Instead of drumming up a war to meet the needs of the political moment, B.O. is trying to drum up a fake temporary “peace(?)” or something that could pass for it to the undiscriminating.

Now, what could be the motivation for THAT? Hmmmm. Oh, here it it, right in the article:

Under the proposed deal, Israel would not attack Iran until 2013, after US elections in November this year.

Such a deal for Israel. Yeah, right!

Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources[1], according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles.

The Chief recently finished reading Michael Dobbs’ One Minute to Midnight, his engaging, authoritative, and detailed account of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and how we were able to avoid a thermonuclear war largely due to the fact that grown-ups (Kennedy and Krushchev) were at least nominally in charge, and in spite of a spontaneous flow of negative events were able to engineer a mutually tolerable conclusion to the situation. (By the way, the book is a great read…sort of Tom Clancy for real!)

Unfortunately one doubts that with Obama, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the players today, that the character and level of rationality available will prove to be adequate to maintain sanity, to say nothing of national security.

The situation that is unfolding in Venezuela has some resemblance to the Cuba crisis of 1962. At that time, Cuba was acting on behalf of the USSR; now Venezuela is acting on behalf of Iran. At present, the geopolitical situation is very different: the world is no longer ruled by two superpowers; new nations, often with questionable leaders and the ambition of acquiring global status, are appearing on the international scene. Their danger to the free world will be greater if the process of nuclear proliferation is not stopped. Among the nations that aspire to become world powers, Iran has certainly the best capabilities of posing a challenge to the West.

Back in the 1962, thanks to the stern stance adopted by the then Kennedy administration, the crisis was defused.

Nowadays, however, we do not see the same firmness from the present administration. On the contrary, we see a lax attitude, both in language and in deeds, that results in extending hands when our adversaries have no intention of shaking hands with us. Iran is soon going to have a nuclear weapon, and there are no signs that UN sanctions will in any way deter the Ayatollah’s regime from completing its nuclear program. We know that Iran already has missiles that can carry an atomic warhead over Israel and over the Arabian Peninsula. Now we learn that Iran is planning to build a missile base close to the US borders. How longer do we have to wait before the Obama administration begins to understand threats?

Pray.

Is Yemen the most dangerous new front in the war on terror?

In case you don’t recall, one of Major Hasan’s internet e-mail pen pals is Yemeni Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki.

Sheikh Anwar’s latest blogpost describes Major Hasan as a “hero”, a man of conscience. Given that the cleric says other Muslims have a right, or a duty, to behave similarly, army investigators will no doubt be keen to see who else was in contact with him. But the blog is worth reading for other reasons, too. Last month, for instance, Sheikh Anwar told us to expect the unexpected. But the message had nothing to do with Fort Hood. Instead, his focus was closer to hand: “Could Yemen be the Next Surprise of the Season?” he asked.

The Yemen situation is truly what the Brits might refer to as “a sticky wicket”.

The multiple crises afflicting Yemen are not a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and certainly not to those in Washington. There is every reason to suppose that the US authorities are far more alarmed over events there than they were over Major Hasan, but they have been similarly unsure how to react. Some commentators in the Middle East are starting to see this as a trend: an uncertainty over how to deal with the Muslim world is leading to disaster.

Yemen, which occupies an important position at the tip of the Red Sea and on the borders of Saudi Arabia, is home to three separate conflicts. One is against al-Qaeda, which has put down strong roots in the territory, the ancestral home of the Bin Laden clan. One is against secessionists in the south. The third is the most obscure, the most seemingly pointless, but the most destructive: a long, drawn-out campaign against an insurgency by a group of Shia tribalists known as the Houthis.

Fir the gory details of Yemen (“It ain’t that pretty at all.”) go to the piece. Meanwhile, on other fronts of WW-IV, formerly known as the G.W.O.T., things aren’t much better:

…In the Occupied Territories, America has scuppered its Palestinian ally Mahmoud Abbas by allowing him to set conditions for talks with Israel which it then allowed Israel to ignore.

On Iran, Washington set a deadline for a response to a proposed deal on enriched uranium, and then let the deadline pass. Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both regard Iran as a mortal enemy, are taking counsel.

In Afghanistan, it has just given itself more time to decide whether to send extra troops. Can Hamid Karzai even consider himself a friend of America any more?

The trend was summarised by Riad Kahwaji, the chief executive of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, in a research note yesterday: “It is a bad time to be an American ally.” He quotes one Arab official as asking, “With a weak and hesitant ally, who needs enemies?”

