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Obama Decides His Iraq Policy Sucks
But, we knew that, right?
Out comes the Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, as another Iraq City falls to ISIS.
, serif; line-height: 28px; color: #333333; background: 0px 0px;”>Defense Secretary Ash Carter held open the possibility of a strategy shift by the White House on Iraq, a few days after recent setbacks in Iraq and Syria revived sharp criticism of the Obama administration’s approach in combating extremist groups there.
Islamic State forces last week captured the key Iraqi city of Ramadiand also expanded their reach in Syria. Critics and even allies of the administration took to Sunday television talk shows to call for a strategy change by the administration to stem the advance of Islamic State forces.
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Already Nuclear
No surprise that Iran is admitting that they have been developing or possess a nuclear weapon, is it?
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that while Iran is already a nuclear state, it has no intention of attacking Israel. Ahmadinejad was interviewed on the eve of his visit to Cairo, where he will attend the 12th Islamic Summit Conference, due to open there on Wednesday.
Before his trip, he gave a long interview to the editor-in-chief of Egypt’s newspaper Al-Ahram. Although Al-Ahram ran the entire interview only in its print edition, excerpts appeared on Egyptian websites.
Ahmadinejad said the world must now treat Iran as a nuclear country. “They want Iran to go back to what it was in the past, but they won’t succeed. They assume we’ll give in to pressure; such thoughts are misguided. We’re already an industrial and nuclear country, a country that has conquered space. For years we have been thinking about sending a human being into space, and we will do that, with Allah’s help. We must ensure development and growth and bring them to pass, and the world must acknowledge our progress,” he said, adding that the best solution was cooperation with Iran.
Mentioning the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Ahmadinejad said that while it might be easy to launch missiles or attack using fighter jets, Iran’s response and defense capability were important in this context.
So, is this the Iran Breakout Capability moment?
Perhaps.
Now, what will the United States and other Western nuclear powers do?
How about another round of sanctions?
Let the Middle East nuclear proliferation wars begin.
Will Iran give the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt a nuclear weapon? How about Hezbollah? Hamas?
The United States and Europe better reconsider those Eastern European (Poland) missile defense installations – and quick.
Why the United States Needs National Missile Defense
Screencap of video depicting a nuclear missile attack on the United States
Is there any wonder why President Reagan over three decades ago, pushed for national missile defense?
It begins benignly enough, with an image of a sleeping young North Korean man, and a genteel piano version of the US feel-good pop anthem We Are the World providing the musical backdrop.
But the YouTube video recently posted by Uriminzokkiri, North Korea‘s official website, quickly takes a more sinister turn as the man’s dream continues into the realms of Stalinist fantasy.
Within seconds he is aboard a space shuttle, launched into orbit by the same type of rocket the North successfully launched in December. The shuttle orbits Earth, at one point passing over a jubilant and reunified Korean peninsula, before the focus switches to an unidentified city draped in the Stars and Stripes.
What appear to be missiles rain down on the city, setting fire to high-rise buildings in scenes reminiscent of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York.
“Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing,” the Korean-language caption says. “It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze.”
Here is the video (embedded below):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKWJSKYBDXE&feature=share&list=UUknqqNd3-joIjWzf1Jn4oVQ[/youtube]
Of course, this is just plain B.S. and something for members of Congress to consider when they have to vote on whether to cut the crap out of the defense budget over the next few months
Day By Day October 22, 2012 – Try Hard
Interesting, isn’t it that on the eve of the third and last Presidential debate there is a “leaked” report or an October Surprise about Iran?
The New York Times reports (and the White House denies) that “The United States and Iran have agreed for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.”
Two of the three assertions in that lead paragraph are demonstrably false. One-on-one negotiations have been going on for years (most recently, according to my friend “Reza Kahlili,” in Doha, where, he was told, Valerie Jarrett and other American officials recently traveled for the latest talks). The only news here is that the talks would no longer be secret. And the notion that only diplomacy can avert “a military strike on Iran” is fanciful. There are at least two other ways: sanctions may compel the regime to stop its nuclear weapons program, or the Iranian people may find a way to overthrow the regime, thereby (perhaps, at least) rendering military action unnecessary.
