Simply unbelievable:
The Obama administration is pressing Congress to provide an exemption from Iran sanctions to companies based in "cooperating countries," a move that likely would exempt Chinese and Russian concerns from penalties meant to discourage investment in Iran.
The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act is in a House-Senate conference committee and is expected to reach President Obama's desk by Memorial Day.
"It's incredible the administration is asking for exemptions, under the table and winking and nodding, before the legislation is signed into law," Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and a conference committee member, said in an interview. A White House official confirmed Wednesday that the administration was pushing the conference committee to adopt the exemption of "cooperating countries" in the legislation.
Translation? Russia and China would still be allowed to sell gasoline, weaponry and nuclear technology to Iran with Obama's blessing.
This, I guess, is what the Administration meant when they talked about Russia and China 'coming on board for sanctions'!
While Iran is a major oil producer, it lacks adequate refineries and is forced to rely on imported gasoline. The regime has had rationing in place for a very long time, and while we dither is is furiously working on transforming its military vehicles to run on natural gas.
Bottom line? Obama has no plan for Iran, exactly as SecDef Gates finally admitted.
Rather than admit it, Obama is willing to settle for phony sanctions with loopholes large enough to drive a truck through so he can say he 'did something.'
Ultimately, Obama is willing to live with a nuclear Iran no matter what it does to peace in the region, US security or our economy when the mullahs decide to shut down the Persian Gulf.He's simply voting 'present' on the matter to avoid th etough decisions.
Voltaire had the right of it when he said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Except that this is both.
In the mean time, the centrifuges keep spinning.
Yet with all do respect to Monseur Arouet, this is not funny in any way shape or form.
ReplyDeletei don't see why this would surprise anyone.
ReplyDeletei mean, afterall, it does sound like kyoto.
penalize the US but exempt china and india, the two biggest [raw] violators of the environment.
and as hussein sees hisself as the secretary general of the US, why would he not push forth such an ambiguous piece of legislative horse droppings?
Comparing Obama to Chamberlain is a smear of Chamberlain, and I'm not joking either. As far as I'm aware, Chamberlain was an honest fool. Obama is not only dishonest, but his actions are outright treasonous.
ReplyDeleteThey must be chortling with unbridled laughter in the Kremlin. I concur with the other Anonymous that Chamberlain was not at this subterranean level of ethics : he no longer had a Mussolini card to play ( M had switched sides in 1938 in exchange for an African & Balkans Empire, courtesy of Hitler ) ; & he no longer could credibly play an American card ( Joseph Kennedy's toxic pro-Nationalist Socialist propaganda had poisoned the US well. ) Chamberlain & his aides were still trying to assemble an anti-Hitler coalition before, & even, initially, in Munich ; however, there were Joseph Kennedy & Lindbergh there to stymie his final efforts. -----But Zero never wished any interdictions or sanctions ; he proved this last September when he quashed any mention of Iran's nuclear violations ( at the Kum nuclear site in Iran ) at the meeting of the so-called Security Council, whose very session was devoted to the question of illegal nuclear-weapons proliferation. He subverted Sarkozy's undertakings at the summit to shine the limelight on Iran's activities ; he vetoed any reference, any allusion, to this in Sarkozy's speech ; Sarkozy was reduced to nebulous references to Zero's living in ' a virtual world '. Everyone had to cool their heels & wait till the next day when Zero was in Pittsburgh ( ?! ) before the Kum intelligence was divulged. It should have been disclosed the previous day, preceding even the formal convoking of the joke Security Council. Zero has betrayed Poland, Czechland ( missile defence ) ; he has betrayed Taiwan ( speech & answers to questions from Red Chinese students ) ; he has betrayed Britain ( the Falklands ) ; he has betrayed Tibet, ( in fact, he even forced the Dalai Lama to enter & exit the White House via a side-door, as if the monk were a plumber come to fix the White House plumbing ) ; & he has snubbed India repeatedly. -----And Israel.----- -----Zero is not an idiot : he manifestly loves Iran & the radical Mohamettans. If there are any American independents ( like me ), libertarians ( like me ), or sane Democrats out there reading this : please, I beg you, for the 2010 & 2012 federal elections, vote for ANY GOP candidate at the federal level, no matter how half-witted or corrupt. I am not a GOPer, & I normally vote Libertarian ; however, this troika of Zero, Pelosi ( our Lady Macbeth ) & Reid is catastrophic. ( I don't care what you do at the local & state levels. For all I care, you can vote for the Communist Party, or the Donner Party, or the Tupperware Party. Just help to clean the Augean Stables run by the Dems in DC-land. ) Be sure to lie to the pollsters before the election : let the Dems get ultra-haughty, ultra-arrogant ! -----Sorry for being away for 2 months, JP, ( business ). Love all the Voltaire references ! Signed, respectfully, dragon/dinosaur
ReplyDeleteThe quotation attributed to Voltaire actually comes from Karl Marx. It is the opening sentence to his "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"
ReplyDeleteKudos for your reporting otherwise.
