Saturday, September 26, 2009

Today's Reading Assignment

...courtesy of Ralph Peters, in the New York Post. In his latest column, Colonel Peters (essentially) asks the same questions we posed yesterday: how long did President Obama know about that Iranian nuclear nuclear facility before he publicly acknowledged its existence? And why keep it a secret, particularly if you're trying to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear program?

The answer, according to Peters, can be found in the President's lack of military experience; his unswerving faith in diplomacy and humiliation over a situation that is spinning out of control:

Obama didn't want you to know how much progress Iran had made. It's an embarrassment.

And it raises the pressure on the White House to act -- something this president's squirming to avoid. But the Iranians have now realized we know, so they tipped it themselves.

Obama had no choice but to come clean.

Yesterday, he interrupted the G-20 summit to go public -- before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did. Flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's dead man walking, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, our president offered more uselessly vague rhetoric in response to proof of a major "covert Iranian enrichment facility" and its implications.

So what happens next? Peters predicts a coming apocalypse, caused (in part) by Mr. Obama's refusal to act. We've said the same thing, predicting that the commander-in-chief will face a foreign policy reckoning in the coming months, a catastrophic event that will make last year's market crash seem tame by comparison. Here's how Ralph Peters sees events playing out:

Obama will try more talks. We may see half-hearted sanctions -- which will be violated right and left. Russia, which profits hugely from dirty trade with Iran, can slip goods across the Caspian Sea or through Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

And maritime sanctions are meaningless, unless our president is willing to order our Navy to fire on Chinese-flagged or Venezuelan-flagged merchant vessels.

Think that's going to happen?

How will it end? With desperate Israeli attacks that do only part of the job, followed by Iranian counterstrikes on Persian Gulf oil facilities, the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and oil above $400 a barrel.

Only the United States can stop Iran's nuclear program before it's too late. And this president won't.


12 comments:

retank said...

Quit spreading this fear. According to the IAEA they need to announce it 6 months before the facility goes on line. This is eighteen months before they are even scheduled to activate.
And even then they have agreed to inspection. Also according to regulations the US should have offered to help build the thing.

If anything the world should be more concerned about Israels refusal to allow inspection of it's nuclear facilities along with it's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Or maybe you are the enemy

tom said...

Well George, it looks like IAEA and other entities will be allowed to inspect these sites, perhaps that will be the start of something better, I remind you that George Bush did NOTHING to stop the NKs from their weapons programs....
just saying....

urbanadder22 said...

re retank's comment,

Yes, trust the IAEA,and Mohamed ElBaradei, inspections will show that Ahmadinejad is just posturing when he declares that Israela nd teh Jews will be destroyed.

Worry about Israel instead. What could it be up to? Is it planning to defend itself?

How could those Israelis (Jews) dare to refuse El Baradei (note the name and its ideological connotations) to inspect their military facilities?

And why did they not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? If they do have nuclear armaments, and this is uncertain, is there the danger that they will proliferate nuclear technology to the many other Jewish States?

As to who is the enemy of the United States--as they have stood for the past 233 years--NOT what they are becoming now under the Fascist-Socialist rule of Obama?

The answer: look at what is in control of our government and what supports them.

Aerospook said...

Why does everyone trust the IAEA?

Do you also trust the United Nations?

C'mon people, look at the records, not the rhetoric............The goal of a unified globe is laudable, but, not realistic...

retank said...

Let's go back in history. Kennedy wanted Israeli compliance with nuclear treaties. What did that get him? Killed by a punk who was then killed by "Jack" Rubenstein (Jewish Mafia).
More humans have been killed in nuclear attacks by the US than any other country. And if you defend the deaths of innocent children, you are praising Satan.
Shame on you

sykes.1 said...

How about something really interesting, like Russia occupying the Ukraine, or China annexing Taiwan, or North Korea going for broke. Maybe all three.

tfhr said...

retank,

Are you getting your JFK killer joo info from Khadafi? Thank God it didn't take you 90 minutes to rattle off your "point", but you sound just as unhinged.

What is "Occupation" said...

As I see it, and I am an NOT an expert...

Israel will act when it's sure that obumbler is the President of Voting "Present" and will do nothing.

I see that there are several interesting ways that Israel COULD pull this off...

A major hack into the iranian computer system that would crash it...

An EMP over selected areas

and yes conventional long range bombing...

