The Revolt of the Peasants

Charles Krauthammer nails it !

http://article.nationalreview.com/423992/the-great-peasant-revolt-of-2010/charles-krauthammer

February 5, 2010

The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010

The president’s supercilious modesty is getting him into trouble.

‘I am not an ideologue,” protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.Compare his 2010 State of the Union with his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society — health care, education, and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a “jobs bill.”

This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid, and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’”

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people’s anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda that the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part Two of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement, and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick’s masterwork, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, “proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification.” The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda — which couldn’t get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts — is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush — from Iraq to Social Security reform — constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is “one of the truest expressions of patriotism.”

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. “They made a decision,” explained David Axelrod, “they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed” — a perfect expression of liberals’ conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country’s, that their idea of the public good is the public’s, that their failure is therefore the nation’s.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions. For liberals, the observation that “the peasants are revolting” is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It re-centers. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.

Is this where our country is headed ?

Is Greece Our Future? [Victor Davis Hanson]

I lived in Greece for more than two years, and one of my best memories is of a small hotelier at a seaside resort. He checked you in; he cooked; he did the landscaping at night; he did all the maintenance during the day. I asked him why he didn’t hire more help, since his hotel wasn’t all that small and he seemed to be going 24/7. What followed was a harangue about the cost of hiring a permanent worker in Greece, the difficulty of ever firing him if he proved worthless, and why he preferred to do everything himself rather than fill out all sorts of forms and hire unmotivated but tenured employees.

Besides, he said, almost everyone was on some sort of pension, disability, or government benefit, and was unwilling to work, so his choices were either illegal immigrants or broke foreign students. Then he launched into a blast against socialism, and explained how he was forced to become an expert tax dodger, how he would barter for all the transactions he could, and why he hated the government. He finished by sighing that in Greece, the people spend their time either devising ways to get government money or scheming to avoid the tax collectors — or, preferably, both.

I think the medicine for Greece’s current crisis will prove more unpalatable than the wasting disease.

Scott Brown sworn in today ...

Viva La Revolucion !

Scott Brown's Remarks Following His Swearing-In

It's a great honor to stand before you as the new United States Senator from Massachusetts.

I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to many people, starting with my wife Gail, to Vice President Biden, to Senators Kerry and Kirk, to Leader McConnell, and to so many other people who have been generous with their time and their advice.

I especially want to thank the people of Massachusetts who sent me here. I can't promise I'll be right in every vote I make. I'm sure I'll make mistakes from time to time. But I will try to give them my level best every day.

My daughters Ayla and Arianna could not be here, but I felt their presence. The bibles I used for today's swearing-in belong to my daughters, and I stacked them one on top of the other and took my oath on them. So they were both with me in spirit.

People have asked me why I wanted to get sworn-in so quickly after the results had been certified. It's because I want to get to work.

There are a lot of votes pending that I would like to participate in.

Even more importantly, these are urgent times for our nation. The President this week submitted a $3.8 trillion budget. We'll have to borrow 40% of that amount because we don't have the money to pay for all that spending. I'm concerned we're living beyond our means. Also this week, the CIA director said there will be another al-Qaeda attack in the US in the next 3 to 6 months. This is frightening news, and we owe the people of America everything we can do to deter and prevent future attacks on our nation.

So I'm glad to be fully able to participate in the affairs our nation at this critical time.I also want to extend my appreciation to all of you in the press. I see many familiar faces here and I want you to know how much I respect the work you do, and the patience and many kindnesses you have shown my family.

With that, I'll take a few questions

Obama's Waffling on Nat'l Security critiqued here ...

Re: Did Obama Reverse Himself on Miranda Rights for Terrorists? [Andy McCarthy]

Dan, the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary. He's not the play-by-play announcer of a game between arch rivals. He is the main participant on one of the teams, who actually has to make decisions. If he doesn't affirmatively make them, he makes them by default — meaning, the system's routine processes will carry on.

I'll have more to say in a column about yesterday's letter by Attorney General Holder to Sen. Mitch McConnell regarding the Christmas bomber case. But the AG's position is basically: These are our procedures (arrest, Miranda, appointment of counsel, civilian indictment, etc.) and we followed them. Obama would like you to believe that he is captive to these procedures, but he's in charge and he can change them — as Lincoln did, FDR did, and Bush did, to name a few.

I'm not a Holder fan, but I give him credit for this: He really does believe prosecution in the civilian justice system is the way to go, even in cases involving alien enemy combatants sent by al-Qaeda to the United States to carry out acts of war during wartime. Vice President Cheney, to the contrary, really believed (and believes) that this law-enforcement orientation doesn't work against wartime enemies, that it thus endangers the country, and that we have to treat a war like a war, with indefinite detention of enemy-combatants and military commissions for war criminals. Holder and Cheney have defended their positions vigorously. As my column will elaborate, I don't think Holder's defense is very persuasive, but at least he's making it. These guys are willing to be accountable for their positions.

Then there's Obama — you know, the guy who actually has decision-making authority. (In the executive branch, all the power is reposed in the president. Everyone else, including the vice president and the attorney general, is just carrying out his policies.) What do we get from our president? We get his already tired routine: Some people say our criminal justice system is not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. Others say you must give every arrested person Miranda rights and treat them just like shoplifters. I reject this false choice between terrorism and shoplifting.

Well, no, big guy, it's not a false choice. But it is a choice, it has to be made, and you have to make it. If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the attorney general argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the attorney general handles it, that is a decision to do it the attorney general's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's.


Who Is Wrong, Dennis Blair or Eric Holder? [Daniel Foster]

From the looks of things, it must be one of them.

