Iran: April 2009 Archives

A few helpings from Jillian Bandes' table....

***Hundreds of thousands of Americans nationwide rallied for lower taxes and limited government during the April 15 tax day tea parties, organized by conservative grassroots activists with little or no funding. Americans for Tax Reform estimated attendance at well over 360,000, despite bad weather across the East Coast and the fact that it's harder to get a conservative to a protest than it is to get Levi Johnston to stop hitting on Tyra Banks. The protests elicited widespread criticism in the [Oba]media, with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow labeling tea party protestors "tea baggers," and David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Obama, calling the protests "bewildering."

But of course - libs think that they own the protesting gimmick.  It's of a piece with the rest of their moral supremacism that sees anything they do - even if it's the very thing they've been smearing the Right with for years (e.g. earmarks, profligate spending, their own brand of military adventurism, secret databases and other spying on American citizens, etc.) - as being not just innocuous or permissible but actively noble and patriotic based on nothing more than their inherent genetic virtue.  But let conservatives exercise their constitutional right to peaceably assemble to redress grievances - did I say that's specifically in the United States Constitution? - and the Left flies into a palsey of growling, condescending indignance that labels the T.E.A. parties like they were some kind of decentralized twenty-first century Nuremberg rally.

Maybe Axelrod's "bewilderment" stems from the assurances he was given that after the Ascension of The One there wouldn't BE any such thing anymore as conservatives, not unlike the climax of Childhood's End.

Boy, did HE get his metaphors mixed up.

***The U.N. is holding a conference on racism this week during which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already come out with anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting the walk-out of over forty delegates who presumably attended the conference on the pretext that Ahmadinejad wasn't actually planning on saying these things. "Regretfully," according to the White House, Obama wasn't there.

Oh, my, yes.  It's so regrettable that the Li'l President will not be present to nod his head approvingly as Adolph The Nuclear rants on about the "most cruel and racist regime," created only "on the pretext of Jewish suffering," while his regime soldiers on toward finishing the job Adolph The Original started.

Damned scheduling conflicts.  Looks like the Geico Caveman doppelganger will have to mail Barry his own autographed tome.  Maybe the latter will put it in a place of honor in the Oval Office right next to Georgetown University's betitted crucifix.

***An FBI computer database that contains a billion documents containing personal information - some pertaining to American citizens - will not be opened to public scrutiny as requested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF had sued under the Freedom of Information Act to try and open up the lockbox, but the Obama administration quietly denied the group's request, keeping with the policies of his predecessor. Many criticized Obama for talking the big talk about increased government transparency, and then singing a different tune when it was time for action.

They need not worry.  President Bush did what was necessary, while still excruciatingly constitutional, to protect Americans from any sequels to 9/11 (or worse).  President Hussein doubtless has different plans for such secret databases.

And we know which application the Donks consider to be "criminal".

***Obama decided to cut .002% of federal spending by trimming the fat from various federal agencies to the tune of 100 million. This compares to an overall $2.5 trillion spending package that he pushed through Congress. The cuts will be accomplished by combining offices, switching training programs from in-person instruction to online instruction, buying office supplies in bulk, and halting the production of new logos. Thank goodness.

"Awright, THERE!  I GAVE you your !#$%ing cuts, you *&^%$#! rightwing skinflints!  Now PISS OFF!!  I've gotta go give Fidel his afternoon pedicure!  He said if I do a good enough job, he'll sign my pecs!"

I'm guessing this is what passes for lib sabre-rattling these days:

“[Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad recruits forces against us, but there are also forces against him,” Israeli President Shimon Peres warned Sunday, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

“What happened in Egypt created a fierce opposition and we must unify all his opponents -- the Sunnis and the Europeans, as well as those afraid of nuclear weapons and terror,” the Israeli leader said.

Wow, looks like Bebe pumped some spine into Shimmi's spine....

Peres tempered his saber-rattling remarks by adding that he hoped President Barack Obama’s call for dialogue with Ahmadinejad would be heeded.

Oh, no, he reverted to base lib instinct....

More ominously, however, he advised that if such talks don’t soften the Iranian president’s approach, “we’ll strike him.”

Whoops, gotta listen to the people who put the right-wingers back in charge....

Peres hastened however to caution that Israel couldn’t carry out any strike against the Islamic republic without the U.S.

“We certainly cannot go it alone, without the U.S., and we definitely can’t go against the U.S. This would be unnecessary,” qualified Peres.

Aw, but he can't put patriotic loyalty to the PM ahead of worshipping Godbama!

