No, not Rantburg.
Via DhimmiWatch
Just before going back to the USA after five months in the UK I attended the âGlobal Peace and Unityâ Conference at Londonâs Excel Centre presented by the new Islam Channel and sponsored by Emirates Airlines, Western Union (hmm??) and the Metropolitan Police.
It was advertised as a diverse event to which non-Muslims were invited and the impression one got from the website was of a celebration of Middle Eastern culture, food, music and childrenâs activities in a London milieu.
To my utter horror -- and I should have written this report two days ago but my physical and emotional shock have rendered me nearly inert -- it was a seven-hour call to Jihad by a succession of ranting and shouting rabble-rousers.
The eminent barrister Michael Mansfield QC, wearing black and white keffiyah scarf, shouted into the mike about the heinous crimes of the Western coalition countries. The crowd chanted and thundered its appreciation.
The terrifying demagogue George Galloway ascended the podium and exhorted the crowd to stand up for the redemption of the oppressed Muslim world or else the nation had better get ready for ârioting in every street in Britain.â.
The âslaughter in Palestine and Iraqâ being only part of the equation, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir were also mentioned all day by every speaker including a crazed, chador-clad Yvonne Ridley, who at any moment I expected to self-immolate, such was her fury at the Zionists, the Americans and her fellow Britons. To my utter disbelief, she condemned the British police force as some form of fascist brigade in âjackboot Britain.â
To all of these exhortations came cries of âAlllahu Akhbarâ from the enormous, simmering crowd of what looked to me like the angriest gathering of young men and women with whom I have ever had the misfortune to be seated in my lifetime. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
12/07/2005 15:19 ||
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#1
Them wakeup calls can sometimes be shattering...
#8
The terrifying demagogue George Galloway ascended the podium and exhorted the crowd to stand up for the redemption of the oppressed Muslim world or else the nation had better get ready for ârioting in every street in Britain.â.
Sound awfully like incitement to riot. P'raps it might be best to lock up Galloway until an extensive multi-year investigation can be completed.
Eventually, the officials will wise up and contain events like this so that photos and the identification of each attendee can be recorded for further investigation.
John Rosenthal Long, but well worth the read, especially for Ms. Trailing wife or LH, who will find it interesting I guess, from the new and upgraded (read : "not free anymore at first") "Transatlantic Intelligencer", on judeophobia and moral equivalency in La Belle France.
#1
21 June, Colombes: Gang rape of a young woman of the Israelite faith..., accompanied by anti-Semitic insults and acts of humiliation. Anti-Semitic insults by two persons of North African origin when they see the Star of David worn by the victim on a necklace.
What is it with Muslims and the whole gang rape thing anyhow? It seems like you get a half dozen teenage Muslim boys together and their first instinct is to look for some dhimmi victim to ravage. While âpulling a trainâ might be common enough behavior from bangers in many of Americaâs more noteworthy urban abysses, it is also generally at least semi-voluntary and not strictly rape (although there are certainly exceptions). Is it because young Muslim men see themselves as a conquering army? Or are there deeper social issues involved?
#2
Secret Master, for an explanation read Robert Spencer's The Rape Jihad
Posted by: ed ||
12/07/2005 12:05 Comments ||
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With Muhammad revered throughout the Islamic world as al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, the rapes of Darfur and Beslan are nothing surprising. What is surprising, or ought to be, is the silence from the Islamic world about the rapes in both cases. Where are the reformers who will dare to say that Muhammadâs example must not be followed in this case? Who will acknowledge that the world has developed principles of human rights that must supercede those forged in seventh-century Arabia?
Looks like Robert Spencer has the topic nailed down. Thanks ed!
âToday, the United States Department of Justice is announcing the indictment of Sami al-Arian and seven co-conspirators.â Thatâs how United States Attorney General John Ascroft began his press conference, back in February of 2003. It was a momentous day in the war on terrorism, a triumph of the Patriot Act. We caught a leader of a terrorist ring based in Tampa, Florida, and he and at least some of his compatriots were going to be brought to justice. Now, it appears justice may not have been served.