Consider, in his letter to Senate Republicans yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote:

On the evening of December 25 and again on the morning of December 26, the FBI informed its partners in the Intelligence Community that Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally, and no agency objected to this course of action. In the days following December 25 – including during a meeting with the President and other senior members of his national security team on January 5 – high-level discussions ensued within the Administration in which the possibility of detaining Mr. Abdulmutallab under the law of war was explicitly discussed. No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued.

But in testimony in before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael E. Leiter and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said they were not consulted about the charging decision.

Blair, Mueller, Leiter, and Napolitano all fall under one or both of the descriptions "partners in the intelligence community" and "senior members of [Obama's] national security team," and all four claim they were not consulted. Could they all be mistaken?


Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]

On Eric Holder’s letter regarding the interrogation of the Christmas Day bomber:

In that letter, Holder [says] he followed the precedent of the Bush administration. It's true that with Richard Reid … he was Mirandized, he was treated as a civilian. But it was a mistake. It happened three months after 9/11, and the military commission system hadn't been established. . .

Here we are eight years later where we know that's not the way to go, and they repeat the error and defend it.

They also had said there was a meeting — Holder said there was a meeting on January 5th involving the president, all the senior members of the security cabinet on this issue, and nobody even raised the issue of having him held under the laws of war. . .

Why it [Mirandizing Abdulmutallab] was done in the first place is a mystery and why it wasn't undone and why nobody at a senior level, including the president, had suggested undoing it and having him interrogated without him having the right of silence, is really quite puzzling.


The Attorney General Speaks — and Says Nothing [Bill Burck and Dana Perino]

Attorney General Eric Holder has penned a five-page response to senators who demanded answers about his decision to Mirandize and charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, as a criminal defendant. It is a full-bore justification of the law-enforcement approach to combating terrorism, and despite its length, it does nothing to solve his problems.

Near the beginning of the letter, Holder writes: “I am confident that, as a result of the hard work of the FBI and our career federal prosecutors, we will be able to successfully prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab under the federal criminal law.” No one has ever doubted that. Even if Abdulmutallab had never uttered a word in response to questioning, there were 200 witnesses on the plane he tried to blow up, not to mention the defective bomb discovered in his underpants, which should provide plenty of evidence to prosecute and convict him.

They didn’t need a confession to convict him, so why Mirandize him at all? Well, Holder explains, everyone did everything by the book. Again, no one doubts that the Justice Department followed its internal system to a T. But as one of us has discussed, the system itself is a big part of the problem, because it excludes the intelligence services from participation and prioritizes law-enforcement interests over intelligence gathering when a foreign terrorist is captured on U.S. soil.
Keep reading this post . . .


More on the Holder Letter [Shannen Coffin]

Among the outrages in Attorney General Holder’s letter to Senator McConnell is his selective memory when it comes to military detention of terrorist suspects captured in the United States. Oddly, the only words highlighted for emphasis in the entire letter are in this sentence: “Since the September 11, 2001 attack, the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States.” That emphasis is odd because, on the very next page, he explains that two “persons apprehended in recent times have been held under the law of war.” I guess by “without single exception” he meant that two is not one. Just as it is true that a hitter does not get credit for two singles when he hits a double, two exceptions are not “a single exception.”

But that’s not the most outrageous misrepresentation (or omission) when it comes to those cases. Holder explains that Jose Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri were both transferred to military custody after being apprehended in the United States and held initially in civilian custody. Holder explains the “lengthy litigation” that ensued: “In Mr. Padilla’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the President did not have the authority to detain him under the law of war.” Ultimately, Mr. Holder says, Padilla was returned to law enforcement custody, convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to prison.

Strangely, that is where Holder leaves it, suggesting that Jose Padilla was transferred to law enforcement custody because he couldn’t be held in military detention. Holder is correct that, in 2004, the Second Circuit did indeed hold that the President did not have authority to detain him. It did so not because the President lacks authority to indefinitely detain unlawful enemy combatants captured in the United States. It did so because Padilla, unlike Omar Abdulmuttallab, was a U.S. citizen. More importantly, Holder leaves out a bit of crucial information: The Second Circuit’s decision was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that the Second Circuit had no jurisdiction to decide Padilla’s habeas corpus petition, since he was being held outside of that jurisdiction in a brig in South Carolina.

So Holder (apparently deliberately) misrepresents the ultimate holding in the Padilla case. But it gets even worse for Holder’s claims. After the Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit ruling, Padilla’s case went to the proper court in South Carolina, which also held that Padilla could not be held in military detention. That ruling, too, was eventually thrown out. In Padilla v. Hanft, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ultimately held that the President indeed had the authority to detain Padilla, by virtue of his own constitutional power and the Congressional delegation of authority under the Authorization of Use of Military Force Joint Resolution enacted by Congress in the days after September 11, 2001. Padilla was subsequently transferred to civilian criminal custody while Padilla’s petition for Supreme Court review of that decision was pending, and the Supreme Court eventually declined to hear the case.

Curiously, Holder does not mention any of this subsequent history, leaving his audience with the suggestion that there was some limitation imposed by the Padilla case on the power of the President to designate and detain under the laws of war an enemy combatant captured on U.S. soil. The truth is just the opposite. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the power of the President to detain Jose Padilla — a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil — “as a fundamental incident to the conduct of war.” While the Supreme Court never had a chance to hear the case, Holder grossly misrepresented its importance in citing a Second Circuit decision that had no legal value because it had been issued by a court that improperly asserted jurisdiction over the case in the first place.


