Right Wing Nut House

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s about what’s going on in my little community of Algonquin and how for my neighbors, that kind of news trumps what’s going on in the rest of the world.

A sample:

The Internet is truly a seductive place. It is the 18-year-old blond hard body with legs that don’t quit, swishing through a lunchtime crowd of 40-something paunched, balding, married men wishing they didn’t have two kids, a wife with a headache every night, and a mortgage to rival the national debt. With a flick of her hip, the seductress will whisk them all away to some place where they don’t have to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home from work or take the kid to soccer practice. Instead, our middle-aged Lotharios imagine themselves… (Insert current fantasy here.)

Getting caught up in earth-shaking events and the personalities that shape them is all well and good. But there are times when instead of peering at the monitor, gleaning the latest news from thousands of miles away, we should be looking out the window instead. What’s going on in your community? Your neighborhood? Next door?

C’mon, America. Lighten up!

President Ahmadinejad being escorted to Ground Zero in New York City shouldn’t get everyone’s panties in a twist. Didn’t you hear? This is the guy who is going to end the Iraq War and allow the boys to come home. If he wants to visit Ground Zero - even though he and his rogue nation are terrorist sponsoring scum - then by God the Bush Administration and all of the Iranian apologists in this country are going to make sure he gets his wish.

In a move that has stunned New York, the Bloomberg administration is in discussions to escort the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to ground zero during his visit to New York next week, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today.

The Iranian mission to the U.N. made the request to the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service, which will jointly oversee security during the leader’s two-day visit. Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against his country for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Kelly said the NYPD and Secret Service were in discussions with the Iranian Mission about the logistics for the possible visit, and whether it will take place at all. He said that for safety reasons related to ongoing construction at ground zero Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed to descend into the pit.

Wouldn’t you like to have been a fly on the wall in the White House when the Secret Service told the President that Ahmadinejad wanted to visit Ground Zero?

The White House will deny the President was informed of the tour but I would be monumentally shocked if Bush weren’t told within 5 minutes of the request being made. Somebody somewhere somehow had to give the go ahead for such planning to occur, especially since you have so many security services involved.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of what anyone could imagine would be a bigger insult to the dead of 9/11. Yassar Arafat laying a wreath in Shanksville? How about Nasty Nasrallah being invited to tour the new wing of the Pentagon, rebuilt after the attacks?

There is no imagining what would be a bigger insult because there wouldn’t be one. The fact is, there is no more wrenching, rage inducing, fist-through-the-wall event that could take place in this day and age than allowing the President of a state that equated the 9/11 attacks with our attack on Hiroshima to visit Ground Zero.

It would be no different than if we had allowed Tojo to visit the Arizona Memorial.

THE LEAST SURPRISING UPDATE IN THE HISTORY OF THIS BLOG

Evidently, the New York City police have nixed the idea of an Ahmadinejad drop by at Ground Zero:

Earlier today, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had said that Iranian officials had made a “formal request” that Mr. Ahmadinejad be permitted to visit ground zero and that the department, in coordination with the Secret Service, was discussing the matter with officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations…

A short while later, around 4:15 p.m., the Police Department’s spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said that Mr. Kelly had misspoke and that police commanders had already decided that a visit to ground zero by Mr. Ahmadinejad was not feasible.

Bush washed his hands of the responsibility for the incident faster than Pontius Pilate:

President Bush, moving quickly to respond to news that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has asked to visit ground zero, had a spokesman issue a statement aimed at Mayor Bloomberg that said – in so many words — deal with it.

“This is a matter for the City of New York resolve,” a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, Gordon Johndroe, said. He added pointedly: “It seems odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit ground zero.”

Odd? ODD? Holy Christ what a moron! Fire that flunky immediately.

Allah, by the way, has the definitive wrap-up on this mini-storm that will now probably die down, and adds this:

If it happens, if this Holocaust-denying terrorist filthbag is allowed to use the remains of the Trade Center for a photo op, the rage on the right will burn so white hot that even the anti-amnesty activism this summer will pale by comparison.

The tone deafness of that crew at the White House when it comes to the base - on up to and including Bush - never ceases to amaze me.

From Syrian President Bashar Assad’s point of view, why use words when bombs are so much louder and more attention getting?

Phalangist MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated by a powerful blast that ripped through his car in east Beirut’s Sin el-Fil suburb Wednesday in what appears to be bloody scheme to strip the March 14 coalition of its parliamentary majority just six days before a scheduled session to elect a new president.

A 40-kilogram strong car bomb explosion shattered Ghanem’s black Chevrolet Sedan as it drove in the plush suburb, killing him and five other people, including his driver and an unidentified person who was sitting next to the slain MP on the back seat of the vehicle.

Well that’s one way for Assad to express his disapproval at Ghanem’s anti-Syrian politics although he may have gone a bit overboard with 100 pounds of explosives doing his talking for him.

Maybe we can get Jim Baker to negotiate a dignified surrender of the March 14 government to Assad. After all, he’s willing to do it for the United States.

Another assassination of a March 14th MP. Another step in gangster Assad’s plan to control Lebanon any way the world will let him. It is unbelievable to me that civilized nations continue to carry on business as usual with this thuggish tyrant. Despite mountains of evidence assembled by the Hariri Commission that these assassinations are planned and ordered at the highest level of the Syrian government, the US and the rest of the world continue to deal with Syria as if it were a sovereign nation and not a collection of murderous gangsters who brazenly flout international law and human decency in order to fulfill their twisted goals of ruin and domination of a tiny neighbor.

If there was ever a need for the nations of the world to collectively and as one step up and take on the responsibility of grabbing Assad and his henchmen by the scruff of the neck and throwing them on history’s ash heap, it is now.

