China Confidential
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Retired US General to Israel: Drop Dead
Foreign Confidential....
Three decades after the Untied States under President Jimmy Carter betrayed Iran's pro-US, modernizing monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Washington is warming to another betrayal--of Israel.
The stage is being set for US-led, international acceptance of the unacceptable--a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran--even if that means putting Israel in permanent danger of annihilation.
Haaretz reports:The former United States army head of operations in the Middle East, retired general John Abizaid, believes that Israel is incapable of causing serious damage to Iran's nuclear program, Newsweek reported earlier this month.
The weekly magazine quoted the former Commander of the U.S. Central Command, who oversaw operations in the Middle East, as saying he doubted whether "the Israelis have the capability to make a lasting impression on the Iranian nuclear program with their military capabilities."
According to Newsweek, Abizaid made the comments earlier this month at a Marine Corps University conference, where he also reportedly said that an Israel-Iran confrontation would be bad for the U.S. and would further destabilize the region.
Abizaid's recent reported comments appear to echo remarks he has made on the issue of Iran's nuclear program, which Israel and the U.S. believe is aimed at developing atomic weapons.
Last year, the retired general said that, "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran."
Several officers and Pentagon analysts were also quoted by Newsweek as saying that the U.S. military thinks Israel would face huge challenges in reaching Iran, refueling its warplanes along the way and penetrating hardened nuclear targets.
Abizaid isn't the only surrogate speaking out. Nicholas Burns, former US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, writes in the current (November 3) issue of Newsweek that John McCain is wrong to attack Barack Obama for his willingness to sit down with America's foes.
"As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others--China, India, Brazil--are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike," Burns writes.
Asserting that that one of America's greatest but often-neglected strengths is its diplomatic power, he suggests that the next administration should look for opportunities to talk in Iran, Syria, and eventually even Afghanistan--i.e. negotiating with the Taliban.
"I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat," Burns writes. And "I've been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama ... Is it really smart to declare that we will never talk to such leaders?"
Burns proposes a diplomatic offensive around the world akin to Obama's call for "aggressive diplomacy"
Burns: "Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms."
Clearly, the stage is being set for a major policy shift.
Even the Observer Can't Find a Columbia Classmate or Prof Who Remembers the Mysterious Mr. Obama
One of Britain's most respected, left-of-center publications, The Observer, sister publication of The Guardian, published an intriguing article about Barack Obama today--intriguing because of what was omitted.
The article in the Sunday newspaper, which has been published since 1791, features "intimate, often touching" recollections of the Democratic Presidential candidate long before anyone could have imagine him approaching the "brink of greatness."
One friend from Occidental College is included ... and a Harvard Law School professor who taught Obama Constitutional law ... but nobody ... neither a teacher nor a former classmate ... is quoted from Obama's undergraduate years at Columbia University, to which he transferred from Occidental.
Which makes perfect sense, because Obama's years at Columbia are lost, as this blog and other publications have pointed out. His college files are ... sealed. Like his medical records ... and Muslim ties ... Obama's college years are a no-go zone. (The Observer article does quite an Indonesian friend saying that Obama's father was a Muslim, which would make the candidate a Muslim according to Islamic religious law.)
Apart from his non-student Pakistani roommate, with whom Obama lived far from the Columbia campus (scroll down for the story), nobody who remembers attending class with him or even knowing him at the Ivy League university can be found.
What is known is that Obama studied under the late Edward Said, a brilliant and charismatic--and notoriously anti-Israel--Palestinian activist and professor of English and comparative literature (who lied for decades about being born in Jerusalem). 
Some analysts believe Said wrote Obama's acclaimed memoir, Dreams from My Father; others suspect that the unrepentant former Weather Underground communist terrorist, Bill Ayers, was the Dreams ghostwriter.
There is also reason to believe that Obama was at least partially supported while at Columbia (and later at Harvard) by Dr, Khlaid Al-Mansour (aka Donald Warden), a Muslim supremacist and adviser to one of the world's richest peolple, Saudi Prince Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, who has donated tens of millions of dollars to Harvard and Georgetown University and to a national effort to teach US elementary and high school students world history from a Muslim viewpoint.Israel's Livni Calls for New Elections
Foreign Confidential....
Tzipi Livni has called for new elections in Israel, saying she failed to form a coalition government.
Livni, the foreign minister and prime minister-designate, won the Kadima Party primary in September following Ehud Olmert's resignation.
But she was unable to assemble a governing majority and on Sunday said she would not ask Israel's president, Shimon Peres, for more time to bring coalition partners on board.