A Craven Act [Bill Burck & Dana Perino]

Yesterday, we talked about the White House's outrageous decision to leak that the underwear bomber was now cooperating with the FBI. We said that these coordinated leaks would damage national security by, among other things, telling the underwear bomber's fellow terrorists that he had flipped on them and it was time to go to ground.

The White House dismissed this criticism, saying that revealing the underwear bomber's cooperation would not harm national security. Well, apparently FBI director Robert Mueller didn't get the memo. According to this letter from Senator Bond on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director Mueller on Monday "personally stressed [to Senator Bond] that keeping the fact of his cooperation quiet was vital to preventing future attacks against the United States.

"Less than 24 hours later, the White House was deliberately leaking this very information to the press. What changed in those 24 hours? Nothing except the White House decided the political benefits of leaking outweighed the national security costs.It is hard to imagine a more craven act than this one. The question is whether anyone will be investigated for this leak.

Unlikely.

— Dana M. Perino is former press secretary to Pres. George W. Bush. Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush.


Politicizing the Justice Department, Chapter 329,721 ... [Andy McCarthy]

I should have mentioned this but I've been too under it. Encounter Books has just released by contribution to its series of pamphlets, which publisher Roger Kimball calls "Encounter Broadsides." Mine is called, "How the Obama Administration Has Politicized Justice." I'm very proud to be a part of the series, which includes contrributions on important topics by Michael Ledeen, Victor Davis Hanson, John Fund, Roy Spencer, Steeve Moore, and David Gratzer — and there are more to come.

What I'm not very proud of, as a Justice Department alum, is that it should be necessary to write such a thing. Alas, there seems always to be more to come on that score, too. Scott Hennen alerts me that Pres. Obama has nominated a DNC member, trial lawyer, and long-time John Edwards crony, Tim Purdon, to be the the next U.S. attorney for North Dakota. Purdon has reportedly never been a prosecutor, and the candidate who was passed over had 12 years' experience in that district's U.S. Attorney's Office. More here.

Of course, as I argue in the pamphlet and said during the trumped up U.S. attorneys firing "scandal" (see here and here), this is the kind of political patronage that goes on all the time with these slots. Still, I can't help but wonder whether, with a Democratic administration now in charge and passing out the goodies to Democrats, the congressional judiciary committees will scorch the earth with subpoenas and demand testimony from top White House staff?

Holder: ‘I made the Decision’ on Abdulmutallab

Holder: ‘I made the Decision’ on Abdulmutallab [Daniel Foster]

Attorney General Eric Holder has taken ownership of the decision to treat Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal.

"I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government," Holder says in a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other senators who have sought testimony from Holder on the treatment of Abdulmutallab.

In an at-times testy letter, Holder endorses the treatment of terrorist attacks as a matter of criminal justice, and implies that Senate Republicans are using the Abdulmutallab case for political gain, saying that his Justice Department relied on procedures that were not criticized when employed by previous administrations:

The decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and the methods used to interrogate him, are fully consistent with the long-established and publicly known policies and practices of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the United States Government as a whole, as implemented for many years by Administrations of both parties. Those policies and practices, which were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations, have been and remain extremely effective in protecting national security. They are among the many powerful weapons this country can and should use to win the war against al-Qaeda.

Holder writes that on December 25 and 26, the FBI informed partner agencies within the intelligence community of the decision to try Abdulmutallab as a criminal, and that none registered objections. He also writes that the idea of trying Abdulmutallab under the laws of war was explicitly discussed — and rejected — in high-level meetings with President Obama.
In the days following December 25 — including during a meeting with the President and other senior members of his national security team on January 5 — high-level discussions ensued within the Administration in which the possibility of detaining Mr. Abdulmutallab under the law of war was explicitly discussed. No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued.

Holder writes that "without a single exception" (emphasis in original) terror suspects arrested on American soil have been treated as federal criminals. But later in the letter, he notes two exceptions under the Bush administration in which suspects arrested under criminal law were later transferred to military custody by executive order. (National Review Online first noted those two cases here).

A Senate Republican aide tells National Review Online that Holder's response was released within hours of Senate Republicans' formal request that Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) call on Holder to testify before the body. It was Holder's first public response to a series of four GOP letters on terrorism policy that date back eight months, according to Republicans.

In a written statement released just before Holder's response was made available, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), ranking Republican on the Committee, said "We have been asking the Attorney General questions on behalf of the American people. He has not simply shut us out; he has also shut out the public."


Charles Krauthammer:

On the Obama administration's anti-terror policies:

What we are seeing is a collapse of the Obama policy — [closing] Guantanamo, Mirandizing [terrorists] and [granting] trials in a place like New York with all the constitutional protections of a civilian.

These are untenable in terms of logic and national security, and they are increasingly untenable in terms of politics, especially after Massachusetts. That's why Democrats are retreating on this.
All three elements of this [policy] are going to collapse in the end

Nuclear Weapons Follies

Road to 'Zero' [David Satter]

U.S. and Russian arms-control negotiators have now reached an “agreement in principle” on a new nuclear arms-reduction treaty which will symbolize the Alice in Wonderland readiness of the U.S. side to believe all manner of impossible things before breakfast.
The agreement will bring down the ceiling for deployed nuclear weapons to 1,500 to 1,675 (from 2,200) and the ceiling for nuclear-delivery systems (missiles, submarines, and bombers) to between 700 and 800 for each side. It will soon be the task of the U.S. Senate to ask why these reductions are necessary but it is already obvious that the negotiations for the treaty have been carried out in an atmosphere of irreality that does not bode well for the usefulness of the final product.