Walid Phares saw this coming last June:

After the withdrawal of regular Syrian forces from Lebanon in April 2005, Bashar Assad and his allies in Tehran designed a counter offensive (which we described then and later) aiming at crumbling the Cedars Revolution. One of the main components of this strategy was (and remain) to use all intelligence and security assets of Syria and Iran in Lebanon in order to “reduce” the number of deputies who form the anti-Syrian majority in the Parliament. As simple as that: assassinate as many members as needed to flip the quantitative majority in the Legislative Assembly. And when that is done, the Seniora Government collapses and a Hezbollah-led cabinet forms. In addition, if the Terror war kills about 8 legislators, the remnant of the Parliament can elect a new President of the Republic who will move the country under the tutelage of the Assad regime.

As incredibly barbaric as it seems in the West, the genocide of the legislators in Lebanon at the hands of the Syrian regime and its allies is very “normal” by Baathist (and certainly by Jihadist) political culture. During the 1980s, Saddam Hussein executed a large segment of his own Party’s national assembly to maintain his regime intact. In the same decade, Hafez Assad eliminated systematically his political adversaries both inside Syria and across Syrian occupied Lebanon to secure his control over the two “sister” countries. So for Bashar to order the assassination of his opponents in Lebanon as of the fall of 2004 to perpetuate his domination of the little Baathist “empire” is not a stunning development: it is the standing procedure in Damascus since 1970.

The guy is psychic.

Phares points out that for this strategy to succeed, 8 pro-government legislators must be dealt with. To date, due to assassination and death by natural causes, the March 14th majority has shrunk by 6. Two more and Hizbullah will be able to name their own man for the presidency, probably paying off Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun by handing him the office on a silver platter.

Ghanem was no fool. He knew he had a bullseye painted on his back:

A Friend of the victim, speaking on condition of anonymity, quoted Ghanem as telling him Tuesday evening: “I face the threat of assassination. They want to kill me to open the door for by-elections to choose a new MP from (Michel Aoun’s) Free Patriotic Movement.”

I’ll have more on this story and the implications for the presidential elections as well as the future of the Siniora government either later today or tomorrow morning.

UPDATE

Jim Hoft has a huge roundup from both MSM and Lebanese sources as well as some pretty gruesome pictures.

Running around Capitol Hill, their white flags flapping majestically in the breeze, Senate Democrats have desperately been searching for Republican allies to help them in their quest to hand Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

To be sure, the Bush Administration has spent much of the last 4 1/2 years doing the same thing, albeit not trying quite as hard and with considerably less planning. But for the Democrats and their hard and fast timetable for withdrawal of the bulk of American troops (and if the netnuts get their way, there won’t be a corporal’s guard left by the time the withdrawal is done), there don’t appear to be too many takers among Republicans:

Senate Democrats, who have spent weeks trying to woo Republicans to help end the war in Iraq, have taken a hard turn against compromise.

They now believe their best political strategy is to continue to play to a stalemate and blame an intransigent President Bush and his Republican congressional allies for refusing to negotiate an end to the war.

This is actually the safest political strategy possible. Knowing full well that pulling out the troops the way they are advocating would lead to a bloodbath, the Democrats will seek to cash in on people’s war weariness in 2008 by pointing out the obvious; that it was Republicans who got the country in this mess in the first place.

Not that people are liable to forget the previous 4 years of blunders, stupidities, mistakes, and miscalculations that have contributed in no small way to the chaos in Iraq today. But politicians like to think of the American people as children, the difference being the Dems want to play nanny to all of us while Republicans think it best that voters be seen and not heard. So rather than act like grown-ups themselves and cooperate on an Iraq policy that would serve our interests while allowing us to disengage, leaving behind something less than an unmitigated disaster, the two parties insist on playing “Pin the tail on the party that lost the War.”

“We haven’t found much movement with the Republicans. They seem to be sticking with the president,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday. “I think they’ve decided they definitely want this to be the Republican Senate’s war, not just Bush’s [war]. They’re jealous. They don’t want him to have it as only his war.”

That’s our Harry. First, last, and always the fool. Of course GOP Senators aren’t “jealous” of Bush nor do they ” want him to have it as only his war.” That may be the silliest political barb tossed on Capitol Hill this century. In fact, it’s borderline incoherent which makes one ask what time of day he was quoted and from which Capitol Hill watering hole Harry was coming from.

The calculus for getting the 60 votes needed to end the GOP filibuster on Iraq legislation apparently became too difficult for Reid to achieve, and a compromise could have forced anti-war Democrats to vote on softer goals for troop withdrawal, something staunchly opposed by the party’s base.

So Reid has forged ahead with an aggressive list of Iraq proposals, including a key amendment that would place hard timetables on troop withdrawal, shifting the mission in Iraq for U.S. forces from combat to supporting the Iraqi security forces, and completing the deployment.

Reid’s move essentially brings to an abrupt halt the delicate lobbying Democrats had engaged with moderate Republican senators whom they thought were vulnerable on the war issue.

Does anyone actually believe that the “base” would be satisfied with “shifting the mission in Iraq” to supporting Iraqi security forces? This has always been the dirty little secret of the Democrat’s “timetable.” No one is going to be “supporting” the Iraqi security forces. That’s because for the foreseeable future - 2 to 3 years according to the report issued by retired General James Jones - we will have to take the lead in operations involving the Iraqi army and police because only 6 or 7 brigades are judged competent enough to go it alone with Americans in support and advisory positions.

What this means is that beyond the 30,000 or so troops expected to be gone by next summer, there isn’t a whole lot we can do to reduce our troop commitment without severely damaging Iraqi security. But this isn’t about Iraqi security or American interests or fighting al-Qaeda, or any other military/political goal we might aspire to. This is about the raw, cynical use of politics by the Democrats in calculated effort to garner as many votes in 2008 as possible. That, gentle readers, is the bottom line. And what is truly shocking is that the Dems aren’t even trying to hide this fact from anybody. They are boasting about it. They are glorying in the notion of it. They are congratulating themselves, patting themselves on the back for being so clever.