Yesterday, al-Arian and his three friends were acquitted after five months of hearing testimony that seemed to point to the contrary. Of the 17 counts al-Arian was charged with, he was acquitted on eight of them, including âconspiracy to murder and maim people abroad,â the most serious charge. The remaining nine were considered a mistrial, as the jury was deadlocked on them. Two of his co-defendants, Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, were acquitted of all charges against them. The other, Hatem Naji Fariz, was found not guilty of 24 counts, and jurors deadlocked on the remaining eight.
Until we hear from the jurors, itâs hard to say how this could possibly have happened. The judge in the trial, James S. Moody, had stipulated to the jury that the prosecution needed to prove that the money allegedly going from Tampa to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was sent for the purpose of violence. Is it possible that anything related to PIJ can be disassociated with violence? It is a terrorist organization. Did the defense convince the jurors that this was all one big political demonstration against the âZionistsâ based on the Israeli-Palestinian situation?
I cannot envision either of the above occurring, because I attended the trial. Along with the jurors, I watched the video of the 1991 Cleveland fundraiser, in which al-Arian begged his audience to create a Palestine âfrom the river to the sea,â concluding:
Thus is the way of jihad. Thus is the way of martyrdom. Thus is the way of blood, because this is the path to heaven.
Along with the jurors, I watched Fawaz Mohammed âAbuâ Damra â the individual that founded al-Qaedaâs main American headquarters in Brooklyn â call al-Arianâs Islamic Committee for Palestine the âactive arm of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine.â Sami al-Arian was present in the video. Did he disagree? Absolutely not. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
12/07/2005 11:32 ||
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Dan is mostly correct. I'm leaving for Israel in February to enlist in the IDF. Al-Arian has been quite explicit about wanting Jews massacred and Israel destroyed, which would include me and my family, and numerous friends and relatives. I take that pretty personally. I retain my right to opine that a jury can be wrong, and point to the overwhelming evidence against al-Arian and his co-terrorists.
As for advoating his death, yeah, I do. The unit I plan to join is the one that usually clashes with Islamic Jihad in Nablus and the surrounding area, so I or one of my pissed-off-Jew colleagues could well be shot, blown up or otherwise wounded or killed with munitions purchased with money sent by al-Arian and the U.S.-based Islamic Jihad. I'd take that pretty personally, too.
Operation Wrath of G-d was a good model and ought to be used again.
Things in Iraq clearly have not gone as planned. The administration's that troops would be greeted as liberators fell far short. Iraq's oil fields have not yielded the anticipated revenues. Insurgent attacks are a constant and dangerous force. And Iraq's divided population has not galvanized as was hoped following the removal of their brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein.
As casualties continue to mount and as success continues to elude American troops in the region, the American public has grown weary of the war. Opinion has turned against the war in recent weeks and a majority of Americans now believe that the decision to go to war was a mistake.
But while Americans have always wondered whether it was a wise decision to go to war, they now also wonder whether they were duped into going to war by an administration hell-bent on capturing Iraq.
To some of President Bush's harshest critics, the answer is simple: Bush and his legions exaggerated the threat posted by Iraq in order to secure support of a war that made oil company fat cats drool with anticipation.
On the one hand, these criticisms are irrelevant. The decision to go to war was made and, well, what's done is done.
On the other hand, if the Bush administration did, in fact, mislead the American public and Congress into a war, that most certainly is an issue that affects the public trust of our elected officials - no small thing.
So do the charges against the administration bear out?
No. There's a difference between misleading the American people and being mistaken. And when it comes to prewar opinions on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal, almost every Republican and Democrat was mistaken in their belief that Iraq was indeed a threat and that it possessed considerable stockpiles of destructive material. Indeed, it has been the policy of the United States since 1998 (following the Iraqi Liberation Act) to forcibly remove Saddam from power.
Consider: The Washington Post ushered in the Bush administration in January 2001 with an editorial that read, "[O]f all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous - or more urgent - than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos ââ¬- show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons."