In the first place, the new arms-reduction treaty is a major part of the Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Russia, a policy that so far has involved serious U.S. concessions to Russia, such as the cancellation of the deployment of anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe with scant sign of reciprocity on issues of concern to the U.S. for the Russians.At the same time, the treaty along with the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by Congress is seen as an important step in “getting to zero,” a world without nuclear weapons. This, under existing circumstances, is a totally unrealistic and even dangerous goal. It comes at time when Russia, far from seeking to abolish nuclear weapons, is making them the keystone of its military strategy and lowering the threshold for their use.If all this wasn’t bad enough, the Obama administration believes that its efforts in the disarmament field will make it easier for the U.S. to isolate the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs in advance of the United Nations conference to review the nuclear non-proliferation treaty later this year. It should be plain to “a drunken hedgehog” as the Russians like to say, that Iran and North Korea are not going to be deflected from their goal of building a nuclear arsenal by the moral example of Russia and the U.S.

Finally, the treaty is based on the elimination of weapons that the Russians would be obliged to scrap anyway. Russia does not have the means to maintain its present nuclear arsenal. In exchange, the U.S. will eliminate weapons that we can afford and may need to keep. Ironically, by preserving Russian parity in nuclear weapons — the one area where they can compete — at U.S. expense, we don’t make the world safer. All we do is encourage Russia’s great power illusions which are actually more dangerous than the nuclear weapons themselves.

— David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. His latest book is Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State.

Obama / Holder just don't get it on National Security

Candidate Obama talked tough about terrorists not having Miranda rights.

President Obama ? Like most of his other claims / assertions / promises ... he lied.

Spineless; feckless; wuss.


Stephen Hayes has an excellent article at The Weekly Standard:

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-vs-holder

In an interview with 60 Minutes last spring, President Obama discussed the handling of captured terrorists and challenged those who claimed the "American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists."Obama said: "I fundamentally disagree with that. Now -- do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter -- down the block? Of course not." President Obama ought to call Attorney General Eric Holder. In a five-page letter to Senator Mitch McConnell, Holder lays out in exhaustive detail exactly why these folks deserve Miranda rights and why his Justice Department will treat them like a shoplifter down the block.Holder's letter responds to criticism of the Obama administration's handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, from McConnell and other Republicans

Middle East: Scary Stuff re: Iran / Hezbollah

Debka is not always the most reliable of sources, but if this stuff is remotely accurate; this is not good at all (and also points out the folly of UN 1701 and Condi Rice)


EXCLUSIVE: US intelligence finds 5,000 Hizballah training to seize Galilee towns http://www.debka.com/article/8575/

Explosives-packed containers drift onto S. Israeli beaches
http://www.debka.com/article/8576/

Budgetary Lies: Don't Worry, Prosperity is Just Around the Corner !

The disconnect between reality and watching Obama go on TV and make all sorts of outlandish claims about his budget and his fiscal responsibility is truly mindboggling.

Who does Obama think he is kidding ? (besides himself ...)

Even the media understands, and is calling him out, including "friendly media" like ABC News:

Jake Tapper - ABC: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/02/president-obama-every-economist-from-the-left-and-right-says-stimulus-has-saved-or-created-at-least-.html

Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-dont-worry-prosperity-is-just-around-the-corner-2010-2

Mike Shedlock: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/obamas-two-faced-poisonous-plan-sure-to.html

**** Rich Lowry: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/prez_quixote_JmPNCFEFBoE8QId4wAMsYM
Prez Quixote: Bam's Fiscal Restraint Fantasies

Brian Riedl: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_most_bloated_budget_ever_LBOG42oSAfo7HbPFf50eWN
The Most Bloated Budget Ever

Charles Hurt: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/obama_got_real_trouble_at_home_x6NgQX0HGVlcFJn78D1nuK
Obama's Got Real Trouble at Home

Obama's $3.8 TRILLION Budget: "Drunken Sailor"; "Bush on Steroids"

Another long post; this time on Obama's budget ... worth the long read !

Obama's ridiculous spending "freeze" -- video illustrates the absurdity here:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGM3NzUwMjY5ZjA5NDk2M2Q1NWU1Mjc4N2QyMzdlZGI=

Ryan: ‘Two Futures’ [Robert Costa]

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells National Review Online that President Obama’s budget “is not like most budgets, with some tax-code tinkering and spending.” No, he says, “this budget is a choice. We are about to make a decision whose consequences will last for generations.”

“This budget presents a choice of two futures,” Ryan says. “Don’t look at the president’s rhetoric, look at his actions. His substance implies a different reality. Not only is this budget worse than the last one, but it triples our debt within ten years, features gushers of tax increases, and relies on some partisan commission to do the heavy lifting on fiscal policy after the next election. Make no mistake: This is a budget aimed to advance the administration’s philosophy and ideology. By increasing taxes and letting the country spiral into debt, this budget is a firm step toward transforming America into a collectivist society overseen by a social-welfare state.”

“The fiscal future of America, however, is still in the hands of the people,” says Ryan. “It is not too late to turn things around and inject our economy with the freedom to grow. Republicans have offered voters a roadmap. The president, CBO, and Peter Orzag have all acknowledged that it is a credible plan. We want to talk to the American people, and listen to them, like adults, with crystal-clear alternatives based upon the founding principles of this country and let them decide. This budget is about more than specific programs or policies. It is really about the American idea, and whether we want to move towards a European-style welfare state. I know that seems like those are big words, but those are the stakes. It is hard to come to another conclusion when you look at our debt and how we are spending. We are in a very dire fiscal situation.”

