Ahmadinejad: ‘Yep, I’m Nuclear’

by Ann Coulter at Human Events

The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama’s short-list for V.P.)

Despite Obama’s personal magnetism, the Iranian president persists in moving like gangbusters to build nuclear weapons, leading to Ahmadinejad’s announcement last week that Iran is now a “nuclear state.”

Gee, that’s weird — because I remember being told in December 2007 that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had ceased nuclear weapons development as of 2003.

At the time of that leak, many of us recalled that the U.S. has the worst intelligence-gathering operations in the world. The Czechs, the French, the Italians — even the Iraqis (who were trained by the Soviets) — all have better intelligence.

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NRA News: UN Doomsday Treaty With Ginny Simone

It’s time to wake up and see what the United Nations and gun ban groups are trying to do to subvert the US Constitution. A must see for anyone who values his/her 2nd Amendment rights!

Obama revives talk of U.N. gun control

by Drew Zahn at WorldNetDaily

Gun rights supporters are up in arms over a pair of moves the White House made last month to reverse longstanding U.S. policy and begin negotiating a gun control treaty with the United Nations.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first announced on Oct. 14 that the U.S. had changed its stance and would support negotiations of an Arms Trade Treaty to regulate international gun trafficking, a measure the Bush administration and, notably, former Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations John Bolton opposed for years.Two weeks ago, in another reversal of policy, the U.S. joined a nearly unanimous 153-1 U.N. vote to adopt a resolution setting out a timetable on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty, including a U.N. conference to produce a final accord in 2012.

“Conventional arms transfers are a crucial national security concern for the United States, and we have always supported effective action to control the international transfer of arms,” Clinton said in a statement. “The United States is prepared to work hard for a strong international standard in this area.”

Gun rights advocates, however, are calling the reversal both a dangerous submission of America’s Constitution to international governance and an attempt by the Obama administration to sneak into effect private gun control laws it couldn’t pass through Congress.

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Obama’s French Lesson

By Charles Krauthammer at Townhall.com

“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.” — French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

WASHINGTON — When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia … what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

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Surrendering U.S. Sovereignty at G-20 Summit

by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann at Townhall.com

While all eyes were on the rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, the United States — under President Obama — was surrendering its economic sovereignty at the G-20 summit.

The result of this conclave, which France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy hailed as “revolutionary,” was that all the nations agreed to coordinate their economic policies and programs and to submit them to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for comment and approval. While the G-20 nations and the IMF are, for now, only going to use “moral suasion” on those nations found not to be in compliance, talk of sanctions looms on the horizon.

While the specific policies to which the U.S. committed itself (reducing the deficit and strengthening regulatory oversight of financial institutions) are laudable in themselves, the process and the precedent are frightening.

We are to subject our most basic national economic policies to the review of a group of nations that includes autocratic Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Even though our gross domestic product is three times bigger than the second-largest economy (Japan) and equal to that of 13 of the G-20 nations combined, we are to sit politely by with our one vote and submit to the global consensus. Europe has five votes (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the EU), while we have but one.

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With Obama, Too Much Nuance, Not Enough Power

by Michael Barone at Townhall.com

“It is my deeply held belief,” Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly, that “in the year 2009 — more than at any point in human history — the interests of nations and peoples are shared.”

That is, of course, the year Obama became president, and he wasn’t shy about referring in his second paragraph to “the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,” though he assured us they “are not about me.”

Before Obama’s speech, I wrote that he seems “stuck in a time warp in which the United States is the bad guy.” Not any more, he seemed to say in his U.N. speech. He has ordered the closing of Guantanamo. He has prohibited the use of torture. He is “responsibly ending” the war in Iraq (no triumphalist talk of victory). He is promising substantial reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons. He has invested $80 billion in clean energy. The U.S. has joined the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.

All of which is a way of saying that nasty George W. Bush is no longer around with all his self-righteous swagger, and that with (as Obama did not fail to note) the first African-American installed in the White House, America is now on the same page with the rest of the world.

Much of the speech seemed to be an exercise in what Sigmund Freud called “projection,” assuming that others think the way you do. Obama spoke as if the mullahs of Iran, the Kim Jong Il clan of North Korea, Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs, and the rulers of China had the same gripes against the Bush administration as Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress. Hey, if we just close Gitmo, they’ll realize that we’re all in sympathy now.