Failed to Reach a Deal
Livni had managed to bring the Labor Party, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, on board, but she failed to reach an agreement with the Orthodox Shas party or other potential coalition partners to pass the 61-seat threshhold necessary to become prime minister.
Livni made her decision late Saturday night during a party meeting that included her main Kadima rival, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. The meeting was called after the Shas and Degel Hatorah, another Orthodox party, said they would not join Livni's government.
The Pensioners' Party also announced Saturday night that it would was backing out of negotiations with Livni.
'Impossible Demands'
"After the primaries, I said that I believed in stability and was committed to seeing through the process of forming a government," Livni told Israel's Cabinet meeting on Sunday. "Recent days have seen coalition demands become impossible, and there was a need to draw the line, to say 'no more.'
"I was prepared to pass budgets I believe in for needy families and social causes, but when it became clear that every person and every party was taking advantage of the situation to make illegitimate demands -- both economic and diplomatic -- I decided to put a stop to it and go to elections."
Although Peres is likely to recommend going to new elections, the president has three days to appoint another lawmaker to form a new government within 28 days. If the country goes to new elections, they likely will be held in February or March. Until then, Olmert will stay on as caretaker prime minister.
-JTASaturday, October 25, 2008
US Reported Ready to Renew Relations with Iran
Foreign Confidential....
Peace in our time?
A stab in the back for Israel and John McCain?
Say it ain't so, George!
After surrendering to nuclear-armed North Korea, the battered and bankrupt Bush administration appears ready to throw in the towel and renew diplomatic relations with nuclear-arming Iran following the 2008 US Presidential election.
US recognition of Iran's monstrous, missile-mad mullahocracy--even under cover of a flawed and phony, North Korean-style nuclear deal--would completely undercut John McCain's opposition to appeasing the Islamist regime. Hence, the need for a November surprise.
Reports of the secret deal recall the Iraqi government's stunning support for Barack Obama's proposed date-certain withdrawal from Iraq, and lend credence to speculation concerning a so-called grand bargain between Washington and Tehran regarding a reduction of violence in the occupied Arab country (scroll down for the story)--i.e. the theory that Iranian control of Iraqi Shiite militias matters more than the US troop surge.
Haaretz reports:Several American media outlets reported on Saturday that President George Bush is likely to announce after next month's presidential elections that he intends to restore the diplomatic relations with Iran, almost 30 years after they were suspended.
Quoting U.S. civil servants, the reports said that Bush's decision to postpone the announcement until after the elections was meant to rid the two presidential candidates of having to deal with the controversial move.
In the first stage, the American administration allegedly seeks to appoint a low-level diplomatic delegation, and has already started the recruitment process.
Tehran has already been informed of the initiative, but its view on the matter remains unclear. Similar reports were published a few months ago, but the plan was then put on hold.
Click here to continue.Sarah Palin, Now More than Ever
Dateline USA....
Thank heaven for Sarah Palin. Now more than ever, the nation needs her passion for liberty, plain-spoken wisdom, and old fashioned common sense.
If only the morons who muzzled McCain and mucked up the Republican campaign would let Palin be Palin. Millions of ordinary Americans want to hear what the courageous and charismatic Governor of Alaska has been prevented from saying about the agent of change (and Islamic/Left influence), Barack Hussein Obama.
Unlike her running mate, Palin has resisted the urge to praise the Mysterious Mr. Obama, and appears poised to confront the false messiah and his lying stooge, Joe (the Senator) Biden, in the boldest, clearest language.
Palin won't back down. She stands for the working class instead of the welfare class, for wealth creation instead of wealth spreading, for the United States of America instead of the United Nations, for the forgotten left-behind of rural America instead of the urban lumpenproletariat and their sickening, limousine liberal defenders ... for law-abiding gun owners instead of law-breaking criminals ... for Judeo-Christian values instead of Islamo-Fascism ... for the State of Israel instead of the state of Palestine that the communist Bill Ayers and the racist Jeremiah Wright (and the Muslim supremacist Khalid Al-Mansour and the Muslim maniac-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) want to establish after perpetrating a second Holocaust.
This New York Jew says: a vote for BHO is a vote (a) to disarm and defeat the world's greatest democracy, and (b) to destroy its most loyal and strategic ally.
-Ben Naftali
POSTSCRIPT: What's in a name? Palin is named for Abraham's wife, Sarah; Barack, as Chris Matthews and other members of the adoring mainstream media delight in calling the Democratic candidate, for Mohammed's miraculous horse.
POST POSTSCRIPT: Is Palin ready? Was Truman ready? Better another Truman as VP than another Carter--or worse--as President.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
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