This year, Ryan says, “will be the year for the GOP to show Americans that they are no longer the opposition party, but the alternative party. The president acknowledged that in Baltimore last week. We had a good discussion, and I’m happy he came, but at the end of the day, we come to this from a different premise. We believe that the individual is the nucleus of American life, and they see the government in that role. That is our big difference.”

“This is a choice of two futures,” he reiterates. “It’s not too late to make the right decision.”

Obama Adds $2 Trillion in Spending and Deficits to Last Year’s Budget [Brian Riedl]

One would think the nation’s deteriorating fiscal picture would cause the White House to scale back it spending-and-debt spree. Think again. Over the ten years in which both budgets overlap (FY 2010–2019), this year’s budget would spend an additional $1.7 trillion and run up an additional $2 trillion in budget deficits. In fact, this year’s proposal shows annual budget deficits as much as 49 percent larger than last year’s proposal — raising the debt by an additional 6 percent of GDP over the same period. It is a spending spree that will drive up both taxes and deficits.

According to our quick analysis of his budget, the president’s budget also would:

* Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over 2007 pre-recession levels;

* Raise taxes on all Americans by more than $2 trillion over the next decade (counting health-care reform and cap-and-trade);

* Raise taxes for 3.2 million small businesses and upper-income taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade;

* Borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010;

* Run a $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 — $143 billion higher than the recession-driven 2009 deficit;

* Leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion in as late as 2020 — a time of assumed peace and prosperity; and* Double the publicly held national debt to over $18 trillion.

Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per U.S. household. President Obama would hike it to $36,000 per household by 2020 — an inflation-adjusted $12,000-per-household expansion of government. Even the steep tax increases planned for all taxpayers would not finance all of this spending: The president’s budget would add trillions of dollars in new debt.

President Obama has offered a budget that does nothing to address the nation’s serious short-term and long-term fiscal problems — and indeed makes them worse. By doubling the national debt over pre-recession levels, America could head toward the tipping point when rising debt levels will become too large for global capital markets to absorb, potentially triggering a financial crisis, an interest-rate spike, and gigantic tax increases.

The president who said, “I didn’t come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation — I’m here to solve them” would, over the next decade, pass $75,000 per household in additional debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren.

— Brian Riedl is Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

Obama's Budget and the $1 Trillion Mistake [Chris Edwards]

President Obama has introduced his budget for next year. He proposes that the government spend $3.83 trillion in fiscal 2011. To put that number into context, let's take a trip down memory lane.

The bottom line in the chart shows the proposed spending over ten years in Pres. George W. Bush's first budget, which was released in February 2001. Bush came into office when annual federal spending was $1.86 trillion. He proposed to increase spending at a healthy clip, rising to $2.71 trillion by 2011.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmY4N2Q4YWY1NDAzMDQ5OTI1NDAxMjdhZTg2ZjY5MmM=

The top line in the chart is actual spending and Obama's proposed spending for 2011. It reveals that Bush and his team started blowing their budget almost immediately. They kept spending more and more — wars, a giant new homeland-security bureaucracy, a big-government response to Katrina, the prescription-drug bill, doubling K-12 education spending, big pay raises for federal workers, financial bailouts, and so on. I can't think of a single crisis that occurred on President Bush's watch that the Bush-Rove team didn't have an interventionist and big-spending response to.

In Bush's last year, FY2009, the government spent $1 trillion more than the Bush-Rove team had originally planned. It is true that 2009 spending included $112 billion for the Obama stimulus bill, so let's take that out. With that adjustment, the Bush-Rove team ended up spending $916 billion more annually by 2009 than they had originally planned. Note that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost only about one-fifth of that 2009 excess spending amount.

Then Obama comes into office and turns out to be Bush on steroids with respect to federal spending. Obama is calling for spending $3.83 trillion in 2011, or $1.1 trillion more than the federal budget nine years ago had promised. That's a 41 percent forecasting error.

The lesson from all this is that an administration's promised spending beyond the first year is meaningless. Obama is proposing a freeze on a very small part of the budget, for example, but his budget plan next year will likely find reasons to break that promise. It scares the hell out of me that federal spending down the road could be 41 percent higher than even the huge increases projected by Obama. But that seems to be where we are headed unless we put in place laws or constitutional amendments to really clamp down on the spend-happy politicians of both parties.— Chris Edwards is director of tax policy at the Cato Institute and manager of http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/.

Sen. Judd Gregg: Obama's 'Drunken Sailor' Budget [Robert Costa]

President Obama’s new budget, with its record-breaking $1.6 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year, is a sign that the administration “is not working to end its drunken-sailor ways,” says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, to National Review Online. “They are playing small ball when they need to be thinking about major-league fiscal solutions.”

Gregg says what concerns him the most is the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that cumulative deficits will reach $6 trillion by 2020 (Brian Riedl predicts a ten-year deficit of $13 trillion), and the president’s “regrettable” avoidance of any “serious” solution. “President Obama’s language doesn’t connect with the substance of his fiscal policy,” says Gregg. “Yes, there are a few fiscally-responsible ideas being proposed, but they’re not enough. For example, with the spending freeze, I say go for it, but we should be doing a hard freeze starting this year. And when it comes to spending cuts, we should be aiming at the programs and entitlements that spend the most money — the big-dollar numbers.”

What would Gregg like to see instead? “First, repeal TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), since the administration is using it as a piggybank, and put that money toward debt reduction. Second, rescind stimulus spending after 2010. Third, stop trying to reduce Medicare spending in order to create major new health-care entitlements.” Gregg would also like to see “broad-based tax cuts to create economic activity, and talk from the president about discipline on his tax-credit proposal.”