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Israeli Address to UN Security Council

#TCOT #diggcons

You can view the entire transcript here on IsraelPolitik.org, but here are some highlights:

Eight years. For eight years the citizens of southern Israel have suffered the trauma of almost daily missile attacks from Gaza. For eight years more than 8,000 rockets and mortar shells have targeted Israeli towns and villages. For eight years the residents of these towns have had a bare 15 seconds to hurry, with their children and their elderly, to find cover before rockets and missiles land on their houses and schools.

Many in this hall have condemned Hamas’ terrorist attacks, and we welcome this statement of basic principle. But the families at home in the city of Sderot, and children at school in Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara will not be protected by these condemnations. In the face of such terrorism we have no choice. We have to defend ourselves – not from the Palestinian people, but from the terrorists who have taken them hostage. Not to gain territory or power, but to demonstrate that our restraint was not weakness and to give our citizens the basic right of a normal life.

Hamas shows a similar disdain for the lives of Palestinians. It has adopted the terrorists’ tactic – the coward’s tactic – of using civilians as shields while its leaders themselves flee from combat with Israel’s soldiers and make pathetic demonstrations of bravado from their bunkers. It hides its missiles and terrorist bases in homes and hospitals and mosques, and, as we saw earlier today, deliberately launches attacks from in and around schools and United Nations’ facilities – with tragic results.

Since the start of the fighting, Israel facilitated the entry into Gaza of over 540 trucks, delivering over 10,000 tons of humanitarian assistance. In fact, just a few days ago Israel was asked by the World Food Program to halt supplies of food shipments since their warehouses were full.

As Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad was proud to announce on Al Aqsa TV: Palestinians have created a human shield of women, children the elderly and the jihad fighters as if to say to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death as you desire life.”

We, the people of Israel, listened to the international community when you told us to withdraw from Gaza and promised that this would give us the credibility to respond forcefully should Gaza turn into a launching pad for terrorism. We listened when you promised us that acting with restraint during the period of calm would give us the credibility to fight back should the rocket attacks resume. Now is your time to make good on those promises.

Of course the UN will continue to condemn Israel for defending her citizens against the terror attacks by Hamas, but Ambassador Gabriela Shalev very eloquently made a case that any rational person could understand.

Israelis and Palestinians: Who’s David, Who’s Goliath?–Jewish World Review

Israel knows how to win a war

Israel continues to pound away at Hamas targets in Gaza while it amasses troops on the border in preparation for a possible ground attack.

The typical response from the international community is coming in as well.  Iran is calling for volunteer Muslims around the world to fight in Palestine.  French President Sarkozy has condemned the Israeli attacks as disproportionate to the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets.  The Egyptian foreign minister referred to Israel’s military response as “blind military action” in the same breath in which he extended his condolences to the Palestinian “victims.”   Protests throughout the Arab world are calling for more agressive action against Israel and America.

Such hypocrisy has come to be expected anytime Israel responds to Palestinian or Arab aggression.  But, Israel knows how to take care of itself.  Since the United Nations created the State of Israel in 1948, the geographically tiny and isolated country has fought and won several wars with its surrounding Arab neighbors.

War of Independence 1947-1949

1947 Boundaries

During the War of Independence from 1947-49, the tiny state fought and defeated an Arab coalition consisting of Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt.  Troops of these nations were supplemented by Palestinian and Sudanese contingents as well.  Over 6,000 Israeli troops lost their lives to defeat the Arab aggressors who greatly outnumbered the fledgling nation’s armed forces.

This was not to be the war to end all wars however, as Israel’s neighbors retreated to lick their wounds and develop new strategies.  During this time, Palestinian terrorism was born as Egypt funded suicide troops who operated from bases in Jordan.  The U.N. Security Council condemned every Israeli response to this terror, but condemnation of the Arab’s who sponsored violence against Israel was blocked by the Soviet Union’s veto.