I'm picturing the little angel (represented by Mr. Netanyahu) and the little devil (represented by False Messiah) sitting on either of Peres' sloping shoulders and whipsawing the poor schlemiel into schitzophenic, chiropractic catatonia.

Me, I'm just motion-nauseous.

Well, maybe it's the motion, and maybe it's the stomach-churning helplessness of knowing that the window of preventive opportunity has shut and history is now irretrievably destined to repeat itself:

Global terrorism and Middle Eastern expert Walid Phares tells Newsmax that within the next five years, the radical regime in Iran will have a missile capable of reaching North America.

Phares, who has conducted briefings at the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Security Council, also said Iran is definitely seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to use them if they do....

“When the Obama administration devises a policy that says we need to reach out to the Iranian regime, without putting pressure on that regime by engaging with the actual Iranian opposition, the perception in Tehran is that the Obama administration will not use everything at its disposal to [apply] that pressure.

“Hence last week President Ahmadinejad declared that there is no more pressure to be made on Iran, and when that is the case obviously they are free to develop the weapons they want.”

If Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, will the regime actually use them, Martella asked.

“Regimes in the past that are totalitarian, including the neighbor of Iran, Saddam Hussein, have used missiles, have used weapons of mass destruction, have gassed their own population,” Phares declared. “The Iranian regime’s allies in Hezbollah have used missiles in their confrontation with Israel.

“The Iranian regime, which is ideological and radical, will use them when they think they can win the war.”

They don't "think" they can win the war; they think they already have.  And why wouldn't they?  President Bush was cowed from any pre-emptive showdown with the mullahgarchy.  Now Barack Obama has caved on what meager principles the Bushies were weak-kneedly standing.  Either that's pre-emptive surrender to Iranian nuclear weapons development, or that's a concurrent surrender to an existing atomic reality.  And the one power on Earth that possesses the military capability and desperate regained will to deal the mullahs a strategic setback is weathervaning itself like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, probably for fear that the Jews will have to fight a two-front war against Ahmadinejad AND Obama.

Hey, who said Red Barry wouldn't find a use for those F-22s?

While the Ayatollahs are waiting for their ICBM order from North Korea to be filled, there's always Hezbollah to deliver the nukes for them with "a human touch" as they have with conventional weapons on a number of overseas Israeli targets in the past; in a pinch, they could always bin Laden a jingle, and he's been long rumored to have a residence in Tehran.  And then there's the simple matter of enlisting their good friend Uncle Hugo to host Tehran's mid-range missiles to deliver their radioactive payloads from forwardly deployed and equally unexpected directions.

I guess it isn't quite history repeating itself.  Adolph Hitler stupidly let his rabid anti-Semitism deprive him of the ultimate weapon with which he could have brought the entire world to its knees before him.  The entire world, led by Barack Hussein Obama, is already on its knees before not just the mullahgarchy, but scraggly Jack Sparrow wannabes as well.  Accepting nuclear-enforced dhimmihood will be the gratuity.

For "President" Peres and his beleaguered people, the solution will be a bit more "final".

Following current events these days stretches the boundaries of the adjective "surreal".  So much so that I could almost forget that I'm not an outside observer but am right in the same predicament with everybody else.

Take this statement of the day-glo obvious:

A source close to the U.S. intelligence community tells Newsmax that North Korea’s launch of a missile was, contrary to widespread reports, a big win for the reclusive communist state.

The three-stage Taepodong-2 missile was launched on Sunday, and according to North Korea was intended to place a satellite in orbit.

North Korea claimed the launch was a success and the satellite was in orbit broadcasting patriotic tunes. But American officials said the missile’s payload instead splashed into the Pacific Ocean after a flight of about 2,000 miles, and the New York Times termed the launch “a failure.”

But the close source told Newsmax the launch that North Korea’s satellite claim could well have been a “ruse” – with the real goal of the launch to test the missile’s range.

Naw - ya think?  What was your first guess, Cap'n Obvious?  But hey, we have to cut Newsmax's intelligence source some slack in all his glorious anonymity, since he's tipping the gray matter scales compared to the appalling credulity of the New York Times, which faithfully swallowed the NoKo's risible alibi of Kim jong-IL's becoming a competitor with Direct TV.  George W. Bush they never believed on anything, no matter how painfully honest he was, but Pyongyang they not only take at face value, but spin it in such a way as to pooh-pooh the NoKo ICBM test even in a military context.  Nothing to see or worry about here, folks, so move along.

At least until you get to the part about their honored guests for the occasion:

“A 2,000-mile shot is a significant technical achievement. And a test is a test. It provided North Korea with valuable data and experience, not to mention publicity to help it sell more missiles to Iran, Syria and other countries.”