But hey! Don’t call them unpatriotic.

The Iraq Tar Baby has well and truly trapped both parties. Unless Dennis Kucinich is elected president, the next Commander in Chief will come into office facing exactly the same situation in Iraq on January 20, 2009 that George Bush faced on January 19, 2009 and will have to manage the situation in Iraq so that the kind of disaster that would surely follow any “hard” timetables for withdrawal currently being pushed by Democrats can be avoided.

Some are grumbling about Bush “kicking the can down the road” so that withdrawal will be up to his successor. That may be true but I doubt whether the President - any president - would prefer that to be the case. Nor should Democrats fear that anyone who hasn’t lived in a cave for the last four years will blame them for any disasters that would befall Iraq or the Middle East following an American exit - unless they force a withdrawal under the worst possible circumstances and at the worst possible time as they are advocating now.

Simply put, the “hard” timetable pushed by the Democrats will not end up with any kind of “redeployment” but rather a full scale retreat for which their rabid base has been agitating these last few years. To pretend otherwise is to ignore both political reality and the cynicism of those who promote the surrender of American interests in Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

Join me today at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Central time for the Rick Moran Show on Blog Talk Radio.

Today my special guest will be Shaun Mullen of The Moderate Voice and Kiko’s House. Is there such a beast as a moderate in American politics today? We’ll ask Shaun about that as well as Iraq, the presidential race, and other interesting topics.

If you want to access the stream live, you can click on the button below (I think.) BTR has just had a huge and wonderful upgrade to its software so I hope you can get the broadcast by clicking on the button.

Here’s my new Host Page at BTR. I think you can access the show once it starts there as well (some features don’t show up until 2 minutes before air time.)

You can also access the player for the podcast which will be up almost immediately after the show.

UPDATE

The first 11:30 seconds or so is dead air (you can use the cursor to fast forward to when the dead air ends) thanks to the fact that I had no idea my feed was not going out over the air. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway, it was an interesting discussion. You can stream it or download it by clicking the button above.

Many of you may have heard or been following the so-called “Holy Land Foundation” trial in Texas where CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to use Islamic charities in this country to fund Hamas in their war of genocide against Israel.

The Dallas Morning News has been doing a bang-up job of covering the trial and all the issues and personalities surrounding it. Here’s a piece that gives some good background on the charges and the issues.

In combing through the thousands of pages of documents seized by federal authorities, prosecutors have translated some documents that will have many blogs buzzing this morning.

The documents detail a Muslim plot to take over the United States.

First, it must be said that I have a better shot of being the closer for the Chicago Cubs than the Muslim Brotherhood has ever had of taking over the country. Reading excerpts from the plan is like taking a walk through a psyche ward for the criminally insane:

A 1991 strategy paper for the Brotherhood, often referred to as the Ikhwan in Arabic, found in the Virginia home of an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, describes the group’s U.S. goals, referred to as a “civilization-jihadist process.”

“The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions,” it states. This process requires a “mastery of the art of ‘coalitions,’ the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’ ”

Success in the U.S. “in establishing an observant Islamic base with power and effectiveness will be the best support and aid to the global movement,” it states.

A transcript of a Brotherhood orientation meeting recorded in the early 1980s includes discussions of the need for “securing the group” from infiltration by “Zionism, Masonry … the CIA, FBI, etc. so that we find out if they are monitoring us” and “how can we get rid of them.” Discussions later turn to “weapons training at the Ikhwan’s camps” in Oklahoma and Missouri.

Not only were these guys lunatics, they were paranoid as well. The Masons? Thank God they don’t know anything about Moose Lodges.

But as nutso as these fanatics are, a germ of truth emerges from their rantings and certain actions by Muslim groups in the west begin to make sense.

I have taken great pains over the years to differentiate between the extremely small, violent minority of Muslims who have taken up jihad against American and the west and the huge bulk of the followers of the Prophet who wouldn’t hurt a flea. You can no more judge Islam by pointing to Osama Bin Laden than you can judge Christianity by invoking the name of David Koresh or Judaism by using Rabbi Kahane as an example. Such thinking is shallow, ignorant, and flies in the face of the facts.

But it is perfectly proper to judge Muslims who have emigrated to the US and Europe by standards we here in the west set for ourselves - tolerance for other faiths being among the most important. That, and a recognition of living in a shared community while adopting similar values and respecting the rights and dignity of all is a fundamental necessity to the smooth functioning of our western societies.

This does not mean that western Muslims should be prevented from proselytizing their faith nor should the process of assimilation destroy their culture or subsume their traditions. Such assimilation has been going on for centuries and has succeeded in building a stable, vibrant western culture where all can share in the advantages freedom has brought us.

But Muslims have failed in Europe (not so much in the US) to assimilate the western values of tolerance and freedom of thought and resist joining the societies that they have chosen to live. Certainly a large part of the problem have been short sighted policies promulgated by the relatively homogeneous, Christian governments of Europe that segregate the newcomers and deny them many of the benefits of living in the west. But beyond the material, there is the very real and growing problem of Muslim resistance to the very idea that there are certain tenets of western society that all must believe in if it is to work.

The fanatics who wrote the plan to “take over” the US reveal tactics being used in Europe by Muslims to further isolate their communities, shielding them from the influence of western culture while seeking to impose their own beliefs on the majority. There is nothing subtle about this which makes it all the more incomprehensible that governments acquiesce to some of the demands of the “moderates.” If the goal is to avoid social unrest, all they are doing is putting off the inevitable. Eventually, the newcomers will demand more than any government will be able or willing to give. And at that point, the clash they could have avoided by resisting calls for codifying intolerance now will certainly come back to haunt them.

