peoples. The [Iranians] will beat their [nuclear] swords into plowshares and their [atomic] spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."

No, the idea here wasn't to defect to Tehran, but to deny Governor Palin a public appearance on an equal footing with the Feminazi Popette.  A suspicion whose confirmation was not long in emerging:

"Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In that day, when My people Israel are living in safety, will you not take notice of it? You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding on horses, a great horde, a mighty army. You will advance against My people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, O Gog, I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I show Myself holy through you before their eyes."

Here's an interesting little nuance of Russia's attack on Georgia last month (via Carl in Jerusalem):

In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter-bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli air force would fly over Turkey.

The attack ordered by Saakashvili against South Ossetia the night of August 7 provided the Russians the pretext for Moscow to order Special Forces to raid these Israeli facilities where some Israeli drones were reported captured.

Now not only are those Georgian airfields no longer available for Israeli use against Iran, but thanks to the undiminished incompetence of Israeli Brigadier General Gal Hirsch - the commander of Israeli forces on the Lebanese border in July 2006 - but the Russians reportedly got hold of an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle complete with sophisticated electronic reconnaissance equipment. Which means we can count on them reverse-engineering it and passing on that helpful information to their clients in Tehran and Damascus.

The loss of a northern axis of attack limits the potential effectiveness of an Israel pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facililties. Shorter distance is only one factor; as one of Carl's commenters points out, Iran's air defenses are concentrated to the west and south, not the north, and the mountainous Caucasian terrain makes it easier for low-flying aircraft to evade radar. It's not difficult to project that we envisioned using those Georgian airfields for airstrikes against those same targets as well. Now that option has been, if not eliminated, than far less likely. And the chances for a direct solution to the Iranian nuclear problem dwindled away to virtually nothing quite some time ago as it is.

This may be the stake through the heart of avoiding a nuclear war in the Middle East - or over our own territory.

Like the old man at the gas station told Sara Connor at the end of The Terminator, "There's a storm coming." Seven years after 9/11, are we any less fat, dumb, and oblivious now than we were then?

Why is it a majority of Americans still understands the Iranian nuclear threat and what needs to be done to stop it better than our so-called "leaders" do? (via Newsmax Insider):

More than six in ten Americans — 63% — say they would approve of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, a new poll reveals.

Somewhat fewer, 55%, would approve of a strike on Iran by the U.S. and its allies, according to the poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

A solid 80% of those polled said Iran would likely use nuclear weapons if it acquired them.

Also, 87% of American voters believe a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the U.S.

Americans worry about the direct threat to Israel from Iran “and fear Iran’s potential to share nuclear technology with terrorist groups,” Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research told the Jerusalem Post.

These numbers have remained consistent over the past several years, even as the Bushies' weak, craven, feckless, stubborn insistence on useless "diplomacy" has provided the mullahs all the time and resources they need to break the atomic barrier and build an indigenous nuclear arsenal that they will not be long in "deploying" against the Israelis, Europe, and ourselves.

However, the moral rot of appeasement has taken its toll on the clarity of public thinking:

However, 62% of respondents feel it is still possible to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

That is the approach the Bush Administration currently favors.

“Everyone from this White House, including the vice president’s office, is in agreement that the military action is not the best option at this point, and we should pursue diplomatic and economic pressures,” an American official told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

But Ignatius added that if the diplomatic track does not work, “and there are no signs yet that Tehran is willing to bend, all the deadly options will remain on the table.”

And what will be the threshold of confirmation that "the diplomatic track" has failed?  The very nature of "diplomatic tracks" is that they're treadmills that go nowhere and yet whose riders never want to dismount because of the comfortable sheen of sweaty complacency the masturbatory exercise generates.  "If we just keep talking long enough, if we just offer enough concessions, why, the mullahs are BOUND to come around sooner or later.  After all, they're reasonable, rational human beings like we are, right?"

Therein lies the lethal trap.  It was clear years ago that the "diplomatic track" against Iranian nukes was a fool's errand, and that they have simply been stringing us along in order to buy enough time to gain the means of our destruction at their hands.  But, predictably, we and the EUnuchs haven't acknowledged that failure and moved on to more "direct" measures because we don't want to face the alternative, even though pre-emptive conventional action on our terms will be infinitely preferable to suffering nuclear attack on theirs.

It's like a dental check-up.  We all know we need them, but none of us wants to make that appointment, and so we duck it, taking comfort in that nothing bad has happened - yet.  Then comes the inevitable toothache that forces our hand.