No such uncertainty affects the Houthis, whose slogan could not be clearer: “God is Great; Death to America; Death to Israel.” [emphases added]

As is common these days…one needs to go to the UK press to get a decent picture of events.

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer. Both have studied the Middle East for decades, traveled to the area repeatedly in recent years and written about the region extensively. And both have become convinced that we may be facing a cataclysm.

Hanson and Baer each presented his analysis during an interview this past week. Although they differ on certain matters, they agree on five observations.

There is more of the backstory on each of these in the article, but that doesn’t make the situation look any better.

The first: If not already capable of doing so, Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons in mere months.

The second observation: The Iranians have no interest in running a bluff. Once able to produce nuclear weapons, they will almost certainly do so.

The third observation: As the Iranians scramble to produce nuclear weapons, the Obama administration appears too feckless, inexperienced or deluded to stop them.

The Chief doesn’t know whether it is the fecklessness, inexperience, or delusion that is causing the problem. Probably all three!

The fourth observation: Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.

The final observation: Iran would retaliate.

“Iran’s deterrent doctrine is to strike back everywhere it can,” Baer explained. “We should expect the worst.” Iran would attack American supply lines in Iraq and command Hezbollah to start a civil war in Lebanon. It would fire surface-to-surface missiles at every oil facility within range, wreaking devastation in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states while removing millions of barrels of oil a day from the world markets. The economy of the entire globe would suffer a paroxysm. The Middle East could descend into chaos. The U.S. would experience the worst crisis in decades.

After the assassination 95 years ago of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the great powers of Europe engaged in meaningless diplomatic maneuvers. “Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot possibly comply with it,” British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith confided in a letter. “[W]e are in measurable, or at least imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon.”

A big nation attempting to humiliate a small nation in a way the small nation simply cannot accept. Unseriousness among great powers. A gathering sense of impending catastrophe. Once again, it may be Armageddon time.

Like the lyric of an old Warren Zevon song: “It ain’t that pretty at all!”.

The Pentagon has brought forward to December 2009 the target-date for producing the first 15-ton super bunker-buster bomb (GBU-57A/B) Massive Ordinance Penetrator, which can reach a depth of 60.09 meters underground before exploding. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that top defense agencies and air force units were also working against the clock to adapt the bay of a B2a Stealth bomber for carrying and delivering the bomb.

30,000 pounds?!  Uff da!

Congress has since quietly inserted the necessary funding in the 2009 budget.

Dang! Who’d have thought Congress could do anything besides increase taxes or pass new restrictive regulations QUIETLY?

All this urgency indicates that the Obama administration has been preparing military muscle to back up the international condemnation of Iran’s concealed nuclear bomb program, its sanctions threat and his willingness to join the negotiations with Iran opening on Oct. 1 in Geneva. Tehran may have to take into account a possible one-time surgical strike against its underground enrichment facility as a warning shot should its defiance continue. In particular, the world powers this week demanded that Iran open up all its nuclear facilities and programs to full and immediate international inspection. Failure to do so could bring forth further US military action.

A LIGHT IN THE FOREST? This could be a sign of the survival of SOME rationality in the White House.  One can only hope!

According to our military sources, the earliest date for the accelerated Pentagon program to produce a super bunker buster bomb mounted on a stealth bomber is December 2009 or January 2010. This too is three years ahead of its original schedule.

How could this have been speeded up three years early? Samuel Johnson’s observation comes to mind: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Stay tuned.

Up above a big military parade in Tehran on Tuesday, Sept. 22, as Iranian president declared Iran’s armed forces would “chop off the hands” of any power daring to attack his country, two air force jets collided in mid-air. One was Iran’s only airborne warning and control system (AWACS) for coordinating long-distance aerial operations, DEBKAfile’s military and Iranian sources disclose.

The proud military parade, which included a march-past, a line of Shehab-3 missiles and an air force fly-past, was planned to give Ahmadinejad a dazzling send-off for New York and add steel to his UN Assembly speech Wednesday.

Dubbed “Simorgh” (a flying creature of Iranian fable which performs wonders in mid-flight), the AWACS’ appearance, escorted by fighter jets, was to have been the climax for the Iranian Air force’s fly-past over the parade. Instead, it collided with one of escorting planes, a US-made F-5E, and both crashed to the ground in flames. All seven crewmen were killed.

AND – To add insult to injury:

Eye witnesses reported that the flaming planes landed on the mausoleum burial site of the Islamic revolution’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, a national shrine.

Dare one suggest something about a “bad omen” for Ahmahdinejad Ah’m-mad-on-jihad, the Iranian neo-Hitler since this effectively will greatly aid if/when Israel strikes against the Iranian nuke.