“All in all, this budget is an unnecessary and dramatic increase in the size of government that will add innumerable new programs,” he says. “We need to be a solvent country that can pay back its debt and this is not a start. We will be offering amendments in the Senate, and I hope to get some bipartisan support to discipline our fiscal health. I think there will be some responsible votes on the other side of the aisle who will agree.”

John Boehner in a post-budget-release statement:

“Just three days after talking to House Republicans about the importance of fiscal responsibility, President Obama is submitting another budget that spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much.

“Filled with more reckless spending and more unsustainable debt, the President’s budget is just more of the same at a time when the American people are looking for Democrats in Washington to listen and change course. Families asking ‘where are the jobs’ deserve better than more government ‘stimulus’ programs and another year of attempting to tax and spend our way to recovery. Under President Obama’s budget, the federal government will continue to live well beyond its means for years to come with no relief in sight.

“I’m pleased that the President has spoken out about the need to get our fiscal house in order, and his proposed spending freeze is certainly a good first step, though it’s already being undercut by Washington Democrats and liberal special interests. Serious fiscal responsibility requires more than a few cuts here and there at the margins. Republicans have proposed adopting strict budget caps that limit federal spending on an annual basis and are enforceable by the President. These caps were a critical plank in the budget alternative Republicans proposed last year, led by Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan, and they are notably absent from the President’s budget. Without these caps, the federal budget deficit will continue to spiral out of control and this broken status quo will continue.

“I am also pleased that the President’s budget ensures our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have the resources they need to succeed in their mission. It’s my hope that this will continue to be an area in which the President and House Republicans find consensus.

“Another priority that has received strong bipartisan support in recent days is putting a stop to the Obama Administration’s plan to try the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and his-co conspirators in civilian courts in downtown Manhattan. Yet, the President’s budget irresponsibly spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on importing dangerous terrorists to U.S. soil, housing them at a ‘Gitmo North’ facility and trying them in civilian courts. Republicans will continue to stand with the American people and fight this severely misguided plan.”

NOTE: Republicans proposed spending caps as part of last year’s budget alternative, which was included in the “Better Solutions” document Leader Boehner presented to President Obama on Friday.

Today in Counter Terrorism; new arrests and politicization

Lots of good stuff in this post; please read the whole thing !


Will Congress Challenge the Justice Department on Those Bogus 'Terrorist' Conviction Numbers [Andy McCarthy]

It was just brought to my attention that, if you don't read carefully, the phony figure of 195 convictions of "international terrorists" since 9/11 magically becomes 300 by the time the Justice Department is done with it. Last week, DOJ put out a "fact sheet" on "The Criminal Justice System as a Counterterrorism Tool." Among other things, it claims (the italics are mine, for reasons that will become clear):

Hundreds of terrorism suspects have been successfully prosecuted in federal court since 9/11. Today, there are more than 300 international or domestic terrorists incarcerated in U.S. federal prison facilities.

Note first the slippery use of the word "suspect." All this means is that a person was suspected of being a terrorist at some point in the course of an investigation. It does not mean he actually was one, that he was ever charged with an actual terrorism crime, or that he was ever convicted of such a crime.

During the Bush years, lawyers sympathetic to suspected terrorists (several of whom now work in the Justice Department) claimed that the Bush administration was overstating the terrorism problem by counting as "terrorism" cases those matters in which suspects were prosecuted for less serious crimes, such as false statements, or perhaps not prosecuted at all — just deported under the immigration laws.

As I said in my column today, the use of immigration procedures in particular was slandered as "racial profiling." In debates, I would routinely point out that many of those deported were likely terrorists, but that we probably had weak cases because we could not use some of the intelligence we had on them; by deporting them, we were at least able to get them out of the country without having to reveal our intelligence publicly in trial proceedings. Nonsense, the lefty lawyers would scoff: "If these people were really terrorists, we would charge them with terrorism offenses and convict them in court!" Any other position, I was told, violated the presumption of innocence.

Now that Obama is president and wants to portray civilian courts as effective, however, the presumption is thrown overboard. Now we are supposed to assume someone is a terrorist simply because someone — even someone from the dreaded Bush administration — once suspected, for whatever reason, that he might be a terrorist.

The DOJ "fact sheet" goes on to tell us there are 300 "terrorists" in custody. But look at what they have to do to get there: (a) gone is the "since 9/11" limitation — the 300 figure represents all terrorists ever convicted who are still in jail; and (b) they have to add in domestic terrorists to goose up the numbers — even though no one is contending that domestic terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants. We are at war with al-Qaeda, not PETA.

Quite clearly, the 300 figure is a gross exaggeration if our focus is the number of international terrorists convicted since 9/11. As I show in my column, the Human Rights First report had to include all sorts of non-terrorism crimes just to get to 195. DOJ can't conceivably get anywhere close to 300.

Congress should be demanding, right now, this disclosure from the Justice Department:

Mr. Attorney General, your Department has represented to the public in a "fact sheet" that "hundreds" of terrorism "suspects" have been 'successfully prosecuted' since 9/11. Federal law defines international terrorism as involving "violent acts or acts dangerous to human life" that are intended to intimidate a civilian population, influence government policy by coercion, or affect the conduct of government by "mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping." Title 18, United States Code, Sec. 2331.

Please respond to the following:

1. Are you saying that the Justice Department has obtained convictions on crimes involving violent acts that fit this legal definition of terrorism?

2. Provide a list of the hundreds of terrorism suspects you say have been convicted since 9/11, indicating in each case the offenses that were charged and the crimes of conviction, and indicating in each case whether the crimes of conviction involve violent acts that fit the legal definition of terrorism set forth above.