The intelligence was, quite simply, way, way off. But no intentional malice was committed.
The remaining criticism, then, is that the Bush administration purposely withheld intelligence from elected officials that would have shed some doubt on Iraq's weapons program. Wrong again. The summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (read only by six senators, by the way) had a caveat from the State Department and Department of Energy alerting readers that certain information could not be verified and that questions remained.
If senators want to hold the Bush administration responsible for missteps, they, too, need to be willing to explain their own failures of judgment.
Of course, believing that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction does not - and should not - mean that war must be declared, and the administration's decision to invade in March 2003 is one that the Bush administration will have to constantly defend (although, to be fair, let us not forget the myriad Democrats and liberals who also supported the war ...).
Since the case for war - as argued by people on both sides of the political aisle - was based largely on Iraq's alleged weapon capabilities, and since those capabilities have been proven to be grossly overestimated, it is true that the war in Iraq was, indeed, based on faulty intelligence - a faulty premise, even. That's an unfortunate embarrassment and setback that the U.S. will have to work hard to overcome. That should not, however, lead one to conclude that the Bush administration is guilty of deliberate deception or even that the goal of a peaceful, democratic Iraq was never worth the effort.
As for how the war has been conducted - and what the future holds - well, that's a different story. To be continued in Part 2 of this series ...
Notable Iraq quotes
- Former President Bill Clinton: "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program."
- Sandy Berger, national security adviser under Bill Clinton: "[Saddam Hussein] will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.: "Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members."
- Former Vice President Al Gore: "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/07/2005 19:12 ||
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Liberals have been suffering from conservative envy for several years now. The liberal Center for American Progress was founded explicitly to be the leftâs answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation. The lefty radio network Air America was launched to copy Rush Limbaugh & co.âs success. Deeppocketed liberals are scrambling to copy conservative foundations, even though liberal foundations have always had more money. Most conservatives I know snicker at all this. Itâs not that talk radio, think tanks and foundations havenât been essential to the rise of American conservatism in the last five decades. They have been. But liberals are emphasizing hardware because they donât want to question the validity of their very outdated software.
Look: Conservatives would love to switch places with liberals. Weâd get the universities, Hollywood, the Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and Pew Foundations, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, CBS, etc., while liberals would get the Washington Times and Fox News and the few conservative foundations left. And that sort of makes the point. Not only does the left have better stuff, but theyâve also got plenty of mechanisms to âget their message out.â Megaphones matter, but not as much as what you say into them.
If liberals really want to emulate conservative successes, I have some advice for them: Get into some big, honking arguments â not with conservatives, but with each other. The history of the conservative movementâs successes has been the history of intellectual donnybrooks, between libertarians and traditionalists, hawks and isolationists, so-called neocons and so-called paleocons. Liberals would be smart to copy that and stop worrying how to mimic our direct-mail strategies. Liberals have a tendency to confuse political tactics for political principles and vice versa. Exhibit A is the leftâs fascination with âunity.â Unity is often useful in politics, but itâs often a handicap if you havenât figure out what to be unified about. Just as the Socratic method leads to wisdom, big fights not only illuminate big ideas, but they force people to become invested in them. Unfortunately, liberals define diversity by skin color and sex, not by ideas, which makes it difficult to have really good arguments.
Of course there are arguments on the left and there are individual liberals with deepseated convictions and principles. But most of the arguments are about how to âbuild a movementâ or how to win elections, not about what liberalism is. Even the âget out of Iraq nowâ demands from the base of the Democratic Party arenât grounded in anything like a coherent foreign policy. Ten years ago, liberals championed nation-building. Now they call it imperialism because George W. Bush is doing it.
Hereâs an example: The Hoover Institution recently issued two books edited by Peter Berkowitz, âVarieties of Conservatism in Americaâ and âVarieties of Progressivism in America.â Each contain thoughtful essays by leading conservatives and liberals. But the conservatives defend different ideological philosophical schools â neoconservatism, traditionalism, etc. The liberals, meanwhile, argue almost exclusively about which tactics Democrats should embrace to win the White House.