Sinai Campaign of 1956

In 1956, Israel launched an offensive against Egyptian forces in the Sinai Desert in response to the Arab nation’s stockpiling of Soviet arms in preparation for war against the tiny Jewish state.  When Egytptian President Nasser blockaded the Suez Canal, Britain and France backed the Israeli action.  Israel launched the campaign with paratroops who quickly conquered the Egyptian airfields in the Sinai and cleared the path for Israeli ground forces to march to the Suez Canal.

The United States sponsored a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai that was subsequently vetoed by Britain and France.  The next day, these two countries launched air attacks against Egyptian airfields along the canal allowing Israeli ground troops to pummel their opponents.  These operations resulted in the capture of the Gaza Strip, along with virtually the entire Sinai Desert.  It had taken this tiny, isolated Jewish nation only 8 days to relieve Egypt of the heavily fortified Sinai.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union condemned the Israeli assault and demanded it remove its troops to pre-war borders.  Israel complied after 6 months of negotiations produced a U.N. agreement to take control of the Gaza Strip and station a U.N. Emergency Force in the Sinai to protect Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aquaba and Suez Canal.

The Arab states were surprised by Israel’s quick victory, but not ready to accept its right to exist.  This war was not yet over.

The Six Day War–1967

Over the course of several weeks in 1967, anti-Israeli rhetoric comprised of threats of annihilation of the small Jewish state was spewed by Arab leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, and Syria, as well as Palestinian leaders.  This rhetoric was followed by the massing of Arab troops on Israeli borders in the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  Egypt sent 100,000 troops into the Sinai, blockaded Israel’s southern port, and demanded the withdrawal of the U.N. Emergency Force, while Syria staged its forces in the Golan Heights, and Jordan in the West Bank.

Israel launched a preemptive attack on and quickly crushed Egyptian forces in the Sinai and Gaza.  A Syrian air attack was quashed by the Israelis on the first day of the war.  Jordanian troops then launched an offensive from the West Bank.  After six days of fierce fighting, Israel had routed the Arab forces and expelled them from their staging areas (now known as the Occupied Territories.)

War of Attrition 1968-1970

Egypt, seeking to recapture the Sinai, launched artillery attacks against Israeli Defense Forces on the east bank of the Suez.  Israel responded with a cross border commando attack that knocked out the main source of electricity for Egypt.  President Nasser spent the next few months fortifying strategic targets in Egypt before again escalating the conflict.  In the interim, Israel had refortified its positions along the Suez which came to be known as the Bar Lev Line.

In February 1969, Nasser ordered a massive artillery and air attack against the Bar Lev Line, resulting in heavy Israeli casualties.  Israel again responded with cross border attacks deep into Egyptian territory.  In July, Israel launched a massive air assault that continued into December and destroyed Egyptian anti-aircraft defenses.

With nothing standing between Egypt and the Israeli Air Force, Nasser appealed to the Soviet Union for assistance in the form of arms and troops.  The United States, fearing superpower involvement could lead to a nuclear confrontation, then became involved in cease-fire negotiations and Israel accepted the U.S. brokered cease-fire agreement in July of 1970.

Yom Kippur War 1973

On the holiest day of the Jewish calender, The Day of Atonement–October 6, 1973, this attack caught the Israeli Defense Forces totally off guard and the initial action went heavily for the attacking Syrian and Egyptian forces.  Egypt launched an all out attack on the Sinai coordinated with a similar attack by the Syrians in the Golan Heights.  Israel’s 500 troops in the Suez Canal zone faced an 80,000 strong Egyptian force while 150 Israeli tanks battled 1,400 Syrian tanks in the North.

Though Egypt and Syria bore the brunt of the campaign, they had help from many of Israel’s Arab enemies.  Iraq supplied the Syrian force with 18,000 troops, which were further bolstered by two Jordanian armored brigades.  Libya and Iraq had previously supplied Egypt with Russian-built MIG and French-built Mirage fighter jets which were employed in the campaign.  Saudi Arabia and Kuwait financed much of the operation.  In a sense, Israel was once again fighting the entire Arab world.

