So, Why Not Dump Israel ?

Why all this fuss about Israel? Aren't they nothing but trouble for America?

To hear a lot of what's going around these days, Israel is at the heart of the problems we have with the Muslim world, and things would be just fine if we became more 'balanced'...or translated, became more pro-Arab and curtailed our support for those pushy, stubborn Jews. Besides, aren't they an ungrateful ally? Certainly President Obama, John Kerry and a lot of others in Washington say things like that all the time. Although they dress it up a little, that is essentially what they believe. Israel is a problem, not an asset.

ISIS, terrorism against the west, Iran's belligerent behavior, the problems in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and especially with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are all mostly Israel's fault. And murdering Jews is just a natural reaction to 'occupation', although no one's country is being occupied in any usual sense of the way the word is used. Gaza is an example of how bizarre and distorted the idea of Israel's 'occupation has become.

Israel pulled every Jew living in the area out, with effusive guarantees from the EU ,UN and the Bush Administration that it would never be allowed to become a security problem for Israel. Yet the Jewish State is still regularly referred to as 'the occupying power' by the UN and the so-called International Community.And that 'occupation is based on Israel's blockade of Hamas that even the UN called fully legal, a blockade that was only necessary because of the failure by these other entities to honor those those same security guarantees made to Israel to get them to pull out of Gaza in the first place! You literally can't make this stuff up.

Just as an aside, one reason many Israelis aren't the least bit interested in giving up any more land no matter what the UN or anyone else says is precisely because of what happened with Gaza. Why make themselves even more vulnerable for guarantees that won't be kept and demonization as 'occupiers' even after they've left?

Another homily heard often is that Israel can't survive unless it retreats to what people call the 'pre-1967' borders.' That seems fair, doesn't it?

What isn't said much is that those were never borders at all, but simply cease fire lines from 1948 between countries still then in a state of war. Going back to those ceasefire lines would push Israel into an indefensible enclave,turn half a million its citizens into refugees, divide its capitol and make the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron off limits forever to Jews. And it would also give up high ground within easy missile and artillery range of its airports and the country's most populated areas to people who make no mistake about being genocidal when it comes to Israel's Jews.

 

That, after all is what President Obama, the UN and the EU are saying with their insistence on a two state solution based on those 1948 ceasefire lines, and it actually appears that the Obama Administration is willing to sign on to or at least abstain from vetoing a new UN resolution sponsored by France to insist on exactly that.

But hey, isn't that Israel's problem, not ours? So what?

Let's take an objective look. What difference does what happens to Israel make to us here in America? Why should we care? Why is what happens to Israel important to the US? If Israel somehow ceased to exist, would it matter to America? I mean, we give them all that aid money. Why not spend it at home? And who knows, maybe if we weren't giving all that aid to Israel, we might not have all those problems with the Muslim world!

There's a very well organized, well funded effort going on now to convince people of exactly that. Could they be right? Let's find out.

And to do that, let's put aside any of those slooshy considerations of fairness, justice, religion or humanitarian principles and go for the cold, hard, self-serving realpolitik mindset to find out if what happens to Israel is important to the US:

Wouldn't America be more secure if we weren't supporting Israel?

Like it or not, Israel occupies some very strategic real estate in the Levant. It is in a position to safeguard NATO's soft underbelly, especially significant since most of the NATO countries lack any significant military component...and also would have a significant political problem convincing their electorates to support any kind of military action anyway, given whom their electorates increasingly are composed of these days.

As tired of the Middle East as many Americans are, this is an increasingly strategic part of the world where whatever allies we might have had or thought we had among the Sunni Arab states are either alienated, ultimately untrustworthy or weak. Israel is none of these things, and unless you're like John Kerry or our president and are convinced that Iran is now going to be just a peace loving pussycat and ISIS isn't really a major problem, the value of having a strong ally in the region with a powerful military and superior HUMINT on the ground is obvious. Here's a few examples of how that's worked in the past and how it continues to work now:

• Israel pushed the Soviets out of the Middle East during the Cold War  and provided America a first hand look at the latest Soviet weapons and technology...all without the cost of a single American soldier. When the then new Soviet Mig 21 was knocking our pilots out of the air in Vietnam, it was Israel who bribed an Iraqi pilot to bring one to Israel, which they turned over to the United States so we could figure out its weak points and stop the carnage.

• Israel saved literally thousands of American lives by taking out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak. Yes, they did it for their own reasons, but if not for that, the casualty lists from the first Gulf War ten years later would have been very different if it could have even been fought at all. And just imagine what would be going on now in Syria if Israel hadn't knocked out the nuclear facility Basher Assad got from North Korea back in 2007 over the Bush Administration's objections... and ISIS or some other bad actor got it's hands on it?