Bill Clinton was the only Democratic president elected to two terms since Franklin Roosevelt. One of the reasons for his success was that he was willing to pick fights with his own party. One can argue about the sincerity of some of those fights. But we remember the Sista Souljah moment for a reason.
Right now, Washington is marveling at how the Democratic Party has simultaneously made the Iraq war the central and defining political issue of the decade while at the same time having no clue what it is they want to do about it. Worse, itâs looking increasingly like the Democratsâ position on the war is based largely on the polls, not principles. One of the most important events in the rise of conservatism was the 1978 Firing Line debate over U.S. control of the Panama Canal. William F. Buckley favored giving it up. The governor of California, Ronald Reagan, favored keeping it. Reaganâs side lost the argument, in Congress at least, but conservatives once again demonstrated our willingness to duke it out on such issues. And Reaganâs career hardly suffered. If liberals were smart, theyâd do something similar. Have Joe Lieberman debate Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha. Make liberals get past their
passion and explore what they think. My guess is it would be good for liberalism in the long run â and even better for America.
Examiner columnist Jonah Goldberg is editor at large at the National Review Online and a syndicated
columnist.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/07/2005 07:42 ||
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There is an opening, right now, for the creation of a Conservative party, a party that tries to carve out the most desired elements of the republicans and the democrats. In past, the third parties have failed because they tried to be "top-down", putting up a Presidential candidate without having lower level political support.
So this new party would begin, *not* with the creation of a party, but with the creation of a pledge, think of it as a Contract With America, but one that could be joined by members of both parties, and yet could not be co-opted by either party.
Its issues would be straightforward, taking from the republicans a strong foreign and traditional republican conservative economic policies. From the democrats, ironically, it would take publically popular hypocricies.
For example, legal but discreet abortion on demand ("just do it, and don't tell us about it"); NIMBY-oriented environmental laws, along with the western return of State lands from federal control. Supressing that godawful eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. Decriminalization of marijuana *and* guns (okay, stole that one from the Libertarians).
Much of what the new party offered would be to eliminate very unpopular recent decisions. Perhaps to re-think the FTAA; the Patriot Act and other internal security laws; and criminal law and justice system reform--not just tort reform.
The biggest issues could be immigration, re-negotiation of Native American & Indigenous treaties, and the restructuring of the income tax, and other federal taxes.
The selling point would be that it would marginalize the extremes of both parties, but *not* be a liberal party of the RINOs and DINOs.
#2
Spot on Moose! Most Dems I know are tired of being associated with the far left and are ripe for a more conservative party, but not enough to be a Repuplican. Pulling the average core frome each part would work.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
12/07/2005 13:20 Comments ||
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The article nailed how the Right has all the ideas and could have added the Left is desperately clinging to their version of historical determinism despite all the contrary evidence.
Dilbert's dad has a blog! And it's good! Via Daily Pundit.
Yet another âthird highest ranking al-Qaida leaderâ has been killed, this time by a rocket attack from an unmanned drone. There are a lot of jobs that I wouldnât want, and âthird highest ranking al-Qaida leaderâ is right at the top. But I can tell you for sure that if I ever got that job, the first thing Iâd do is narc out one of the top two guys so I could move up a notch. Apparently one of the perks of being in the top two is having a really, really good hiding place. The number 3 through 10 leadership guys are pretty much scurrying between mud huts and looking at the sky a lot.
I know that war is Hell and all that, but I have to think that the guy who fired the rocket by remote control loves his job. I have an image of him sitting in an air conditioned headquarters someplace, feet up on the desk, a bag of Cheetohs on one side, a Budweiser on the other, staring at his computer screen. Itâs about 1 am and everyone else is asleep. The order comes through on e-mail saying something like âBlow up mud hut #4,7855.â So he takes a break from playing Doom and plugs that number into the GPS system and soon his drone is hovering over said mud hut, missiles ready to go.
