Posts with the tag 'Iran'
Loud and clear:
Earlier today, Senator Obama made a few remarks I would like to respond to. I welcome a debate about protecting America . No issue is more important. Senator Obama claimed all I had to offer was the ‘naive and irresponsible belief’ that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program. He should know better. I have some news for Senator Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a ’stinking corpse’ and arms terrorist who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.
It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment, and determination to keep us safe.
Barack Obama proves himself again and again manifestly incompetent to be President of the United States of America - Iran’s government is responsible for the death of Americans as well as our brave Iraqi allies…we’re supposed to ask them if they’ll kindly leave off killing us? Ask them if they’ll kindly stay out of Iraq? Ask them if they’ll kindly give up nuclear weapons? Ask them if they’ll kindly not pursue another Holocaust against the Jews?
No, we don’t ask - we instruct. Iran must give up its nuclear ambitions and must give up its dreams of destroying Israel - only after the Iranian government has done these things can talks with Iran about other outstanding issues ensue.
Tags: Barak Obama, Defeaticrats, Iran, Iraq, John McCain
May 16th, 2008
Very clear and very concise:
CNN’S WOLF BLITZER: “All right, do you have any doubt about Senator Obama’s commitment to maintain a very supportive role for the United States as far as Israel is concerned?”
SEN. LIEBERMAN: “I have no doubt about that. But here’s what I want to say. Senator Obama has said he would sit down without condition with Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. That not only gives prestige to a terrible America- and Israel-hater, but it also threatens our allies in the region.
“Look, I’ll give you another example. This is an indirect step that can undermine our position in the Middle East. Earlier this year, Senator Kyl and I introduced a resolution in the Senate, which called on the administration to impose economic sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that is training and equipping Iraqis that are going back into Iraq and killing American soldiers, hundreds of them. … Senator Obama did not [support it]. He said it was saber-rattling. It was the exact opposite of that. It was economic sanctions. It had nothing to do with the military.”
BLITZER: “I think what he said, it would give a green light to the Bush administration to consider military action. Something like that.”
SEN. LIEBERMAN: “No way. It was the exact opposite of that. I don’t question Senator Obama’s commitment to the security of the state of Israel. I’m saying when it comes to dealing with enemies, both in the Middle East and around the world, Senator McCain has more experience, more balance, knows when to be tough, knows when to be soft.”
Its good that Lieberman points this out - think about it: in an attempt to bring non-violent pressure on the Ahmadinejad regime, Obama de-facto sided with Ahmadinejad on the apparant theory that President Bush is the greater threat to peace than the man who is sending forth his minions to murder Americans and Iraqis, and who had threated our ally, Israel, with complete destruction. This is a clear indicator that Obama subscribes to the lunatic left position that President Bush is some out-of-control war monger - with the flipside being that of course Ahmadinejad will be reasonable, just as soon as there is an American President who will be nice to him.
Democrats say that the election of McCain - a long term and very strong critic of many Bush Administration policies - will just be a third Bush term. The real strength of this accusation actually stems from the fact that Senator McCain and President Bush - unlike Senator Obama - wish for the United States to win in Iraq, not Iran’s Ahmadinejad. If “third Bush term” means “victory in the war” then, yes, I think that all patriots desperately want a third Bush term. But, of course, such accusation is nonsense - indeed, we movement conservatives are girding ourselves, once we elect John McCain, to fight him on several issues. McCain isn’t “our” man, meaning he’s not the conservatives’ choice…but he is the patriots’ choice, and we’re going to back him - if for no other reason - than the fact that he wants America to win. Fortunately, there is more than just the war to back McCain on - and, equally unfortunately, its not just the war which makes us want to defeat Obama - his creeping socialism and economic illiteracy coupled with his extraordinarily high tolerance for corruption on his side leaves us worried that he’ll not only lose the war, but wreck the nation and hand the ruins over to corrupt cronies of the Democratic establishment.
Vote McCain ‘08: quite honestly, America needs McCain to be President in 2009.
Tags: Barack Obama, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Joe Lieberman, John McCain
May 12th, 2008
From Multi-National Force Iraq:
Coalition forces captured two suspected Iranian-trained Special Groups criminals early this morning in the Rashid district in Baghdad.
Intelligence information led Coalition forces to the location of a suspected Special Groups leader wanted for facilitating the import of Iranian-made munitions into Iraq. He is also suspected of providing information to Special Groups leadership, which led to rocket attacks against Coalition and Iraqi forces. In addition, he is suspected of providing safe-haven to criminals wanted by Coalition and Iraqi forces.
Coalition forces entered the targeted individual’s location where he surrendered without incident.
