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| Home Front: Politix |
| Appease-y does it for weak Prez on road to a Mideast apocalypse |
| 2009-09-27 |
| Ralph Peters DID it surprise a single Post reader that Iran's been hiding a big nuclear weapons development facility? It stunned our president when he learned about it months ago. Then he kept it secret from you. Obama didn't want you to know how much progress Iran had made. It's an embarrassment. And it raises the pressure on the White House to act -- something this president's squirming to avoid. But the Iranians have now realized we know, so they tipped it themselves. Obama had no choice but to come clean. Yesterday, he interrupted the G-20 summit to go public -- before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did. Flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's dead man walking, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, our president offered more uselessly vague rhetoric in response to proof of a major "covert Iranian enrichment facility" and its implications. Obama's statement amounted to, Ooooh, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down . . . maybe . . . eventually . . . but not really . . . let's talk . . . Only Sarkozy made a serious attempt to get the Iranian leadership's attention, stressing the consistent failure of negotiations and the need for action. He understands that a decade of talking with Tehran brought zero results. Obama cringed. Shouldn't we be ashamed that a French president's leading the fight to protect Israel and the free world? To be fair, Obama's overwhelmed. Fatally confident of his powers of persuasion, he's bewildered that he hasn't been able to convince the Iranians (or the Palestinians, Russians, Venezuelans, Chinese, etc.) to do what he wants them to do. So Washington delays. While Iran races toward a nuclear arsenal. Not only has Iran's known program moved ahead despite our cajoling, now comes the news that far more dangerous facilities have been missed for years by our intelligence services (to their credit, though, they ultimately found the Qom installation). Who knows how many more we haven't found? Additionally, an Iranian exile group opposed to the theocrat thugs in Tehran claimed this week that Ahmadinejad's government operates two secret plants that fabricate detonators for nuclear weapons. One of those sites is in an east Tehran suburb, another in that enormous city's exurbs. The major enrichment site that embarrassed our president sits near Qom, Iran's holiest city. Ahmadinejad's boys know what they're doing. They've dispersed their nuclear program across urban areas and deep underground. The network is not only hard to hit -- it's impossible to strike effectively without inflicting thousands of civilian casualties. Not our fault if the Iranian leadership puts their people in the crosshair. Personally, I would consider dead Iranians a feature, not a bug. These new sites raise the stakes higher still: Attack the plant near Qom and we'll be seen by Shia Muslims as violating a holy city. Strike those Tehran detonator factories and you get severe collateral damage -- plus the probable spread of radioactive material, an instant "dirty bomb." And the problem with that is??? Yet, after all this, there's still resistance in Washington to the conclusions that Iran's determined to develop nuclear weapons and then use them. What amount of evidence will it take? Iran's faith-crazed president appears before the UN, denying the Holocaust and damning Israel. He has openly and repeatedly professed an apocalyptic religious vision that requires chaos on earth to bring about the return of the "hidden imam," the Shia version of a messiah. He never misses an opportunity to call for Israel's total destruction. And Washington insists he's joking. (Yeah, they're belly-laughing in Tel Aviv right now.) Appeasers also blather that "other states have had nukes for years," but haven't used them. And mutually assured destruction (MAD) actually did keep the peace between the superpowers for six decades (another lesson our president doesn't get). The arguments don't hold up. Even the North Koreans, the other entry in the rogue-state nuclear-arms race, don't want to die. They want earthly power, not a sacred apocalypse. The new and immeasurably dangerous factor in play is religious fanaticism. The doomsday-lust avowed by Ahmadinejad and his supporters shatters every deterrence equation. So now what? Obama will try more talks. We may see half-hearted sanctions -- which will be violated right and left. Russia, which profits hugely from dirty trade with Iran, can slip goods across the Caspian Sea or through Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 Lest we fergit, IRAN > has already made it clear that it will consider ANY ATTACK BY ISRAEL AS AN ATTACK BY THE USA, which Tehran reserves its right to respond either via Military-led response andor TERRORISM AGZ US-ISRAELI-ALLIED WORLDWIDE INTERESTS. * RADICAL MULLAHS > EITHER ISLAM = ISLAMISM RULES OR WINS, OR NO ONE WILL [aka MUTUAL DESTRUCTION espec vee INDUCING "GREAT POWERS" MILPOL CONFRONTATION BY PROXY + ultimat GLOBAL NUCWAR]. ISRAEL > AIR, NAVAL MISSLE STRIKES alone taint enuff. ISRAEL will need DIVISION/CORPS-SIZED COMMANDO FORCES to not only attack, overwhelm, and destroy Iran's known N-sites but more impor to verify curr Intel and discover unknown factors or changes to Iran's NucDevProgs, and destroy same, THEN TO LEAVE OR EXTRACT THEMSELVES AFTERWARDS. The only other REALISTIC OPTIONS IS LET IRAN HAVE ITS BOMB [read, NUCLEAR ISLAMISM = NUCLEAR MILIT-TERRORISM]; or initiate a FULL-FLEDGED US = US-ALLIED INVASION + OCCUPATION OF IRAN. Anything else in the interim only means IRAN = ISLAMIST MILTERRS > MIGHT BE DELAYED IN GETTING THEIR NUKES, BUT EVENS WILL STILL GET IT. GWOT + ISLAMIST UNIVERSAL JIHAD > among other, 'tis "WAR TO THE DEATH". Any rhetoric to the contary is just fancy schamncey frills + fluffy bunnies. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-09-27 21:52 |
| #4 In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Barack Obama Follow the link for more quotes from the former leader of the free world |
| Posted by: Omavick Sforza7752 2009-09-27 08:18 |
| #3 If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost. Barack Obama |
| Posted by: Omavick Sforza7752 2009-09-27 08:15 |
| #2 IIRC in the 50s and early 60s Israel was heavily aligned with the left, which is why France supported the early stages of the Israeli nuclear program and why the US was cautious. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-09-27 08:00 |
| #1 French offered major military support to Israel long before the USA did. '67 war fought with Mystere jets and other frog equipment. Not until '69 when Nixon delivered the F-4 Phantoms did major US military hardware arrive. Will history repeat itself? |
| Posted by: borgboy 2009-09-27 01:53 |