The tactics of “absorption, “cooperation, and using the “art of coalitions” in order to further isolate Muslims in Europe are familiar to anyone who has followed recent history in countries like Great Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark. Ironically, European Muslims build coalitions and garner cooperation not to assimilate but rather to further separate themselves from the societies where they live. They have little thought of “taking over” France or Great Britain (at the moment). But building a separate society, removed from the mainstream and governed by their own laws is almost certainly within their reach. And when the demographics favor them 50 years from now, it won’t be a matter of them “taking over” but instead simple “absorption” of the minority of original Europeans will be all that is necessary.

Such a scenario will not play out here in America. There would have to be a massive influx of Muslims for that to occur. The latest census shows around 3 million Muslims in the United States or about 1% of the population. Even with lax immigration, the idea that Muslims will be able to resist the pull of assimilation in any great numbers doesn’t make any sense. The US is too big, too diverse, for any one group to “grow” themselves to dominance.

Those Muslim Brotherhood nut cases should go back to the drawing board. The plan they’ve come up with doesn’t pass the loony test.

I would like to be able to say that all the signs we’ve seen this last month about planning for war with Iran was just that - updating target lists, tweaking schedules and so forth. I’m sure the Pentagon does this all the time to many different plans to defend or attack. It’s why they’re in business and we shouldn’t expect anything less. But normally, such activity does not mean that we are about to carry out those plans.

But I don’t think the French Foreign Minister would say something like this unless the president has given ample warning to our EU allies that something was up:

The world should “prepare for war” with Iran, the French foreign minister has said, significantly escalating tensions over the country’s nuclear programme.

Bernard Kouchner said that while “we must negotiate right to the end” with Iran, if Teheran possessed an atomic weapon it would represent “a real danger for the whole world”.

The world should “prepare for the worst… which is war”, he said.

His comments came after Washington reminded Teheran that “all options were on the table” in confronting its nuclear policy, which many officials in the West believe has the ultimate aim of arming a nuclear warhead, despite Iran’s claim that it is for civilian purposes.

Jacques Chirac blew hot and cold on confronting Iran but ultimately came down exactly where Sarkozy’s government is now; no nukes for the mullahs. Whether that means that the French would support the kind of preemptive strike the Bush Administration appears to be planning, we cannot say.

Preemptive it would have to be. There is absolutely no way of us knowing when or if the Iranians will have overcome the immense technological problems in getting their centrifuge system to produce enriched uranium on an industrial scale. They may be months away as I write this if you believe Iranian President Ahmadinejad:

In a report submitted in late August 2007 to the to the IAEA Council of Governors, IAEA Director-General Muhammad El-Baredei stated that as of August 19, 2007, Iran had 1,968 centrifuges at the Natanz facility, into which UF6 gas had been injected. However, in early September, 2007, Ahmadinejad stated: “When we opened [the UCF] at Isfahan, they [i.e. the West, headed by the U.S.] threatened military action [against us]. But now, we are operating over 3,000 centrifuges, and every week [another] new [centrifuge] system is installed… They have not managed to do anything against [our] united and steadfast nation.”(6) He added, “They thought they could, via each of the sanctions resolutions that they issued, make the Iranian nation withdraw – but after each resolution, the Iranian nation showed additional progress [in its nuclear] program.”(7)

A “new centrifuge system” comprises 164 individual centrifuge machines. I believe Ahmadinejad is wildly exaggerating here when he boasts of having 3,000 machines up and running. And there is zero evidence that Iran has been able to use these centrifuges in a cascade - dumping the UH6 gas into succeeding centrifuges further enriching it. Even if they have partially succeeded in operating a cascade, the likelihood of them being able to use all their centrifuges to continuously enrich enough uranium to make a bomb is extremely slight.

According to experts I respect - arms control professionals who harbor no illusions about the world or our enemies - Iran is still 18-24 months from having a workable bomb. Allow me to commit a horrid blog faux pas and reprint an entire post from Dr. Jeffery Lewis’s Arms Control Wonk blog:

We know that Iran operated 8 cascades between 18 April- 19 August. That is seventeen weeks, 119 days or 2856 hours.

Eight cascades, fed 70 grams of hex per hour, should have consumed 1,600 kg of hex.

Assume the four additional cascades began operating on May 13 (about 14 weeks). The additional four cascades should have consumed another 650 kg, for a grand total of 2,250 kilograms.

Instead, Iran consumed 690 kilograms of hex during that period, for an operating efficiency of about 30 percent.

That’s very low.

What is very odd that is that 260 of those kilograms were consumed between 15 April-22 May.

As a result, all twelve cascades consumed only 430 kilograms in the not quite 13 weeks that followed. Twelve cascades, over the course of 89 days or 2136 hours, should consume almost 1800 kg of hex. That means Iran’s centrifuges operated close to one-quarter of their efficiency, a substantial decrease from the relatively continuous operation between 15 April – 22 May (about half their maximum feed).

Are the Iranians husbanding that Chinese hex?

Do the centrifuges with indigenously produced components not work right?

Is Iran holding back for political reasons?

Clearly, Iran is having problems with its nuclear program. It is a third world country without much in the way of educational, scientific, or technical infrastructure and have relied for years on other scientists and technicians - mostly from Pakistan - to make any progress at all on enriching uranium in any great quantities.