Anonymous, I stand corrected.
ReplyDeleteSo here's another one for the pot:
"History is Philosophy teaching by examples" - Thucydides, one of the great early historians.
Welcome back, DD!
Your remarks on Obama I totally concur with..people do not realize yet what a disaster he is but I expect it to become apparent in the not to distant future.
I still like the idea of Hillary as Lady Macbeth (by now,she's already gone ga-ga from failed ambition)and Nancy Pelosi as Ma Barker...or Ahab's Queen Jezebel,the evil power behind the throne if we're sticking to the classic mode.
On Chamberlain, Winston's Churchill's 'The Gathering Storm' provides an interesting insight to the failures of Chamberlain and his quasi-senile predecessor Ramsey McDonald.
As he relates, Mussolini switched sides over Britain's toothless and purposeless League of Nations condemnation of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. Also, Chamberlain, who stupidly believed that Hitler would fight Stalin and that the two would never come to a rapprochement alienated Stalin and refused to send a top level delegation to negotiate with the Soviets.
Hitler, of course, was willing to give Stalin pretty much whatever he wanted and quickly concluded the treaty that ( along with Chamberlain's Munich pact that essentially emasculated Hitler's other well armed foe on his southern borders, Czechoslovakia) freed him up to attack Poland.
As Obama will learn, when you sell out your allies, it sends an important message to both your friends and your enemies.
Although at least as far as Iran is concerned, Israel may still pull the West's chestnuts out of the fire for awhile.
All Good Things,
Rob
This legislation is worse than nothing!! Iran will get the nuclear bomb unless Israel does something to stop it. There is actually not a thing the US can do about. It's military is worn down from continuing operations in the "War on Terror", as the politicians and the media call it, its economy is in shambles, its national debt is massive, and it lacks the technological sophistication to defeat Iran or its backers of Russia and China on the battlefield.
ReplyDeleteGiven the geopolitical realities, Russia and China are the most powerful nations on earth right now. There would be no possible way to enforce sanctions against Iran and to keep them from doing business with Iran.
With these toothless sanctions Iran still gets to rail against America but the sanctions are worthless. In other words not only do these sanctions do nothing of consequence to affect Iran but they actually encourage anti-Americanism in the region and beyond. A better course of action here would have been to do NOTHING.
America's best bet and perhaps its only chance for survival is to withdraw all troops and personnel from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East and the world and redeploy them to defensible positions along the borders.
I think Israel can take care of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The best bet for us is to simply get out of their way. Even if Israel can't take care of Iran's nuclear weapons program, at least by redeploying our forces to defensible positions along the borders we actually have a fighting chance to defend ourselves. Right now we really don't.
I suspect an added benefit to redeploying our forces to defensible positions would also be realized. Most of these troops signed on to defend America. If our forces are properly deployed along the borders, they would actually be doing this. In this case, I would expect morale, troop retention, and new enlistments to all increase substantially.