Obama hosts Ramadan dinner at White House

Showcasing the contributions of American Muslims he said represent “extraordinary dynamism and diversity,” President Obama hosted a White House dinner Tuesday to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Mr. Obama was extending a presidential tradition and pushing forward his goal of reaching out to the Muslim world in an attempt to show cultural understanding.

Now, where’s the administration’s appropriate response to the following bit of Islamic diversity?  (Hint: ALthought B.O. says we should meet with the mullahs, in reality it DOESN’T involve “cultural understanding!)

Ahmadinejad’s Imam: Islam Allows Raping, Torturing Prisoners

Let’s see now…the U.S. administration is going through contortions to insure that no one offends Islamioterr prisoners, purportedly with the idea that if we’re nice, then they’ll be nice too.

Guess again! Here is what the Iranians have to say about THAT:  [emphasis added]

A highly influential Shi’a religious leader, with whom Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly consults, apparently told followers last month that coercion by means of rape, torture and drugs is acceptable against all opponents of the Islamic regime.

Notice the respect for the Geneva Convention? You don’t? Neither do I. But wait, there’s more from these blithe practitioners of the “Religion of Peace”.

According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), an independent Israeli intelligence analysis organization, Mesbah-Yazdi is considered Ahmadinejad’s personal spiritual guide. A radical totalitarian even in Iranian terms, he holds messianic views, supports increasing Islamization, calls for violent suppression of domestic political opponents, and, according to the ITIC, “declared that obeying a president supported by the Supreme Leader was tantamount to obeying God.”

At the Jamkaran gathering, Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad answered questions about the rape and torture charges. The following text is from a transcript alleged by Iranian dissidents to be a series of questions and answers exchanged between the ayatollah and some of his supporters.

Asked if a confession obtained “by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure” was “valid and considered credible according to Islam,” Mesbah-Yazdi replied: “Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih (“Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists”, or the regime of Iran’s mullahs) is permissible under any condition.” The ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

“Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?” was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: “The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it’s acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed.”

There’s more gory details in the linked piece, go look to see more of what can be meant when they remind us that “Islam” equals submission. Now you know HOW to submit!

A rare bit of good judgment from B.O.’s administration.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiled as European diplomats left in protest over his opening address to a controversial UN summit to fight racism.

President Ahmadinejad, speaking as Israelis prepares to commemorate the Holocaust on Tuesday, described Jews and Israel’s creation as the “ugly face” of a Western conspiracy.

“They sent migrants from Europe, the United States in order to establish a racist government in the occupied Palestine,” he said.

“The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces.”

Of course no spewage from Ahmadinejad I’m-mad-on-a-jihad would be complete without his trademark holocaust denial rant, which in this event was the unbearable straw from the Iranian camel’s backside, that even the Eurabians couldn’t abide:

EU diplomats launched a walk out when Mr Ahmadinejad claimed that the “pretext of Jewish suffering”, a reference to the Holocaust, had been used to create Israel.

The US did NOT walk out of the conference…we (fortunately) never even showed up to be there TO walk out, knowing in advance which way this UN stench was going to blow…an example of all-too-rare good judgment from the B.O. administration:

The United States, Israel, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand boycotted the conference because of fears that Mr Ahmadinejad would use the event to equate Zionism with racism.

The real question left standing regarding the B.O. administration stance is who in their right mind can hold out hopes for a positive result from negotiating with this latter-day Iranian Nazi?

Read it all if you want to, but the Chief doesn’t want to dwell on the swill that is passing itself as a diplomatic initiative.

Symbolic gesture gives assurances that US does not want to topple Islamic regime

There. That pretty well sums it up without reaching the retch-point.

This is reminiscent of another letter that promised “peace in out time” that Chamberlain exchanged with Hitler in 1938. But hey, who cares about history any more, anyway?

This is good. One supposes that having weapons as inefficient as the home-brew (but still dangerous) Hamas rockets would restore some “balance”…but the Chief always though the whole idea in war was to do a better job of killing the enemy and breaking his things than he is able to do to you.

So why are they doing this? Hmmmm. (THINK. THINK.)

Hey, Hamas is an Iranian supported operation. Doesn’t this all conveniently distract everyone from the continuing Iranian nuclear project?

Much of Hamas’ imported weaponry, and the expertise with which it now produces the rockets it uses to bombard Israeli border towns and villages, comes from Iran. Dozens of its top commanders have received training in Iran.

Oh well. Hamas is learning again the hard way – if you want to run with wolves, you had better know how to howl.