However I do recall that Israel has sub's..

I do not think Israel will use most of it's airforce on the attack (because of syria, hezbollah & hamas)

I DO think Israel has some tricks up it's sleeves that will be a surprise....

Oil will rocket to 400 a barrel, but if the economy recovers before this happens, it will be at 150-200 on it's own due to a cheap dollar anyway...

America has been filling the SOR (bush increased it's size by 25%) and the world is awash with oil

NOW would be the time to hit iran, while the demand for oil is flat....

As for what can happen if iran is really really motivated to do bad things?

They are already...

They an not immune...

If you destroy iran's oil refinery and power generating plants that would be a major blow to them...

tom said...

It WAS the IAEA that told us Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, also remember Scott Ritter, the ex Marine who treid to tell us that?
facts are difficult things

tfhr said...

tom,

Iraq controlled IAEA access and showed it what Saddam wanted it to see and could never confirm the destruction of stockpiles its inspectors said could not be account for, therefore it's conclusions were not valid.

From PBS' Frontline:

"According to Iraq, 80% of the weaponized CW agents were consumed between 1982 and 1988. In addition, they claim to have unilaterally discarded 130 tons of non-weaponized CW agents during the 1980s. UNSCOM found that these numbers could not be verified."

"After the Gulf War,...1.5 tons of the CW agent VX remain unaccounted for."

"Note: IAEA was allowed back into Iraq in January 2000 and again in January 2001. But its inspectors were blocked from full access inspections."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/etc/arsenal.html

From Hans BlixAn Update on Inspection, January 27, 2003:

"The key part of [the Blix] paper, however, deals with the extent of Iraqi cooperation - with regard to both substance and process. With regard to process.... Blix notes 'some recent disturbing incidents and harassment.'"

"With regard to cooperation on substance, Blix's report is more negative, noting that Iraq has failed to engage in the 'active' cooperation called for in Resolution 1441. He questions Iraqi claims concerning the quality, quantity, and disposition of VX nerve gas produced by Iraq as well as claims that Iraq destroyed 8, 500 liters of anthrax. In addition, he reports that Iraq has tested two missiles in excess of the permitted range of 150 kilometers."
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/

Ritter took money from Iraq.

From Slate:

Ritter hasn't provided any explanation for his change of heart or cited any new evidence. Instead, he denies contradicting himself. He says that as an arms inspector in the 1990s, he observed the United Nations' absolute, "quantitative" standard for disarmament. Anything but the elimination of 100 percent of Iraq's WMD program was unacceptable. Now he urges a more subjective, "qualitative" measurement: "the elimination of a meaningful, viable capability to produce or employ weapons of mass destruction." For instance, Ritter says that although U.N. inspectors may have failed to destroy some portion of Saddam's chemical and germ weapons, most of them have lost their potency by now and are merely "harmless goo."

There may be some merit to this distinction, but it doesn't get Ritter off the hook. In 1998, he suggested that Iraq failed both the quantitative and qualitative tests, writing that Iraq's remaining weapons "represent a vital 'seed stock' that can and will be used by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute his former arsenal." Ritter's argument also fails to explain his old insistence that Iraq could quickly restart its weapons programs. Nor does it account for the probability that Iraq had weapons Ritter never found out about in the first place.

That leaves us to consider ulterior motives. One popular theory, recently advanced by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, holds that Ritter has essentially been bought off. By his own admission, Ritter accepted $400,000 in funding two years ago from an Iraqi-American businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji. Ritter used the money to visit Baghdad and film a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections (which in his telling were corrupted by sinister American manipulation). As Hayes has reported, al-Khafaji is openly sympathetic to Saddam and regularly sponsors anti-American conferences in Baghdad. Al-Khafaji seems to have gotten his money's worth: The documentary was so anti-U.S., says one of Ritter's former U.N. colleagues, that Iraqi officials were passing out copies of it on CD-ROM at a recent international conference.
http://www.slate.com/id/2071502/

If your proposal is to let the Ayatollahs dictate aspects of the inspection protocol or have inspectors on Tehran's payroll, I'm not sure what you think that will accomplish as far as Iran's nuclear programs are concerned.

tfhr said...

tom,

Having difficulty with the facts?

Old Curmudgeon said...

Wrong again, Tom. Hans Blix said Iraq did have WMD, and that he would find them if we gave him another six months before invading.