Iran’s involvement in the North Korean missile launch is worrisome.

There were in fact reports that Iranian missile experts were at the scene of the launch.

Currently Iran’s most advanced missiles, the Shahab-3 and Sajjil, have a maximum range of about 1,200 miles. A missile with a 2,000-mile range could not only strike Israel with ease, but threaten Europe and other targets throughout the Middle East.

This would be the same Iran to whose nuclear weapons program Barack Obama may soon give his effective blessing:

Officials are mulling whether the U.S. will reverse course and allow Iran to carry out uranium enrichment to produce nuclear fuel only, not weapons-grade material, according to a report in London’s Financial Times.

Such a concession, being considered as part of a policy review by President Barack Obama, would be a sea change from the Bush Administration’s hard-line policy [heh] of forbidding uranium enrichment per se....

“There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favored, simply is unfeasible,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, according to the Times. “The U.S. may still have zero as its opening position, while recognizing it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement.”

Sound familiar?  It should; this is the same deal that Bill Clinton gave the NoKos fifteen years ago, which enabled the "Hermit Kingdom" to officially cross the nuclear threshold seven years later (and in reality, long before that).  And the mullahs have almost certainly churned out a warhead or two by now.

Ms. Parsi is wrong, of course.  "The zero enrichment solution" is entirely "feasible".  It simply will not, as it never has, come from pointless, futile, weak-kneed "diplomacy" with a demonic regime that hates us for what we are and seeks our destruction no matter what we do or say, and is all the more certitudinously convinced of their ultimate triumph with each "messianic" prostration proclamation and each weapons program that meets up-close and personal with the Chosen One's sole manifestation of "fiscal restraint".

As the Battlestar Galactica catch-phrase states, "All this has happened before."  The first time it got us Pearl Harbor and forty-five months of all-out global war.  The second time it got us 9/11 and three thousand dead American civilians.

Anybody want to start taking bets on what the trifecta will be?  That couldn't be any more surreal than watching my country skip loopily down the same primrose path to strategic disaster for the third time in as many generations.

Make that the fourth - Ronald Reagan was elected just in time to avert the radioactive consequences of Jimmy Carter's pacifistic idiocy.  Looks like that was just a deferral of the inevitable.

Doesn't get any more surreal than that.

I have long maintained that it is easy for Democrat presidents to bully Israel into coughing up ever more of its meager territory to its enemies in the name of "peace" for much the same reason that it's easy for Democrats to run up gargantuan budget deficits: they're doing it with other people's money (witness their own typically miserly charitable contributions and penchant for tax evasion).  Similarly, the territory Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama try to force the Jews to hand over isn't theirs, and it isn't their national extinction that is being hastened.

Until now.  And Bibi Netanyahu is not going silently into that eternal darkness (via Newsmax Insider):

President Barack Obama’s recent overture to Iran constitutes a “sharp departure” from Israel’s position, the Jewish publication Forward observes.

On March 20, Obama issued a video greeting to the Iranian people and leadership stressing America’s commitment to resolve its differences with Iran through diplomacy.

“This process will not be advanced by threats,” he said. “We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”

The overture “appeared to all but dismiss the possibility of military action,” and is contrary to the Israeli view that the threat of force should remain on the table when dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, according to Forward.

“This is a sharp departure from the Israeli position,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.

“The president’s approach is that diplomacy cannot work if there is a constant military threat.”

The publication cites Israeli sources and media reports who say that Jerusalem insists any American diplomatic engagement with Iran be limited in time and coupled with tougher sanctions, lest Iran use a prolonged series of negotiations to further advance its nuclear program.

Israel delivered that message to the Obama administration during recent discussions, including a March 16 meeting in Washington between Israel Defense Forces chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Dennis Ross, the State Department special adviser expected to coordinate diplomatic efforts.

In any case, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for the most part dismissed Obama’s overture. Addressing a mass gathering, he responded to Obama: “Have you stopped your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? What has changed?”

He did add, however, “We shall see and judge. You change, and we shall change as well.”

His speech was punctuated by the crowd’s usual chants of “Death to America.”

Israel's position has the peculiarity of being difficult to avoid, given their miniscule size (approximately the size of Delaware), their location in the middle of over a billion Muslims ranging from merely hostile to overtly bloodthirsty, and the leader of the latter category building an arsenal of nuclear weapons.  And even they took a Kaditha-led detour into the land of make-believe over the past few years, with a lost war with Hezbollah and Hamas and daily rocket attacks on their cities the best they have to show for it.