Afterward, Coalition forces conducted a follow-on mission to a separate location, also in the Rashid district, to capture another suspected criminal. There, they detained a second individual who was identified as a Special Groups criminal.
“Coalition forces are working with the Iraqi Security Forces to remove the Special Groups thugs who foment violence and instability on the streets of Baghdad,” said Maj. Winfield Danielson, MNF-I spokesman.
Among the many unfortunate results of the anti-Bush/anti-victory effort on the part of America’s political left is the fact that President Bush finds his hands politically tied in the face of Iran. What Iran is conducting is an illegal proxy-war in Iraq designed to force us out, force Iraq into satellite status and thus accrue to Iran’s imperialistic, corrupt and cruel government control of Iraq’s oil resources and central strategic position. Iran cannot afford a democratic Iraq on its doorstep. Iran’s oil is the only thing keeping the Iranian regime afloat, and such reserves are dwarfed by Saudi Arabia and Canada while the addition of Iraqi reserves would make Iran just under Saudi Arabia in proven reserves, and likely the world’s largest oil giant, once Iraq’s unproven reserves are brought on line. Iran has massive imperial ambitions in the middle east, and cannot realise any of them while Iraq is outside Iranian control. All Iran’s needs - as far as the corrupt Iranian government is concerned - are met by Iranian control of Iraq - and so they engage in the current terrorist campaign in Iraq.
After all is said and done, all of the crimes falsely laid at the door of President Bush and the United States by the left are actually being committed by Iran. While President Bush has the ability to act even when he’s politically behind the 8 ball, right now he’s so far behind it - and the politico-military situation is so carefully balanced - that President Bush might believe that any action against Iran would actually work to America’s disadvantage.
The stakes are absolute in Iraq - either we win it, or Iran wins it. A loss for Iran in Iraq means complete loss - the Iranian mullahs cannot sustain themselves without Iraq, and so they won’t quit - not ever as long as the current Iranian regime is in place. Come what may, the next President will have to deal with Iran - and such dealing, given the nature of the Iranian regime, will have to amount to war or surrender on our part. Thanks to the left, we lack any real room to use diplomacy and economics - we either have to throw up the sponge, or fight. Once again, another “peace” movement has only made war more likely - and likely to be longer and bloodier than it ever had to be.
We’re in a real war, fellow Americans, and our actions have real consequences - while the left has self-indulgently engaged in a hate-fest designed to advance the left’s narrow political interests, the United States of America has been fighting a war. We’re winning it, but we’d be far further along without the left’s campaign over the past 7 years…and we might have the worst of it yet to go through, courtesy of the left.
Tags: Iran, Iraq, liberal lies
May 5th, 2008
Some things to think about:
Does a Hillary win in Indiana have any real effect on the race, or is the Democratic contest pretty much “done” as far as primaries go, and we’re all just waiting to see how a nominee is actually chosen?
Given Iran’s clear violations of Iraqi sovereignty and Iran’s responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, should we do anything in 2008, or should we leave any action to the next President?
Would a McCain/Obama battle pretty much alienate the base of both the Democrats and Republicans, thus leading to a surprising low turnout election?
Have at it on these subjects, or anything else you can think of.
Tags: HillBama, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Open Thread
April 27th, 2008
Was the Israeli move the best to make, or should we have sent Obama to talk to the Syrians and North Koreans?
WASHINGTON — A Syrian nuclear reactor built with help from North Korea was weeks away from functioning, a top U.S. official said Thursday after lawmakers were briefed on the site destroyed last year by Israeli jets.
The official, who wanted anonymity, told The Associated Press that the facility was mostly completed but still needed significant testing before it could be declared operational.
Still, Syria’s ambassador to the United Kingdom denied that North Korea’s cooperation with Syria had any nefarious purpose…
…Intelligence officials told several House and Senate committees that the destroyed site was designed to produce a small amount of plutonium, a highly radioactive substance.
Plutonium-producing reactors are of international interest because the material can be used to make high-yield nuclear weapons or “dirty bombs” that disperse radioactive material when they explode, rendering an area potentially unsafe for humans for years.
The reactor was not finished when it was blown up, but U.S. intelligence officials had acquired videotape and other evidence to demonstrate that it resembled the nuclear reactor at Yonbyon, North Korea. No uranium — the fuel for a reactor — was evident on site.
Given Syria’s close links to Iran, we cannot rule out that the Iranians were also involved - it would be rather logical for Iran, under pressure on its own nuke program, to shuttle some of it over to Syria, which wasn’t nearly under the scrutiny that Iran is under. Also, North Korea needs money - of which Syria has none; as we haven’t noted a willingness on the part of North Korea to be charitible, we must presume that North Korea was getting something out of the deal…perhaps some Iranian petrodollars? Certainly, very extensive investigation is needed, and the hope is that our intelligence services are investing a lot into this.