Maybe itâs just a âguy thingâ but the idea of blowing up a mud hut by remote controlled drone sounds like the most fun thing I can think of. And if the number 3 al-Qaida leader happens to be inside, thatâs a bonus. It certainly makes your story sound less nerdy afterwards.
I find it interesting that the guy with the best job in the world gets to blow up the guy with the worst job in the world. Thatâs really rubbing it in. But I guess itâs not so different from a CEO downsizing the auditing department. Itâs one of those recurring themes in life.
#4
I donât have to tell you that there are plenty of good reasons to want your own clone:
a. Spare parts.
b. Slave labor.
c. Decoy in case of assassination attempts.
d. Source of excellent practical jokes on the spouse.
e. Reasonable doubt when you kill someone.
YOU cannot fault Mohamed ElBaradei for caring about world peace, at least. The winner of this yearâs Nobel Peace Prize, who runs the United Nationâs nuclear watchdog, is full of dreams of beating the threat of proliferation â and getting the worldâs nuclear powers to give up their weapons too. Yesterday, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he laid out his answer.
He is right, in theory. But the plan (which he has been pushing for some years) is so divorced from reality that it is hard to take seriously. His speech, entitled Reflections, was like a 45-minute rendition of John Lennonâs Imagine, albeit one written by a UN bureaucrat.
There was a hard kernel to his talk â which itself raises questions about his realism. As director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), his most urgent task is to determine whether Iranâs nuclear work is a front for getting weapons, as the US believes. There are âstill important pieces missingâ in Iranâs account, he said. But he added: âYou cannot continue [investigations] for ever. I would hope within a year we should be able to come to a conclusion [about the scope of Iranâs work].â
Why a year? And even if so, why tell Iran now? The new hardline Iranian Government has done nothing but ramp up the rhetoric against the West. It has also restarted preparation of uranium at one facility.
True, in recent weeks it has hinted that it might talk again to Britain, France and Germany. It might consider Russiaâs offer to supply it with nuclear fuel, and to take away spent fuel. That would allay concerns about Iran mastering the technology of uranium enrichment or of reprocessing fuel, which could enable it to make bombs. But Iranâs gesture hardly answers the worries. It seems self-defeating for Dr ElBaradei to suggest ending an inquiry, with such good reason still to suspect Iran of wanting weapons.
The Iran case illustrates the weaknesses of Dr ElBaradeiâs big idea: creating an international facility for enriching uranium. That would allow any country that wanted nuclear power to acquire fuel, but would stop them mastering weapons technology. That is fine, in theory. It is convenient for Dr ElBaradei, as it happens, because it squares the two notoriously ill-fitting parts of the IAEAâs remit: to promote the spread of civil nuclear power, and to inhibit the spread of weapons.
But who would own this site and where would it be? The big drawback is that no declared nuclear power is treating the notion as practical: not Britain, the US, France, China, and probably not Russia. Although Russia has been encouraging to Dr ElBaradei, he says, its motivation is clear: to explore any chance of selling fuel. But in the one practical test that presents itself to Iran, Russia is offering a simple bilateral deal, as it wants to court Tehran. There is nothing âmultilateralâ about that.
Dr ElBaradei says Russiaâs offer to Iran, if accepted, could be âtransitionalâ on the way to his grand multilateral dream. But there seemed little enthusiasm for his ideas at the UNâs review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty this summer, which ended in disarray.
Dr ElBaradei, who calls himself âa realistic personâ, said that his ideas had been prompted by the worldâs âdismalâ record in stopping proliferation. But he threw into his wishlist other huge dreams, including one for a âuniversalâ programme of disarmament. The nuclear weapons statesâ failure to shed weapons was ânot only baffling but absolutely unacceptableâ. His remarks yesterday also blamed poverty and the âhuge and widening gap in living conditionsâ for the growing threat to international security.
This speech was the work of a man who has spent a long time in a job that demands an awkward straddle over two conflicting briefs. He is just beginning his third four-year term, and clearly wants now to relay a more ambitious vision as well. His ideas are infused with the spirit of the UNâs early days, when the world warmed to huge pacts. But, until he can demonstrate government support, it is a song that gains little from repetition.