Caught totally unaware of the impending attack, the first two days of the war were disastrous for Israel.  Egypt had marched 15 miles into the Sinai and Syria had taken the Golan Heights by the 7th of October.  However, Israel’s geographic disadvantage of being surrounded by its enemies and the numerous wars fought before had left it in a heightened alert status, always ready to respond quickly to enemy activity.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were quickly mobilized and reserves called up.  On October 8, this small, isolated Jewish nation lauched a counterrattack that rapidly forced the Egyptian forces back across the Suez and expelled the Syrian forces from the Golan Heights.  The IDF marched to within 65 miles of Cairo and 35 miles of Damascus before a U.N. brokered cease-fire interrupted the Israeli rout of its enemies on October 24.  A peacekeeping force of 1,200 U.N. troops was sent to the Golan Heights and Israel maintained control of the Sinai.

Once again, the outnumbered Israeli forces had defeated a numerically superior force of allied Arab enemies in a few short days.

Operation Peace for Galilee–1982

Palestinian terror groups, most notably the Palestinian Liberation Organization, had sprung up since before the Six Day War and had expanded their base of operations to include southern Lebanon.  Israel had launched smaller scale attacks against these bases prior to 1982, like Operation Litani in 1978 in response to a terror attack on civilian buses that killed 37 and wounded another 76.

In response to an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to Britain in 1982, the IDF once again attacked the terror bases in southern Lebanon.  This time, the mission was expanded an Israel captured the capital city of Beirut.  The Syrians interceded in June.  Though Israel’s success against Syrian ground forces came with a high price, this small Jewish state dominated in the skies.  Syrian anti-aircraft batteries were quickly destroyed which allowed the superior Israeli Air Force to down 29 Syrian aircraft in one day without a single loss of its own.

The Gulf War–1991

During the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, Israel obliged American requests to not become actively engaged.  However, Saddam Hussein, facing an international coalition devoted to wresting recently conquered Kuwait from Iraqi hands, ordered Scud missile attacks against Israel in an effort to garner support of Arab members of the coalition.  More than 80 Scud missiles resulted in 31 Israeli fatalities.  These Israeli citizens died at the hand of the Arab state of Iraq even though Israel was not in any way involved in the war.

Lebanon/Hezbollah War–2006

By July 2006, the Palestinian terror organization Hezbollah had established bases in Lebanon once again.  An IDF patrol was attacked, inside Israeli territory, by Hezbollah terrorists who killed three and captured two Israeli troops.  This attack coincided with coordinated rocket and  mortar bombardments of Israeli settlements and military installations in the north.

Israel then launched a counterattack against Hezbollah positions throughout Lebanon.  Once again, the international community revealed its hypocrisy in criticism of Israel’s disproportionate use of force.  The war concluded on August 14 with a U.N. brokered cease-fire.

Once again, Israel is forced to respond to unprovoked attacks by terrorist organizations funded and supported by its Arab enemies.  And, once again the world is condemning Israel for responding too harshly.

If the United States and the rest of the international community will stand aside and let the Israelis finish this, the Palestinian problem will be resolved.  Either there will be no terrorists left, or they will come to realize that failure to recognize Israel’s right to exist can only lead to their annihilation.

The Israelis knows how to deal with this.  We need to let them finish it.

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Related Posts

Human Sacrifice in the Pit of Hell–by Cassandra at Politeia

Liveblogging Israel’s operation against Hamas–Michelle Malkin

Green activists find new ally in US unions

By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer

POZNAN, Poland – Some U.S. labor groups that have long feared environmental campaigns as a threat to American jobs are starting to see advantages in going green.

This evolution was clear at this week’s U.N. climate talks in Poland, where several American labor groups and environmental activists made joint appeals for policies that would promote high-tech renewable energy as the answer to both climate change and job losses.

About 25 representatives of U.S. unions were in Poznan — about twice the number at last year’s U.N. talks in Bali, Indonesia — representing workers from the electrical, transit, steel, service and other sectors.

“There is a very wide cross-section of American unions that reflects the growing engagement of American unions’ support of climate change policies,” said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance. The group was founded by the United Steelworkers, North America’s largest manufacturing union, and the Sierra Club, the United States’ largest and oldest grass-roots environmental group.

“There’s a power in the joint vision that we just don’t have functioning on our own,” added Foster, who was for 16 years a United Steelworkers regional director.

…(Read full article)