We must ensure that of all the lunatic regimes in the world that North Korea be the last one of them to obtain nuclear weapons - diplomacy and diplomatic pressure, by all means, but when push comes to shove, we must be willing to act decisively to prohibit regimes like Syria’s or Iran’s from becoming nuclear.
Tags: Iran, Israel, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Syria
April 24th, 2008
Disturbing news:
The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.
The imagery has pinpointed the facility from where the Iranians launched their Kavoshgar 1 “research rocket” on February 4, claiming that it was in connection with their space programme.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.
Avital Johanan, the editor of Jane’s Proliferation, said that the analysis of the Iranian site indicated that Tehran may be about five years away from developing a 6,000km ballistic missile. This would tie in with American intelligence estimates and underlines why President Bush wants the Polish and Czech components of the US missile defence system to be up and running by 2013.
Now, it’d be nice if 10,000 liberals out there would read this and suddenly realise what a bunch of dunces they’ve been…and how President Bush has been right all along…both about Iran’s membership in the “Axis of Evil”, and about the need for SDI. We won’t get that, of course, but we can still dream about it…
Meanwhile, what do we do about this?
One’s first inclination is to give the Iranians a demonstration in accurate missile targeting and blow the place sky high. But then one thinks this might be too harsh, so one goes and makes a sandwich and comes back to the blog ready to put out some non-blow-sky-high alternative…but, even with calming sandwich in hand, blowing the place to smithereens still commends itself.
Will we do such a thing? Doubtful - but if there is a time to do it, now would be it. The world would condemn us - and then breath a hearty sigh of relief. International politics would be roiled, but in 9 months there will be a new US President who can say that EEEEVIL Bush did that, and can’t we all get along? Meanwhile, wink wink/nudge nudge, we’ll do it again if we have to. This is the real world, good people - and the Iranian government is currently commanded by men who have demonstrated their willingness to do evil deeds. Men so capable should not be allowed to obtain that much destructive force - this is not a matter of what Iran might have done to us, or what we might have done to this; this is entirely based on the objective factors that long-range missiles can be very destructive and the Iranian government has proven itself inclined to be wicked. We can’t reach out and destroy all the evil in the world, but such evil as we can attack, we should do so.
Tags: ballistic missiles, Iran, SDI
April 13th, 2008
From the BBC:
Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets.
He said Iran was adding what he described as “lethal accelerants” to a very combustible mix.
There has as yet been no response from Iran to the accusations…
…In an interview with BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, Gen Petraeus said violence in Iraq was being perpetuated by Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards.
“The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example… were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets,” he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force.
“All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts.”
This makes sense - the Iranian leadership cannot afford American victory in Iraq, cannot afford a vibrant Iraqi democracy and would very much prefer some President other than John McCain in January, 2009…so, stirring up as much trouble as possible is in the Iranian government’s interest.
However this particular incident comes out, we must keep in mind that Iran’s government (to be very clear that its not the Iranian people) is an absolute and implacable enemy of the United States and its allies. We might not ever have to fight the Iranians (and I pray God this is so - Iran is America’s natural ally in the region, and it would give me great pain to see American soldiers fighting Iranian soldiers, spilling excellent Iranian and American blood due to the folly of a corrupt few in Tehran), but we must be on our guard at all times - and be ever willing to take the fight directly into Iran, if need be.
Tags: General Petraeus, Iran, Iraq
March 25th, 2008
Interesting report over at NRO’s The Corner:
Eli Lake reports that top spy Michael McConnell has had second thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. If the goal of the NIE was to tie Bush’s hands, it succeeded marvelously. Eli writes:
The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency’s assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner. …
The release of the December 2007 estimate at best delayed American diplomatic efforts to pass a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran’s uranium enrichment, an activity the mullahs have continued for two years despite warnings from all five permanent members of the security council. The estimate also drew rare rebukes from American allies, including Israel, France, and the United Kingdom who said their intelligence agencies did not concur with the American assessment that Iran had frozen its plan to produce an A-bomb.
I tried to get into the Lake article, but I think half the blogospher hit the link once it showed up on NRO - if correct, this story shows that at least part of the intelligence community was determined to thwart President Bush’s policy towards Iran’s nuclear program. As to why President Bush would along with such subversion - simple, he had to. In a dishonest age, it is difficult at times to immediately combat a clever lie. Had Bush suppressed the report, the fact of its suppression would have been leaked and it would have looked in idiot MSM reporting like President Bush had something to hide - so, Bush was forced to grit his teeth and put lipstick on the pig.
Hopefully, however, the truth will come out, and come out soon - because if this NIE was bogus, then we need to move very, very quickly against Iran.