I rather suspect that you don’t have to do anything to avoid an American military strike on Iran. I can’t imagine an Obama administration authorizing a military attack. An administration that can barely bring itself to fly air cover in Libya, and can’t bring itself to take any serious action in Syria, strikes me as very unlikely to unleash our armed forces against the mullahs.
Even as the debate approaches, remember you can fool some of the people ONLY some of the time.
Anyone want to bet how many times Obama spikes the football regarding the demise of Osama bin Laden tonight?
Obama’s Russia Reset: Russia Threatens Strike on Missile Defense Sites
So much for President Obama’s reset of Russian foreign policy.
Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall.
“A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials.
The threat comes as talks about the missile defense system, which the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at Iranian missiles, appear to have stalled.
“We have not been able to find mutually-acceptable solutions at this point and the situation is practically at a dead end,” Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said.
Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense, insisted the talks about NATO plans for a missile defense system using ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in Poland, Romania and Turkey were not stalemated.
But she acknowledged Wednesday that the recent elections in Russia and the upcoming elections in the U.S. make it “pretty clear that this is a year in which we’re probably not going to achieve any sort of a breakthrough.”
She reiterated that the U.S.-built system, still in development, is being designed to shoot down Iranian intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, not Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Yeah, Yeah, Russia is afraid of missile defense as they always have been since Reagan. And, President Obama and the Democrats in the Congress hate the program.
Just watch Obama capitulate and Romney to jump all over the President, especially since Obama made those flexibility remarks..
President 2012: Obama Spikes the Ball in Afghanistan
President Barack Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, the first anniversary of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.
On his third trip to Afghanistan since taking office, Obama met with President Hamid Karzai and will make a televised address at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Tuesday’s visit comes at a particularly delicate time in relations between the United States and Afghanistan, as plans to withdraw U.S.-led international forces proceed.
The countries have been negotiating a strategic agreement that would outline the basis for U.S.-Afghan cooperation after most U.S. and allied troops withdraw in 2014. Obama and Karzai are expected to sign the agreement on Tuesday, according to the senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the flight.
The Strategic Partnership Agreement provides a framework for the U.S.-Afghanistan partnership for the decade following the U.S. and allied troop withdrawal, the officials said on condition of not being identified.
Specific levels of U.S. forces and funding are not set in the agreement and will be determined by the United States in consulation with alllies, the officials said.
Noting the anniversary of the bin Laden mission, the officials called it a resonant day for the Afghan and American people.
Mission accomplished, Mr. President?
In other words, Obama ends the war in Afghanistan on Osama bin Laden’s death anniversary. Obama wins the war, before he loses it.
All symbolism and NO substance.
And, at what cost?
Day By Day April 18, 2012 – The Game
Day By Day by Chris Muir
North Korea Watch: Here We Go Again With Missile Launch
This DigitalGlobe satellite image, obtained on March 30, shows Tongch’ang-ni Launch Facility on North Korea’s northwest coast. A rocket launch, purportedly to put a satellite into orbit, is set for sometime between April 12-16 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il-Sung
And, the United States has initiated its national missile defense system.
The Pentagon recently activated its global missile shield in anticipation of North Korea’s launch of a long-range missile, according to defense officials.
The measures include stepped-up electronic monitoring, deployment of missile interceptor ships, and activation of radar networks to areas near the Korean peninsula and western Pacific.
Three interceptor ships near Japan and the Philippines, as well as U.S.-based interceptors, are ready to shoot down the North Korean missile if space-, land-, and sea-based sensors determine its flight path is targeted at the United States or U.S. allies, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Obama administration will regard any launch by North Korea as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions regardless of whether the North Koreans claim the rocket test is for space launch purposes, the officials said. The technology and rocketry used for a space launch is nearly identical to that used with ballistic missiles that carry a warhead, they said.
Also, because the payload or warhead of the test launch cannot be determined prior to launch, the Obama administration decided to activate the missile defense system.
According to U.S. officials, current intelligence assessments indicate the North Korean missile will be launched from a base called Tongchang-ri, located on a west coast peninsula north of Pyongyang between April 12 and April 15.