3. Provide a list of the approximately 300 "international or domestic terrorists" you've represented are currently incarcerated in U.S. federal prison facilities. In each case, indicate (a) the offenses that were charged, (b) the crimes of conviction, (c) whether the case involved violent acts that fit the legal definition of terrorism set forth above, and (d) whether the crimes occurred before or after the 9/11 attacks.

It would be interesting to see what that "fact sheet" looked like


Who's in charge ? What is the policy ?

Ten with Ties to Abdulmutallab Arrested in Malaysia [Marc Thiessen]

AP has reported that “ten terrorism suspects arrested in Malaysia allegedly have ties to a Nigerian suspected in the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner.”

The question is: Who is interrogating them? The CIA interrogation program is shut down, and, according to the Obama administration, the new High-Value Interrogation Group has not been stood up. Are they being left to the Malaysians for interrogation? And if U.S. law-enforcement officials are involved, are they reading them their Miranda rights? These are questions the administration needs to answer.


Rigging the Numbers http://article.nationalreview.com/423463/rigging-the-numbers/andrew-c-mccarthy

We have not “convicted 195 terrorists in federal court since 2001.”
It is welcome news that the Obama administration has reversed its irrational decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters in Manhattan’s federal court. So far, however, the administration has merely — and grudgingly — begun to climb out of this hole of its own making. The president seems more poised to move his error than to correct it. Reports indicate that the administration thinks the challenge now is to find a new location in which to proceed with the same ill-advised civilian prosecution. Instead, the idea at this point should be to build a sensible strategy going forward: military commissions for now, and, ultimately, a new system for handling national-security cases. No such luck. Rather than learn from this experience, the Left is doubling down on civilian due process. Its agitprop du jour is a bogus numbers game. Rigging the Numbers We have not “convicted 195 terrorists in federal court since 2001.”

It is welcome news that the Obama administration has reversed its irrational decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters in Manhattan’s federal court. So far, however, the administration has merely — and grudgingly — begun to climb out of this hole of its own making. The president seems more poised to move his error than to correct it. Reports indicate that the administration thinks the challenge now is to find a new location in which to proceed with the same ill-advised civilian prosecution. Instead, the idea at this point should be to build a sensible strategy going forward: military commissions for now, and, ultimately, a new system for handling national-security cases. No such luck. Rather than learn from this experience, the Left is doubling down on civilian due process.

Its agitprop du jour is a bogus numbers game.

“We need to develop a greater resiliency in this country on security issues,” Sarah E. Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the New York Times. “The administration needs to remind the American public that we have convicted 195 international terrorists in federal courts since 2001.” That 195 number is making the rounds. It is both false and an exercise in hypocrisy. The figure is mined from “In Pursuit of Justice,” a report published by Human Rights First (HRF) in May 2008 and updated last July (available here). But the report does not claim that 195 international terrorists have been convicted. Rather, it says that 195 defendants have been convicted so far in 119 cases that have some connection, however attenuated, to terrorism. (See the report’s preface.) HRF goes on (at page 5) to explain its methodology. It examined prosecutions that were in some way “related to Islamist extremist terrorist organizations” (emphasis added). It should be obvious enough that this does not mean the people prosecuted were necessarily “international terrorists,” or that the cases involved actual terrorism charges.

But the report makes the obvious explicit:

In building our data set of terrorism cases, we have attempted to capture prosecutions that seek criminal sanctions for acts of terrorism, attempts or conspiracies to commit terrorism, or providing aid and support to those engaged in terrorism. We have also sought to identify and include prosecutions intended to disrupt and deter terrorism through other means, for example, through charges under “alternative” statutes such as false statements, financial fraud, and immigration fraud. [Emphasis added.]

This explanation makes clear that the cases HRF is talking about are, in the main, cases that no one disputes can be handled safely and efficiently by the civilian courts. For example, let’s say the FBI is investigating al-Qaeda and it interviews a person suspected of having relevant information. That person lies during the interview, so the prosecutors indict him for making false statements, and he pleads guilty. Under the HRF’s standards, that gets tallied as a conviction in a “terrorism case.” But it hardly means the defendant is an international terrorist, let alone a KSM.


A Word about the Human Rights First Report and the Left's Claim that We've Convicted 195 Terrorists Since 9/11 [Andy McCarthy]

The subject of my column this morning is the bogus number — 195 convictions — being thrown around by lefty lawyers and the DOJ to support their wayward argument that trials in the civilian criminal justice system make for an effective counterterrorism strategy. This, obviously, is the push-back against the temporary victory of common sense, the Obama administration's reversal of its decision to try KSM & Co. in federal court in Manhattan.

As I demonstrate in the column, the claim that there have been 195 convictions of "international terrorists" since 9/11 is false. It comes from the dishonest use being made of an 2009 update of a report published by Human Rights First in 2008, called "In Pursuit of Justice."

My column links the report and explains that it came up with the 195 number by aggregating cases that involved a lot more than terrorism charges (e.g., false-statements cases, immigration fraud, etc.) if those cases were somehow related to terrorism investigations.

There is something I didn't address in the column but I think I should make clear. The Human Rights First report itself is not the problem. For many years, I've known the authors of the report — Rich Zabel and Jim Benjamin. I think very highly of them, so much so that I cooperated in the original 2008 report, sitting for interviews at great length. I disagree philosophically with Rich and Jim regarding what we ought to conclude from the facts about civilian terrorism prosecutions. But I admire what they did in the report because they made a determined, good-faith effort to report honestly what the facts actually are. You can't have an intelligent debate until you know what the real facts are, and they tried to make sure we did.
The report itself is completely transparent in how it arrived at its number of 195 convictions since 2001. It does not attempt to mislead the reader — indeed, my explanation of why the 195 number is bogus comes from quoting the report itself.