Now that the AQ Khan black market network has been smashed, Iran has been pretty much on its own these last few years. The progress they have made has been uneven at best. Every time Ahmadinejad brags about some new milestone in the Iranian program, it has proven to be unrealistic or an outright lie. The Iranian president is apparently not above using the nuclear program for domestic political purposes as evidenced by his remarks, translated here by MEMRI, before a Rev Guard gathering:

On several occasions, Ahmadinejad stressed that Iran would continue developing its nuclear program regardless of the sanctions. He noted that the sanctions were having no impact on progress in “the irreversible path of the nuclearization of the Iranian nation”(3) and denied Western reports of a slowdown in Iran’s nuclear enrichment. Ahmadinejad further promised to place Iran’s nuclear technology “at the service of those who are determined to confront the bullying powers and aggressors [i.e., the Western countries, headed by the U.S.]…”(4) In a recent conference of Revolutionary Guards commanders, he also stated that “some violent powers [i.e., the West, headed by the U.S.] are now officially declaring that they want to cooperate with the Iranian nation, and that they acknowledge Iran’s [status] as a regional power. However, they must know that Iran is a global power.”(5)

This, of course, is the monumental problem that Iraq poses. How much stock do we put into his boasts to “place Iran’s” nuclear technology in the hands of terrorists? Can we even afford to ignore a threat like that?

This is Dick Cheney’s “1% Doctrine” come calling in the flesh. If there is a 1% chance that such a boast would ever be realized, shouldn’t we act pre-emptively? It is a question we better start asking ourselves and debating. And if not a 1% chance, where do we draw the line? At what point does it become foolhardy not to take Iranian threats like this seriously?

And even though Ahmadinejad is still just the President and his views do not necessarily reflect those of his boss, Supreme Leader Khamenei, Iran has never seen a president with such a strong independent powerbase inside the country. Despite the fact that Bush may be more popular among the Iranian people than Ahmadinejad (just kidding), he has the unwavering support of some very powerful, very conservative elements in the clergy and especially in the IRG where he was a commander of the Qods force back in the day.

If this weren’t enough of a worry, we also have to be concerned that this is not a rational person we would be dealing with. All Iranian leaders have been walled off from the rest of the world for so long, their worldviews skewed by the Koran and by a self-imposed isolation, that it becomes extraordinarily difficult not to look at statements like this and wonder if Ahmadinejad isn’t an unreasoning religious fanatic:

“[The day] of these aggressors… who are oppressing and controlling the nations, is now coming to an end. Those who [seek to] distract the people with a materialistic philosophy of one kind or another, and who pursue materialism, have brought humanity nothing but despair and deception… The time of the righteous rulers will come, and the most righteous [of rulers, [i.e., the Hidden Imam], will form a government and thereby instate the monotheism of Abraham [throughout the world]. That day is not far away…

“Our enemies naturally feel threatened by the call to [believe in] the Mahdi, for they do not want people to thinks about justice. But our reply to them is that the era of the aggressive [powers] has come to an end. We believe that it is time for the righteous to rule, and for humanity to be properly [re]born out of love, knowledge and spirituality.”(14)

His pronouncements regarding the Mahdi may also be for domestic political consumption. But in this, we have independent observers who have remarked about Ahmadinejad’s apparent seriousness when talking about the 12th Imam:

At the International Seminar on the Doctrine of Mahdism, held in Iran September 6-7, 2006 during the celebrations for the Mahdi’s birthday, and attended by representatives of various countries, Ahmadinejad emphasized the universal and active nature of Mahdism and called on the West to accept it: “Today mankind is proceeding towards the truth. Today the happiness of mankind depends on proceeding towards the truth. Today we invite everyone to proceed towards the truth, since [the truth] is the only way… This celebration [of the Mahdi’s birthday] is not only for Muslims but for the entire world. The Mahdi belongs to all of mankind…

“The Hidden Imam has no tangible presence among us, but he is always [here], and we must prepare the ground for his speedy appearance… Some claim that during his occultation, his [nobility] is suspended, but that is not true… On the contrary, we must rush towards him and hasten to prepare the ground for his appearance. [He will not appear] if we sit idly. Mankind must hurry towards the Hidden Imam in order to reach him. A person who [actively hastens the coming of the Imam] is different from one who does not… Today, mankind is proceeding rapidly towards perfection, truth, justice, love, peace and compassion, and this is possible only under the rule of the perfect man [i.e. the Hidden Imam]…” [17]

We have no clue whether this is all for show or whether he truly believes in these messianic principles. And if he believes that the appearance of the 12th Imam can be hastened by actively creating the conditions for his return that have been prophesied, what does that mean for policy makers here and elsewhere in the west? At the very least, this possible obsession with the 12th Imam could be coloring Ahmadinejad’s everyday decision making process:

Ahmadinejad went on to explain: “At some meetings, I told these friends that I was an engineer, and that I had analyzed the problems and presented proof, [and thus] I told them that the enemies do not have the courage to launch a war against us. Some doubted my words, but I presented them with two [pieces of] evidence. First, I told them, I am an engineer, I am deliberate, I make tables and write and examine hypotheses for hours. I present proof and put together plans based on it, and that is how I proceed. They [the U.S.] cannot pose a problem to Iran. They are stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have problems there, and lack the ability [to act against Iran]. As further proof, I told them that I believe in the word of God. God said that those who act properly will triumph. Iran’s Leader [Ali Khamenei] and the Iranian nation are steadfast in, attentive to, and agree with the word of God…” (9)

For those who believe that Ahmadinejad would never attack the United States or the west because he knows the consequences, it might help to reread the above paragraph. This is classic miscalculation of an opponent - the same reason that Saddam continued to fire on our aircraft and boast about driving us from Iraqi soil. He never thought we’d go all the way and overthrow him. He was wrong.

But is Ahmadinejad serious about his belief that the west will do nothing regardless of what they do with their nuclear program? Apparently so. On such miscalculations are wars made certain.

To sum up, we have an Administration determined to deal with Iran, arrogantly believing that no matter who their successor is, they won’t have the guts to do what is necessary to safeguard the country. Given the uselessness of diplomatic moves to date, it is clear to me that there is a clock - probably on Dick Cheney’s desk - that is ticking down toward zero hour.