#1
there should be a saying that goes something like....little men accomplish great dreams, Big men have great accomplishments and have little time for dreaming.
#2
The winner of this yearâs Nobel Peace Prize, who runs the United Nationâs nuclear watchdog, is full of dreams of beating the threat of proliferation â and getting the worldâs nuclear powers to give up their weapons too.
He left out any mention of the ubiquitous pony.
This maggot is one of those bureaucrats who has breathed his own exhaust for so long he now thinks it's Shalimar and wants to bottle it for sale to the rest of us. It wouldn't be so bad if this moron was in control of place settings at UN banquets, but fer f&%k's sake, this waste of skin is mediating one of the most significant threats to world peace since the Cuban missile crisis. I hope (per .com) that he is caught up in the retaliation against Iran. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Frontpage Interviewâs guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of the new book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. A couple of weeks old, but very interesting nonetheless, on the siege mentality of jewish people, and what it means in term of collective psychopathological responses and their political expression. Very revealing and thought-provoking, though some people other than me may have read theses theories elsewhere before (I haven't).
Long interview, see at link.
Light reading published by Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.
Synopsis:
As Iran edges closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb and its missiles extend an ever darker diplomatic shadow over the Middle East and Europe, Iran is likely to pose three threats. First, Iran could dramatically up the price of oil by interfering with the free passage of vessels in and through the Persian Gulf as it did during the l980s or by threatening to use terrorist proxies to target other statesâ oil facilities. Second, it could diminish American influence in the Gulf and Middle East by increasing the pace and scope of terrorist activities against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Israel, and other perceived supporters of the United States. Finally, it could become a nuclear proliferation model for the world and its neighbors (including many states that otherwise would be more dependent on the United States for their security) by continuing to insist that it has a right to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then withdrawing once it decides to get a bomb. To contain and deter Iran from posing such threats, the United States and its friends could take a number of steps: increasing military cooperation (particularly in the naval sphere) to deter Iranian naval interference; reducing the vulnerability of oil facilities in the Gulf outside of Iran to terrorist attacks, building and completing pipelines in the lower Gulf region that would allow most of the non-Iranian oil and gas in the Gulf to be exported without having to transit the Straits of Hormuz; diplomatically isolating Iran by calling for the demilitarization of the Straits and adjacent islands, creating country-neutral rules against Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty state members who are suspected of violating the treaty from getting nuclear assistance from other state members and making withdrawal from the treaty more difficult; encouraging Israel to set the pace of nuclear restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit; and getting the Europeans to back targeted economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to shut down its most sensitive nuclear activities.
Posted by: ed ||
12/07/2005 14:50 ||
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#1
..and getting the Europeans to back targeted economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to shut down its most sensitive nuclear activities.
#2
Why do I have the feeling that stupidity is a result of my tax dollars at work? Maybe we should find out who's on the distribution list and send them a copy of .com's greatest Rants, with forward by Zenster.
#3
I think that the Iranian coast of Hormuz could be made inhospitable for the Iranian army and Navy units. Unfortunately it would be much harder to prevent attacks by irregular forces and "terrorists" using camouflaged dhows armed with missiles.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/07/2005 16:30 Comments ||
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#4
Super Hose! You're back from Korea? We'd thought you'd been run over by an elevator!
Posted by: Phil ||
12/07/2005 16:32 Comments ||
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#5
Note that the document omits even the suggestion that as soon as more than one nuclear weapon is available to Iran, they might use it. Their obvious target is a US fleet, for the same reason that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor: to get the US out of "their pond".
#6
Actually Phil, I've been doing quite a bit of babysitting. Chasing a 9 month-old seems a lot tougher than it was last time (eight years ago.) Been playing a lot of X-mas Tree goalie this last week.
As for getting a fleet nuked, I would think that obtaining the bomb does not in anyway mean that you can reliably: 1. load one on a missile 2. shoot said missile in the right direction 3. have it reach the target sucessfully 4. explode effectively.