That middle section is, most likely, the context for the majority support for military action against Iran cited above.  We continue to negotiate with Tehran not because doing so will be successful in "disarming" the mullahgarchy, but because we don't want to fight them.  And we're all for taking them out - just as soon as we've "exhausted all diplomatic options".  Which will never happen until the first mushroom cloud rises over Tel Aviv and/or Paris and/or New York.  And maybe not even then, if President Hussein is calling the shots.

Hard to believe that lesson isn't indellibly ingrained just seven years after 9/11.  Three thousand dead American civilians weren't sufficient to drive it home; will thirty thousand be enough?  Three hundred thousand?  Three million?

UPDATE: A US attack coming "within weeks"?  Haven't we heard reports like this before?

UPDATE II: Still, I pray to God they're true.

Please, PLEASE, do not EVER credit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with possessing so much as a fraction of a shard of a scintilla of a smidgen of propaganda prowess when "Breathless Brian" Williams is the breed of infidel pissant with which he is presented as a "sparring" partner:

Would you like to know the essence of the mullahgarch's "new stance, ready for further engagement"?  Courtesy of AP:

Lift the sanctions, defang the already mostly defanged Security Council, and then, maybe, they’ll be willing to talk about suspending enrichment via a whole new round of negotiations that “would take a minimum of several years,” according to one European diplomat familiar with the plan. Mind you, since this “offer” was extended, Ahmadinejad himself has said that they won’t retreat one iota from their nuclear rights and Iran’s vice president has hinted they might stop cooperating with the IAEA — which, per the blockquote, is already the only entity they’ll even consider cooperating with.

A lot of us have been using the parallel of Nazi Germany rolling Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Eduard Daladier in the late 1930s, but I'm beginning to think that's unfair to Chamberlain and Daladier.  Hitler made fools of them at Munich, but after his double-cross of taking all of Czechoslovakia instead of just the Sudetanland, and their guarantee of Poland's security, when Wermacht tanks rolled across the Polish frontier on September 1, 1939, they didn't offer more diplomatic incentive packages to lure der Fuehrer back to the negotiating table - they declared war, even if it was just a "sitzkrieg".  There does not appear to be ANYTHING Hitler's Iranian counterparts could do short of nuking Washington, D.C. that will slacken Democrat obsession with "tough diplomacy":

Heck, we might be selling the mullahs short as well.  Hitler believed that he had to move quickly to conquer Europe because his window of opportunity would short.  But I think he underestimated Western decadance, cowardice, and willful gullibility.  Contrastually, the old Soviet Union may have been TOO patient, failing to make their checkmate move for global takeover in the late 1970s when they had their optimal chance.  Instead, they hesitated, Ronald Reagan came to power in America, and both their window of opportunity, and then the Soviet communist regime itself, came to a close.

But the mullahs have taken our measure, and may well be seeking to buy those additional years of time to not just gain the ability to make their own nuclear weapons, but to manufacture a huge arsenal of them, and perhaps even challenge the "Great Satan" for strategic nuclear superiority.  Or, put another way, our contemporary decadance, cowardice, and willful gullibility may have convinced the Islamic regime than their window of opportunity, as well as their global ambitions, may be a lot bigger than they thought it was.

Such as....hydrogen bombs:

The official Iranian news agency (IRNA) quotes Expediency Council chief, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani as saying, “We have started the first activities of nuclear fusion.”

Rafsanjani made the remarks today during a speech delivered to a gathering of students at Tehran’s Jamaran Hoseynieh.

Parenthetically, isn't "Expediency Council" a remarkably candid name for a government entity?  I guess dictatorships can get away with some honesty in their nomenclature after all.

But, getting back to the point, even WE don't yet have nuclear fusion reactors for power generation.  And there's only one other practical application of nuclear fusion.

The irony, I suppose, is that by our relentless fecklessness and foolishness ratcheting up Iranian perceptions of just how much we will allow them to take from us, an immediate Iranian "forward deployment" of the first fission warheads to roll off their assembly line may be less likely in the near term than I have been assuming.

Or it may not, if they can assymetrically get the ultimate drop on us:

Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.

“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”

Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

The commission examined the Iranian tests “and without too much effort connected the dots,” even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so, Graham said.

“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.”

The commission warned in a report issued in April that the United States was at risk of a sneak nuclear attack by a rogue nation or a terrorist group designed to take out our nation’s critical infrastructure.

"If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between forty kilometers to four hundred kilometers above Earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure," the report warned.

And just like that, the United States would cease to exist as a global superpower and obstacle to Iranian, and/or Russian, and/or Red Chinese global ambitions.

And all our so-called leaders - in both parties - are consumed with is more diplomacy, more negotiations, more talk designed to bring the mullahs back to the table, while they busily prepare the means of our decimation.

Seventy years ago there was Winston Churchill; thirty years ago there was Ronald Reagan; but who, oh who, is going to save the West from itself now?