I do not want to be misunderstood as criticizing the report. I don't agree with the report's bottom line that the civilian justice system is an effective tool against war criminals. But my quarrel is not with the data as laid out in the report. I object, instead, to the dishonest way the report is being used. The report is very clear that it is not labeling the 195 convicts as "international terrorists." Thus, the misuse of the report to make that suggestion is all the more disingenuous.

The same holds true for crimes like financial fraud and material support. These often involve people in the U.S. who are not themselves terrorists. Instead, they either contribute money and other assets to the jihadist cause (e.g., by contributing money to “charities” that are actually fronts for al-Qaeda or Hamas), or else help terrorists surreptitiously move their funds from place to place. To be sure, this is not always the case. As I recounted back in May, the Obama Justice Department gave a sweetheart deal to Ali Al-Marri. He was a hardcore terrorist, yet prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of material support to terrorism. As a result, he got an absurdly short sentence rather than the life-imprisonment term he’d have gotten if convicted on an actual terrorism charge. Al-Marri, however, is an unusual result. At least up until 2009, if a person could be proved to have committed terrorism crimes, he was almost always charged with terrorism crimes.

No opponent of civilian trials for enemy combatants is claiming that everyone who is connected in any way to a terrorism case should be transferred to the military courts. The quarrel here is over how to handle real operatives of al-Qaeda (and its components, like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula). We are talking about jihadists who are captured plotting, carrying out, or having carried out attacks against the United States — not just anyone who happens to get ensnared in the broad net of a terrorism investigation.

A handful of the 195 convicted defendants counted by HRF really were terrorists, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are better ways than civilian trials to try enemy combatants. Calling a prosecution “successful” just means that we convicted the defendant; it does not mean that national security was well served. If, because of civilian due-process rules, we had to reveal national-defense information that we could have kept secret in a military commission — or if we had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to address security concerns that could have been obviated by having a military trial in the safety of Gitmo — then the country would have been better off getting the same result in a military commission. That is common sense.

The numbers rigging, moreover, is a bit rich coming from left-wing lawyers. They spent the seven years after 9/11 accusing the Bush Justice Department of artificially inflating its numbers to convey a false sense of counterterrorism effectiveness. How? By opening cases as terrorism investigations but disposing of them without terrorism charges — especially through the immigration laws (i.e., deporting suspected terrorists and facilitators).

That’s right: When the Bush administration used the immigration laws to boot terror suspects out of the country, the Left and its fellow travelers like CAIR claimed this was racial profiling masquerading as counterterrorism. Now, in the age of Obama, we learn from HRF that “immigration fraud” counts as a “terrorism case” — so the group can boost the numbers and claim that the same Justice Department (under the Bush administration for most of the period covered in the report) has done a great job of combating terrorism in civilian court.

In any event, the fact that Umar Farouk Whoever can safely be handled in civilian federal court for procuring his green card by fraud hardly means Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should be brought to civilian federal court for a wartime mass-murder strike targeting nearly 300 Americans — or that we should bestow on KSM the same Bill of Rights protections no longer enjoyed by the nearly 3,000 Americans he slaughtered in a wartime attack. It’s time to cook up a new plan. Cooking the books is not going to cut it.

— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

Obama's Failed Iran Policy -- Is he now preparing to accept nuclear Iran ?

Clearly Obama's happy talk hasn't impressed crazy Mahmoud and the Iranians that Obama means business. Nor has his toothless policy of pushed backed deadlines for Iran to comply or face some really serious harsh words from Hilary and Barack done anything other than allow Iran to keep moving forward toward nuke capability.

John Bolton weighs in today:

Bolton: Obama's 'Troubling' Gulf Policy [Robert Costa]

On Sunday, new reports from the Persian Gulf revealed that the U.S. and its allies are stepping up their military defenses in the region. National Review Online asked John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for his take on the developments. Bolton calls the reports “troubling,” since “there is a risk that the new weapons system being delivered reflect a conscious decision within the Obama administration to accept that Iran will become a nuclear-weapons state, and that these shipments are the basis of the ‘defense umbrella’ that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned last year.”

“Supplementing the defense capabilities of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries is entirely proper, and was planned out during the Bush administration,” says Bolton. “Providing additional equipment and capabilities will help protect the Arab states of the Gulf region against possible provocations or retaliation, and also enhance the security of deployed American forces in the region.” The new equipment, he adds, “should, of course, be consistent with maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge in the region, which U.S. administrations have supported for decades on a bipartisan basis.”

Still, Bolton says he remains “worried” that the reports show “at bottom, how the Obama administration was prepared to acquiesce on a nuclear Iran, once it became clear that diplomacy and sanctions would fail.”

“We have obviously reached that point were the failure is evident,” says Bolton. “I worry that ‘Plan B’ for the administration is simply to hope that a nuclear Iran can be contained and deterred.” That, he says, “is a big mistake, both in how to handle Iran and in ignoring the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states in the region, who will not sit by and leave Iran with a nuclear advantage. All of that means a radically more dangerous and unstable Middle East, which will not be alleviated by a relatively small increase in weapons for the GCC states.”

The Obama Contradiction

Best line:
“I don’t think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he’s not a pragmatist, he’s an ideologue.

Noonan on Obama's State of the Union:

Obama's message: Washington is the problem; Washington is the solution.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=508