It would really suck to attack the USN ineffectively.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/07/2005 17:30 Comments ||
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#7
It would really suck to attack the USN ineffectively.
Yeah, the only thing worse would be to have attacked it successfully. Ask the Japanese.
#9
I'm not so sure the Iranians will be so glad they have nukes. I don't think the Euros will be amused, especially as Bush will rub their noses in it every chance he gets.
It may also create some NATO like structure, CENTO, perhaps, that will line lots of the locals up more firmly than they or the Irqanians would like, but the only way they can be sure to survive or at least reduce the MMs ability to intimidate them.
Having nukes has really bought the Paks little, except a nuclear India now in alliance with the US.
#10
Though the Iranians have fairly capable missiles, and are getting better ones all the time, an attack on a US fleet would most likely be done in the Straits of Hormuz with either a naval mine or a fire ship, disguised as a normal Gulf cargo ship.
By that strategy, it would not only take out a fleet, but it would create an involuntary oil boycott by blocking the Strait, and might even have a bare minimum of plausible deniability.
Every calculation they would make, however, would go back to their guiding principal: to get the US out of the Middle East. Any means is a good means for this end, they would say.
#11
I think there are two very likely catastrophic outcomes of Iran having nuclear weapons. The first is an open attack on Israel. The Iranians have taken the measure of the Europeans and see them for the spineless wimps they are. They present no deterrent. I suspect the Iranians believe if they quickly nuke Israel out of existence and present the world with that fait accompli there won't be any response other than verbal remonstrances and a resolution or two at the UN. They hate Israel so badly it blinds them to reality; they can't see how anyone who isn't Jewish doesn't share their same feelings, if only to a lesser degree.
The MMs would, of course, have to be worried about an American response. I suspect they intend to defuse that threat by claiming that there is at least one nuclear weapon under their control already inside an American city and that any American response to their nuclear attack on Israel will see it/them detonated. They don't think America would risk its own civilians simply to save that "s****y little country." They may be right. I'm not sure that any American president would call that bluff. Certainly no Democrat would.
I am very worried that we are rapidly moving into a situation where we will be faced with the terrible choice of using nuclear weapons first or responding to a well-planned Iranian nuclear attack that has left millions dead. IMNSHO, we should be moving heaven and earth to inspire a popular uprising in Iran while they still don't have nukes. Once they get nuclear weapons even that possibility becomes fraught with peril because of who might get their hands on the nukes during the chaos of a coup. If Bush is going to make a move to defang the MMs, which I sincerely hope he does, he better do it soon. Time is not on our side.
One last thought: if we're finding ourselves looking at the horns of this particularly nasty dilemma, the Israelis are even closer to it. Moral as I believe the Jews to be, I wouldn't bet ten cents against them using a first nuclear strike against Iran. If the Mossad ever truly believes the Iranians are ready to launch, I think the Israelis will do whatever they can to take them out. Given Israel's inability to muster sufficient conventional power for a task of that magnitude, that means nukes and every major Arab and Muslim city glowing in the dark for two hundred years. (That fait accompli logic cuts both ways, you see.} The day Iran gets nukes the world is going to become a much, much more dangerous place.
Posted by: mac ||
12/07/2005 23:01 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Yet another âthird highest ranking al-Qaida leaderâ has been killed, this time by a rocket attack from an unmanned drone. There are a lot of jobs that I wouldnât want, and âthird highest ranking al-Qaida leaderâ is right at the top. But I can tell you for sure that if I ever got that job, the first thing Iâd do is narc out one of the top two guys so I could move up a notch. Apparently one of the perks of being in the top two is having a really, really good hiding place. The number 3 through 10 leadership guys are pretty much scurrying between mud huts and looking at the sky a lot.
YOU cannot fault Mohamed ElBaradei for caring about world peace, at least. The winner of this yearâs Nobel Peace Prize, who runs the United Nationâs nuclear watchdog, is full of dreams of beating the threat of proliferation â and getting the worldâs nuclear powers to give up their weapons too. Yesterday, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he laid out his answer.