And in Tehran, we have a messianic leader who dismisses any threat from the west and wants to put those who advocate rapprochement with the democracies in jail:

On another occasion, Ahmadinejad harshly condemned senior Iranian officials who had in recent months called for compromise with the West: “With regard to obtaining nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, unreliable individuals have spoken of compromising… No one would believe it if I mentioned the names of these individuals, who in several meetings spoke of the need for compromise, enumerating the enemy’s strong points, and [raising the possibility that the West could launch] an all-out war… We have experienced days when we were pressured from a hundred different directions from within [Iran] to withdraw [and halt uranium enrichment]… But I said that I was willing to guarantee them that it was impossible for [the U.S.] to launch a war against us…”(8)

A man who believes in the imminent return of the messiah and who thinks it is “impossible for the US to launch a war” against Iran?

This, along with the tunnel vision among our own leaders is a recipe for disaster.

Can Condi or Gates stop it? I think the answer is a qualified yes if they can engage the rest of the world in applying serious sanctions that dig deep into the Iranian economy. The faltering economy could bring to the fore in Iran the slightly less radical and more practical leadership of the faction led by former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who was recently elected head of the powerful Assembly of Experts and is probably dead set against war with the United States - for now. This is the faction that Ahmadinejad was talking about in the quote immediately above. They don’t want war with the US on very practical grounds. Unlike their engineer president, they have no illusions of what a couple of hundred B-51, B-2, and F-117 bombers can do to Iran not to mention another 300 or so carrier based aircraft in the Gulf. They are rightly terrified that their rickety economy could be destroyed if the US were to seriously go after Iranian infrastructure.

Can the “no war” factions in each government win the day? In order to avoid conflict, the Iranians are going to have to give substantially on their nuclear program - stringent inspections with strict international oversight on its facilities - while the United States will probably have to give some security assurances to the Iranians that we won’t agitate for regime change. You and I both know such assurances will not be forthcoming nor will the Iranians agree to such demands.

But there is still time to maneuver diplomatically. Not much time - perhaps less than a year - before Iran will probably be capable of slowly enriching uranium to weapons grade levels. Whether anything can be done to avoid war in the interim is anyone’s guess.

UPDATE

I should have included this profile of IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei in today’s NY Times if only because reading it - and more importantly, reading this post from Allah - shows the problems with getting the UN to do its job and help avoid war between the west and Iran.

Read especially Allah’s links to his posts from earlier this year when ElBaradei was shamelessly shilling for the mullahs, kowtowing to their wishes to banish an inspector who was doing too good of a job among other things. ElBaradei is the gatekeeper at the UN and would probably be the difference between war and peace in the long run.

Given his historic reluctance for confrontation, it is likely we will get the former.

Think Progress is one of those lefty sites that will skewer the right or Republicans at the drop of a hat:

“GOP activist drops hat; blacks and children suffer.”

That may have been a headline last week. It certainly isn’t any more outrageous than some other Think Progress headlines. How about this doozy:

“Bush Admin Tamps Down Right-Wing Desire For Mass Deportation Of Undocumented Immigrants”

If they only knew that those detention camps out west were built for liberals and not for illegal immigrants…

All of this aside, my eyes popped open today when I saw this headline at the site:

“Fox censors Sally Field’s anti-war speech at Emmy’s.”

OOOOOH those evil Fox News censors! How dare they! Just when Sally is ready to speak truth to power, they pull the plug on her. Whatever happened to the good old days when you could get up at the Emmy and Oscar Award ceremonies and spout ludicrous political screeds, ranting against greedy corporations or evil conservatives to your heart’s content? If this isn’t evidence that the country is going to hell in a hand basket under Bushitler, I don’t know what is.

No matter. This is Fox News we’re talking about here. And not one single mention of the war - unless it’s accompanied with fireworks and patriotic music - will be allowed, right?

Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.”

The “expletive” was “goddamned,” a no-no in the AP Style Book although the oath is heard quite frequently on cable TV shows. But Think Progress took the controversy one step further to infer that the reason Fox bleeped the sentence was because of its subject matter, not because an offensive word was uttered. After all, who else would “silence” an antiwar critic but Fox News?

If true, I hate to tell the denizens over at Think Progress, but most of the press is in on the conspiracy as well. It seems that the word “goddamned” is stricken from almost every newspaper account of the Emmy’s I could find. Here’s that closet Fox News sympathizing New York Times:

And while most of the celebratory acceptance speeches on the broadcast were uninspiring, remarks by Sally Field sent the Fox network’s censors to the mute button — not for her antiwar statements but for a vulgarity made when she remarked that her character on “Brothers & Sisters” was a mother with a son headed for combat in Iraq. If mothers ruled the world, she said in essence, there would be no wars.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch couldn’t make up its mind why poor Sally was muted:

Sally Field of ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” used her win as lead actress in a drama to make an anti-war speech tied to her character’s story line, only to be muted for several seconds at the end. It was unclear whether her remarks were considered inappropriate or whether she was just being punished for running long.

For myself, I find nothing inappropriate about the use of the word “goddamned.” However, those who are religiously inclined - a fair slice of any TV audience - are almost certainly offended by the oath which is why few newspapers reporting the story quoted it and why it is still one of the few words you rarely hear on over the air TV.

Which is why AP, the inventor of the aforementioned style book - the gospel of journalists and columnists in the English speaking world - also realized the true reason the evildoers at Fox bleeped Field’s words:

“Surely this belongs to all the mothers of the world,” Field said in a rambling acceptance speech that wound up with a swear word that had to be bleeped by Fox censors.

Field’s speech recalled her much-parodied 1985 acceptance of the best-actress Oscar for “Places in the Heart,” in which she said the famous line: “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you really like me.”

Perhaps she should pass on a little of that love to Fox News.

I have no doubt that Think Progress actually saw nothing wrong with uttering “goddamned” in front of a nationally televised audience. I don’t find much wrong with it myself. But in a case that was so clearly a matter of taste and network standards regarding language rather than anything having to do with content, you would believe that Think Progress would actually drop the juvenile finger pointing just once and not create a controversy out of whole cloth just to get their knuckle dragging commenters all in a lather over an incident that virtually the entire media sees in a different light.