The Obama Administration has rightly activated the shield and remember when Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats came out against the system and ridiculed President Ronald Reagan.
“This premise, that one day Kim Jong Il or someone will wake up one morning and say ‘Aha, San Francisco!’ is specious,” Senator Joe Biden told AP in May 2001.
Meanwhile in the Senate, Carl Levin (D., Mich.) offered in June to cut off funds for the ground-based interceptor program that Mr. Bush recently activated in Alaska in anticipation of the North Korean launch. Mr. Levin wants to stop new interceptors from being built, but Senate Republicans wouldn’t bring his proposal up for a vote. Mr. Levin has been waging his own private war against missile defenses for a generation, to the point of outflanking Russian objections on the political left.
In May 2001 the Boston Herald‘s Woodlief wrote that John Kerry “wants to croak the hugely costly nuclear missile defense system.” And just one day before the 9/11 attacks Joe Biden (D., Del.) gave a National Press Club speech outlining Democrat opposition to national missile defense.
In May 2001, John Kerry himself outlined some of these arguments on Meet the Press by saying that he wanted “a very limited…highly verifiable and mutually agreed-upon (missile) defense system.” And he complained about the cost. “We’ve already spent $68 billion and have almost nothing to show for it,” noted Kerry.
On May 3, 2001, John Kerry called national missile defense a “mythology” on Don Imus’s radio show.
On June 14, 2001, John Kerry told Hardball‘s Chris Matthews that a “missile shield that could defend the United States against any incoming missile is a fantasy, it is too expensive, it won’t work, and that’s what people believe will drive an arms race.”
If it had been left to them, there would be NO missile shield.
Stay tuned…..
CA-25: Rep Buck McKeon Proposes Afghanistan Surge
With some calling for a rush to the exits in Afghanistan after two weeks of heightened violence, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is looking to add troops into the mix. The bill, should it gain traction, could force the U.S. to change its current drawdown plans.
California’s Rep. Buck McKeon introduced a new bill that calls for U.S. military to guard U.S. entities, replacing the thousands of private security guards and Afghan nationals that are currently being used.
In calling for the bill, McKeon notes increasing incidents of Afghan military attacking U.S. and NATO troops. Afghan soldiers and government workers have murdered six American troops since the news that U.S. troops accidentally burned some Qurans and religious material. In the last five years Afghan forces have attacked NATO troops nearly 200 times, killing at least 70 coalition troops and wounding more than 100. An Army report declassified last year found that American troops think Afghan forces are dangerous and unstable. And many Afghan soldiers and police “demonstrated a general loathing of US soldiers.”
The bill does not specify the number of troops needed but a congressional aide told Security Clearance that the expectation would be that it would not need to be a one-for-one swap of U.S. troops for Afghanistan and private security guards because “American forces would be far more capable and efficient.”
The legislation does allow that if the President does not want to add troops, he would have to certify that using Afghan nationals and private security contractors would provide a level of security equal to what would be provided by U.S. troops.
The President will never allow Congressman McKeon to dictate to him on the Afghanistan issue. Nor, would Democrat Senate majority leader ever allow this bill come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate, even if it passed the House.
So, what is the real reason for this bill?
Dante Acosta.
I will have a post up later on this military father, Dante ACosta, who will be running against Buck McKeon in the June primary election.
Poll Watch: Americans View China as Leading Economic Power
Americans believe China is the leading economic power in the world today, by a significant margin over the United States. This is the second consecutive year the majority of Americans have viewed China as economically dominant; previously, China held a smaller lead. By contrast, in 2000, Americans overwhelmingly believed the U.S. was the leading economic power.
The U.S. economic downturn and the continued expansion of the Chinese economy are the likely factors behind Americans’ belief that China is the world’s top economic power.
Still, the vast majority of Americans name either the U.S. or China as the world’s leading economic power. Relatively few Americans regard Japan (7%), the European Union (3%), India (2%), or Russia (less than 1%) in those terms. Japan has ranked third in recent years, but finished ahead of China in 2000.
Wow!
How far has the American economy fallen in the minds of its own people?
And, to think today the main debate in the country is whether ObamaCare should make Catholic Charities pay for birth control pills and sterilization for its employees.