Sanity has returned to Jerusalem in the person of the aforementioned Reaganesque Prime Minister Netanyahu.  A man who understands, as few on the planet do, that "mutual respect" must be, well, mutual, and isn't generally evinced by inciting mobs to chant for your country's death; a leader who grasps that diplomacy with the mullahgarchy is flatly impossible, as the last several years of pathetic diplodiddling have embarrassingly demonstrated; and a Churchillian visionary who knows that military force is the only thing the Ayahtollahs understand, as we and the Israelis will find out when Ali Khamenie, whether directly or through Adolph Ahmadinejad, issues his nuclear ultimatum, perhaps punctuated by a demostration in Tel Aviv or New York:

Perhaps that's why Red Barry and VP Rogaine and the Empress and every other muckity-muck in the Obamunist palace guard snubbed General Ashkenazi.  And maybe that's what motivated Bibi to lay down the facts of life of preventing an Iranian-dominated Middle East:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is putting President Barack Obama and the world on notice: if nothing is done to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel will be forced to launch a unilateral attack to destroy it.

The former commando – one of Israel’s most experienced leaders – made that clear in an interview given to The Atlantic magazine soon after the swearing-in of his new government Tuesday. The Jewish state views Iran’s nuclear program not only as a threat against its very existence, but also a destabilizing “hinge” point that could determine the fate of the West, Netanyahu said....

The new PM explained in detail to Goldberg why Iran should lead the Obama foreign policy itinerary:

First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one.

Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign — that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

Third, they would be able to pose a real and credible threat to the supply of oil, to the overwhelming part of the world’s oil supply.

Fourth, they may threaten to use these weapons or to give them to terrorist proxies of their own, or fabricate terror proxies.

Finally, you’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area — nearly all the Arab regimes are dead-set opposed to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. They fervently hope, even if they don’t say it, that the U.S. will act to prevent this — that it will use its political, economic, and, if necessary, military power to prevent this from happening.

If Iran acquired nuclear weapons, Netanyahu warned, Washington’s Arab allies would drift into Iran’s orbit. Furthermore, several countries in Iran’s neighborhood might try to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

“Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Middle East is incendiary enough, but with a nuclear arms race it will become a tinderbox,” he said.

Feel free to disregard Bibi's lip service to B.O.'s empty words about stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions.  He's in that tightest of spots, being nose to nose with a nuclear mullahgarchy on one side and more or less completely dependent on continued American militay assistance on the other.  And the Little President enters the equation tilted far away from Jerusalem and toward her blood enemies, as his showering of billions on Hamas rather emphatically illustrates.

The bottom line is, there's no time.  If everything has gone according to plan, the Iranians will during this very month have enriched enough weapons-grade uranium for three nuclear warheads.  I would be astounded if the first two do not already exist.  Just recently Tehran launched a "communications satellite" into low Earth orbit, demonstrating their ability to deploy nuclear ordinance for an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack.  The conclusion is inescapable that America and Israel are already living on borrowed time, and the imperative to at least buy an additional buffer by flattening Iran's nuclear facilities via air strikes is critical.

Yet the Hussein administration frets that pre-emptive Jewish self-defense would be "destabilizing".  Not so much to the Arab states of the region, which fear vassalization at the mullahs' radioactive hands as much as Israelis fear atomization from the same demonic source, but to the "friends" they're trying to make in Iran.  You know, the ones who keep screeching "DEATH TO AMERICA!  DEATH TO AMERICA!"

And when Prime Minister Netanyahu is forced to make good on his threat (since, diplomatic niceties aside, he can't possibly be noodleheaded enough to believe that False Messiah's prostrating will do anything other than embolden the mullahgarchy even more), how will the Chicago Cherubim respond to the IAF fighting our battle for us?  By belatedly joining in the fight that we'll be inevitably dragged into?  At least keeping quiet, as the Bushies did when the Jews took out Syria's North Korean-built reactor a couple of years ago?  Actively condemning the Israeli air strikes?  Or, dare I broach it, taking military action against Israel on Iran's behalf?

Hey, Israel is a lot easier to get to than Iran.  Unlike the latter, with the soon-to-be-installed latest Russian air defense system, the Jews wouldn't shoot back.  And besides, everybody hates them already, so he'd be building political capital with "the world," right?

We've already witnessed that Barack Obama is a blind acolyte of a discredited philosophy that is little more than a mental disorder who is incapable of learning from his mistakes or even acknowledging them but is more than adept at throwing even close friends, allies, and confidantes under the proverbial bus.  Benjamin Netanyahu is not found in any of those three categories.  Which simply speaks to the dispatch with which Bibi must act, before the Groveler-in-Chief can pre-empt him and his country into the Ayahtollahs' radioactive hands.