Tags: Iran, NIE, nuclear weapons
February 6th, 2008
In all the hullabaloo over the primaries, this story might have got missed by some:
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The U.S. military has video and audio recordings of Iranian boats that threatened to blow up U.S. Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and plans to release them, the top Navy commander in the Mideast said Tuesday. President Bush described the confrontation as a “provocative act.”
Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff disputed Iranian claims that the incident early Sunday was a routine encounter, saying Iran’s “provocative” actions were “deadly serious” to the U.S. military.
“It was a dangerous situation,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “They should not have done it, pure and simple. I don’t know what their thinking was, but I’m telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act.”
The confrontation was an unusual flare-up of U.S.-Iranian tensions in the Persian Gulf as Bush begins his first visit to the Mideast. In the tour, Bush is to visit Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab allies, in part to coordinate in confronting Iran.
Many Arab countries fear the Iranian-American rivalry could erupt into a military confrontation that would put them in the crossfire and hurt vital Gulf oil traffic.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that its high-speed boats never threatened the U.S. vessels during the encounter, insisting it only asked them to identify themselves, then let them continue into the Gulf. A Guards commander defended his force’s right to identify ships in the sensitive waterway.
Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based in nearby Bahrain, said the American vessels had already been identified by Iranian authorities earlier in the day before the confrontation occurred.
With the Cole incident at the back of all naval minds, such an event is highly disturbing. What seems like a mere harassing exercise could swiftly lead to one or more of these motorboats making a suicide run towards a US ship. One thing to keep in mind - US naval warships are designed to fight other naval warships, not motorboats. Our ships have limited capability of thwarting a close-in attack from a small, fast moving target. Some people have expressed dismay over the lack of violent reaction on the part of the Navy during the incident, but my bet is that our ships are ready for a missile attack, an aerial attack, a submarine attack…for all manner of attack, but for some reason no one has considered what to do when a motor boat comes at you in open, though restricted (the Straight is narrow, and has a lot of navigation hazards), waters.
Prudence would seem to dictate that we adopt a policy of firing on any identified Iranian surface craft which approaches within a set distance of a US ship - in other words, we figure out how far out we need a small, fast target to be in order to ensure its destruction, and then don’t let any such craft to come closer than that. On the other hand, the Iranian government might not be unified in its determination to challenge the United States - could be that part of the Iranian leadership realises that full scale war with the US is national suicide, and so they work to keep the aggressive elements of the Iranian government in check…but a shooting incident which the hard-core anti-Americans could exploit? That might tip the balance and convince even semi-moderate Iranians that they must fight. So, we have to tread with care here - and I’m glad that this is precisely what President Bush is doing. War there might be with Iran, but it should only start at a time and place of our choosing.
The larger picture must be kept in mind - and central to that larger picture is the huge strides of success being made in Iraq at the moment. Iraq is the central front in the War on Terrorism, and we must allow nothing to divert us from completing that mission - any threat to that mission must be dealt with severely, but before we go tangling with the Iranians, lets be sure we have all our forces ready for all contingencies. Don’t let the Iranians provoke us into a hasty strike.
Tags: Hormuz Incident, Iran, Iraq, US Navy
January 9th, 2008
Just a quick note about how pretty much everyone in the whole world - other than American lefties - is going “what?” to the NIE claiming that Iran stopped its nuke program in 2003:
British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran.
The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.
The security services in London want concrete evidence to allay concerns that the Islamic state has fed disinformation to the CIA.
The report used new evidence - including human sources, wireless intercepts and evidence from an Iranian defector - to conclude that Teheran suspended the bomb-making side of its nuclear programme in 2003. But British intelligence is concerned that US spy chiefs were so determined to avoid giving President Bush a reason to go to war - as their reports on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes did in Iraq - that they got it wrong this time.
A senior British official delivered a withering assessment of US intelligence-gathering abilities in the Middle East and revealed that British spies shared the concerns of Israeli defence chiefs that Iran was still pursuing nuclear weapons.
At bottom, it is absurd to think that Iran has given up its nuclear ambitions - while there might be a delay in this or that aspect of the program, the plain fact of the matter is that once you start on the path to build a nuclear weapon, you’re not going to be easily deflected from your course. With the Iranian leadership getting ever more lunatic in their pronouncements, there’s just no way to reasonably believe that they’ve taken nukes off the table. Only the most rigorous inspection regime could demonstrate one way or the other, and the Iranians won’t allow that.
In my view, American policy-makers should proceed on the assumption that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons - in this very crucial area, it is better to be safe than sorry. We must err on the side of caution.
Tags: Iran, NIE, nuclear weapons
December 11th, 2007
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