This entire left wing obsession with Fox News (and Fox Broadcasting) and their supposed “bias” toward conservatives always makes me giggle. You can’t walk through a green room at Fox on any given day without tripping over a dozen liberals who are engaged by the network to give opposing views on every topic under the sun. I don’t see ABC, NBC, CBS, falling over themselves to do the same. Nor do MSNBC or CNN allow for the kind free wheeling discussions (or shoutfests) between the two sides that Fox does.

This is not to say that Fox is more watchable than any other news net. I find the same lazy reporting, the same ignorance of basic facts there as I do everywhere else. It’s just that liberal sites like Think Progress refuse to see the same thing at the other media outlets unless they feel a liberal ox is being gored - a myopia that makes any of their criticisms of Fox News ring hollow indeed.

UPDATE

The boobs at Crooks and Liars have picked up on the “war censor” meme:

At last night’s 59th Annual Emmy Awards, Sally Field, who won Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Nora Holden Walker in ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters,” was censored by FOX as she was about to make a point about the Iraq War.

Damn. And it was such a great “point” too - that it is a “goddamned war.”

Maybe Fox thought the notion that war is “goddamned” was just too original.

UPDATE II:

Methinks Think Progress thinks too much:

Field’s censored comments not technically ‘profane.’

If not “technically profane,” why do the overwhelming majority of national media outlets either not mention the exact word or employ the euphemism “expletive” or some other device to avoid printing the word? The reason is that it is offensive to millions of people.

Let me make it easier on you lefties; when you hear “goddamned” think “something Muslim.” That way, you’re sure to understand why some Christians would be upset at the use of the word in question.

Of course, Christians are not likely to come after you with a rusty knife and cut off your head for your transgression, which I guess emboldens many on the left to assert the “non-profanity” defense and try to make it appear as if Ms. Field’s anti-war message was the true target of evil Fox’s censorship. But if you imagine Fields insulting Allah or dissing the Prophet, you would have no problem understanding the bleep - anti-war nonsense about mothers running the world or not.

And speaking of mothers in charge of the planet, here’s Meryl Yourish in the comments at Hot Air on that subject:

So, is she counting the mothers like this one, who blew herself up and took four Israelis with her? Or these?

And I say this as a woman and a feminist.

Amen, sister.

Nobody had to bail Glenn Greenwald out of jail yesterday. Or Markos. Or Jane Hamsher. Or Maha. Or any other lefty who has spent the last 4 years safely ensconced behind their computer monitors telling all of us how morally superior they are because they oppose the War in Iraq and how those who support the mission should either enlist or shut up.

Meanwhile, almost 200 of their compatriots in the anti-war movement - those who are serious about peace - could have used their help and their bodies yesterday. They deliberately provoked their own arrests in order to stop a war they don’t believe in.

A march by thousands of protesters demanding an end to the Iraq war turned chaotic yesterday afternoon near the Capitol, where hundreds sprawled on the ground in a symbolic “die-in.” Police arrested 189 people, including 10 who organizers said were veterans of the war.

Capitol Police used chemical spray against a small number of the protesters and pushed back others who tried to jump a barrier in a self-described effort to be arrested. The “die-in,” on a walkway in front of the Capitol, was generally peaceful, but scores of arrests came when protesters tried to climb over metal fences and a low stone wall…

After being processed and released last night, one of those arrested said he had come by train from the Boston area. The protester, who identified himself as Walter Ducharme, 78, of Cambridge, Mass., said he had been arrested at an earlier demonstration and “figured I had to do it again.”

The fact is, those who are truly dedicated to peace and prove it by their actions make pretenders like Greenwald et al look like the cowardly wretches they truly are. The pretenders have no moral standing whatsoever to criticize those who support the mission in Iraq. They are burdened with their own cravenness when it comes to standing up for what they believe in, putting their hides and their freedom on the line in order to stop a war and an Administration they constantly tell us are evil.

If this is how they fight evil, does anyone doubt that evil is laughing in their faces, certain of its triumph?

In fact, their hysteria over the last few years about Bush “tearing up the Constitution” and “taking away our freedoms” calls into question not only their courage but their sanity. Are they trying to tell us that all they can do to save America from a dictator like Bush is write snotty little essays, vying with each other to see who can call the President the most mean-spirited names in the fewest number of words? What about “resistance?” What about “confrontation?”

Let’s take as an example of what ordinary people can do to affect change, the Solidarity Movement in Poland that overthrew a real dictatorship. Not only did they write snotty little essays about the Soviets and their own government, they also protested in the streets and on the docks; cities, towns, villages, and anywhere they could make their voices heard. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people eventually who risked their lives for freedom from real tyranny not the ginned up, politically motivated, exaggerated, fake frenzy over imagined despotism that the left in this country has accused the Bushies of over the last six years.

Those people had the kind of moral courage to which the left can only pretend. Arrested, beaten, even murdered for their beliefs by a pitiless, all powerful government, the example set by the freedom loving protesters in Poland makes the keyboard peace warriors who hunch over their venom soaked little treatises and blather on about the “threat” the Bushies pose to liberty look like dilettantes and mountebanks.

And the same kind of cowardly, “save my own hide” attitude extends to the antiwar effort as well. The demonstration yesterday was planned for months. It was advertised and promoted on every lefty website worth its salt. It was sponsored by one of the largest liberal “grass roots” organizations in the country.

And all they could muster is a measly 10,000 people - many of whom were there representing causes as diverse as anti-globalization and promoting the vegan lifestyle? And only 200 of the protesters exhibiting the commitment and conscience to get themselves arrested?

Why didn’t Greenwald prove how dedicated he is to peace by at least showing up? Probably because they wouldn’t pay his expenses from Brazil. Ditto for the thousands of other lefty bloggers who write smugly of war supporters not putting their money where their mouth is and enlisting to fight in Iraq all the while showing a yellow streak a mile wide about standing up for their own convictions and filling the jails of this country in order to stop a war they say they oppose.

It’s easy to write those overly dramatic, keening laments about how hard it is to move the country and Congress to end the war. One can just imagine these guys at Point du Hoc. “It’s too high a cliff. Let’s try down the beach a bit.” Or can you imagine Hamsher, Greenwald, etc. at Omaha Beach? “The fire is too intense. Let’s go back to the ship and have some lunch.”

The left will no more fight for peace than they will fight for anything else important. Their “fighting” consists solely of lecturing the rest of us on how we should obey their petulant demands because of their moral superiority. Why no one calls them out on this idiocy is beyond me. The brave souls who marched in Selma proved their moral superiority by peacefully facing down those who would do violence to them. They endured billy clubs, fire hoses, beatings, jail, and even death to affect change.

The modern incarnation of the peace warrior has legs of jelly and serious problems with bladder control when confronted with the choice of claiming the moral high ground rather than actually earning it by putting their bodies and their freedom at risk. There should have been 10,000 people arrested yesterday instead of 200. A few protests like that, with thousands of activists hauled off to jail, and I guarantee this war will be over a lot quicker than if Glenn Greenwald or one of his ilk writes another long winded, impossibly boring essay on the evils of Bush or the chickenhawks of the right and their cowardice in not joining the military to fight.

The left will choose the coward’s way out every time and call it “activism.” Come and see me after you’ve spent just one night in jail or gotten a whiff of tear gas. Then I’ll give your “chickenhawk” argument all the consideration it deserves. If you want to argue that someone overage or with a physical disability or even those who don’t want to make a career in an all volunteer army must keep their mouths shut in the debate over the war, then go ahead and make that argument. But not to recognize that the opposite is true - that those who advocate withdrawal based on some kind of moral superiority (on which the entire “chickenhawk” meme rests) while refusing to go to any legal lengths to personally take responsibility for doing what is necessary to end the conflict - prove their unworthiness to not only declaim against war supporters but also agitate for peace.

In short, put up or shut up. You can hardly call hawks “chickens” while hiding behind your computers trying to prove that you are everyone’s moral betters when you won’t do anything more strenuous than cleaning the spittle off your monitors after one of your unhinged diatribes against your political foes.

The week did not start well for Rudy Giuliani. Several polls were released showing the entrance of Fred Thompson into the race for GOP nominee had tightened up the contest considerably as the former Tennessee Senator cut into Giuliani’s lead significantly in several states.

Suddenly, Giuliani looked very vulnerable - especially among the conservative base who seemed to be warming to Thompson’s down home charm and classic conservative positions on many issues.

But thankfully from Rudy’s point of view, an opportunity presented itself for him to rally the base to his candidacy and show himself capable of standing up to those who would smear the military while taking on the leading Democratic candidate for appearing to agree with the slimers.

Salvation came in the form of the dumbest, the most spectacularly ignorant political maneuver in modern history. Radical anti-war group and huge Democratic party asset Moveon.Org published a full page ad in the New York Times (at an apparent discount) referring to General David Petraeus as General “Betray-Us.”

There is very little disagreement that Moveon’s smear job against General Petraeus actually turned the tide and put the anti-war Democrats on the defensive while rallying and energizing the GOP base to support the General’s plan for Iraq. And Giuliani, seeing the opportunity to exploit that stupidity, emerged by week’s end as the General’s most visible champion by buying his own ad in the Times savaging both Moveon and Hillary Clinton, whose statement that in order to believe the General you would have to “suspend belief” seemed to dovetail with the anti-war group’s message.

Giuliani, calling MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad “abominable,” said his campaign is asking the paper for a comparable rate for an ad to run following President Bush’s speech on Iraq.

The former mayor said his ad “will obviously take the opposite view” from MoveOn.org, which argued in its ad that Gen. David Petraeus is “cooking the books” on Iraq and cherry-picking facts that support his recommendation to keep a large number of troops in Iraq for some time.

Giuliani continued to include Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in his criticisms for her comments that it would take “a willing suspension of disbelief” to accept at face value Petraeus’s report on the situation in Iraq. Giuliani interpreted Clinton’s remarks at a hearing earlier this week as questioning the general’s integrity.

The ad, which Giuliani ended up getting the same rate as Moveon, turned out to be something of a campaign ad for Rudy rather than a defense of Petraeus. Allah and some others were not amused but the ad served its purpose of placing Giuliani front and center in the debate.

Rudy followed up the print ad with a devastating attack ad he released on the web:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani launched his first Internet ad on Friday, an attack on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Called “She Changed,” it links Sen. Clinton of New York with a controversial newspaper ad by the left-leaning group MoveOn.org.

It also accuses her of changing positions on the Iraq war between 2002 and today.

It includes footage of her at the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Army Gen. David Petraeus, whom MoveOn labelled “General Betray Us” in an ad on Monday that drew heated criticism from Republicans.

Again, Allah disses Rudy for “shamelessly exploiting” the Moveon ad and making the point that having the General appear in GOP ads does him no favors, identifying him with Republicans which only buttresses the critics who say he’s “carrying water” for the party.

These are valid points but I think they miss the big picture. The Moveon ad altered the political landscape, the controversy drowning out any criticism directed at the General and anyone who supports him. I believe Rudy’s moves to exploit the controversy - shamelessly or not - will play very well with conservatives who are tired of anti-war Democrats smearing those who support the mission.

Whether any of Rudy’s moves translates into additional conservative support remains to be seen. But I don’t doubt that many are grateful to him for coming to the defense of Petraeus and taking on Hillary and the anti-war left so directly.