• Israel has a first class intelligence service in the Mossad and its native Arabic and Farsi speakers contribute immeasurably to US intel by adding to its access in the region and by adding the dimension of `HUMINT'-human intelligence - on the ground. General George Keagan, former head of U.S. Air Force Intelligence, once stated in Congress that "Israel is worth five CIAs," based on the value of intelligence passed to America. Essentially, Israel is a security bulwark and a vital window on America's enemies in the region...unless, of course you agree with President Obama that everything's just wonderful when it comes to countries like Iran and we can rely on Iran's self inspections when it comes to their nuclear weapons program.

• Israel is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world. It has been and continues to be a major partner of the US in weapons technology in numerous joint projects and the US has access to the fruits of some of the most sophisticated technological installations in the world at Tel-Aviv University and the Technion, Israel's MIT. A lot of those projects have saved US lives and enhanced our own military. Numerous Israeli innovations are now commonly used by our troops on the ground. For example, there's the lightweight helmet Israel developed that's more bullet resistant than the one we had. Our troops use it. There's advanced anti anti tank systems, the Green Pine radar, the AGM-142 Have Nap (AKA the Popeye Missile), the Marine Corps Laser Range Finder made by Israel's Elbeit Systems, the SIMON breach rifle grenade...again, it's a pretty long list.

• Israel also hosts America's Strategic Arms Depot free of charge on its territory, so that American troops can deploy in the region quickly and have their armor, supplies, arms and equipment ready and waiting for them when they get there if we have to deploy our troops there in a hurry. The US arranged that after the First Gulf War, when we had to hire merchant ships to get the stuff over there because we lacked merchant marine capacity. It amounts to a base on foreign territory that America gets for free, and without having to deploy any US troops. Going price for that? Based on what other bases cost us, around $4-5 billion per year....a lot more if you include the cost of stationing personnel there. And that's assuming we could find another reliable country in the region we could trust to let us do it. For instance, we have bases in Bahrain, KSA and Turkey, but those countries have all imposed restrictions on our deploying US forces there or using them for military operations at one time or another.
  
  And Israel's one of the few allies we have who routinely makes its facilities available to US forces when needed, its ports, airfields and air space. That also comes in quite handy.
  

So all things considered, I'd have to say it looks like American security is actually enhanced because of our relationship with Israel, not the other way around.


But what about all that money we give Israel?

'Give' Israel? By law, almost all of that $3.5 billion Israel receives has to be spent here in America, a restriction not many US aid recipients, Pakistan ($5-7 billion) and Egypt ($1.5 billion) for example are subject to. Israel means jobs and prosperity for America's defense industry.

Again, you also have to consider the value of the Strategic Arms depot, free use of Israel's facilities,and HUMINT and the value of all those joint weapons projects. That all adds up to a lot more money than Israel gets in aid from the US.

And here's another aspect to be considered. This partnership allows the US to pressure Israel's defense companies to withdraw from lucrative contracts around the world. One recent example is the $13 billion Polish missile defense contract. The Poles really liked David's Sling, developed by Israel's Rafael and they also had their own issues with Obama, so they were ready to accept Rafael's bid and buy. The US pressured Rafael to withdraw its bid so Raytheon could get the contract. That's by no means the only time this has happened.

All this adds up to Israel being one of America's few foreign policy bargains. The aid is less than one tenth of one percent of the Federal budget and the US receives far more in return than it shells out.

OK, so Israel's a bargain. But maybe we should just get out of the Middle East altogether. We'd have much better relations with the Muslim world if we did that and didn't support Israel, wouldn't we? And wouldn't that stop terrorism against the U.S.?

Is that really how it would work? President Obama and two successive Secretaries of States, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have operated on that principle for the last 7 years. President Obama famously said he wanted to create 'distance' between America and Israel, and no objective observer can doubt that he's succeeded to a large degree. The EU has followed the same policy to an even greater extent for some time. How has that worked out? Is the EU experiencing peace, tolerance and kumbaya from their own Muslim populations let alone groups like ISIS? Are we?

If Israel were to magically disappear tomorrow, would ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Jaish Islami, al-Nusra and all the rest go out of business?

Even after getting $150 billion in cash, the sanctions watered down and eventually ended and getting literally everything they wanted at the negotiating table on their illegal nuclear program, is Iran less aggressive or more aggressive towards the U.S.? Did President Obama's decision to create that distance between America and Israel, ignore the Green Revolution and the Iranian government's hideous crackdown on dissidents seeking democracy lead to a less belligerent Iran? Have the Iranians even stopped the massive public chants of 'death to America' or referring to America as the Great Satan?

The answers are obvious. Iran is far more aggressive, hostile and belligerent towards America than they've ever been, even to the point of refusing to cooperate with America against a common enemy in ISIS. There's no reason at all to think this behavior on Iran's part would change one iota if America completely cut off all ties with Israel. Actually, with Israel weakened or even removed as a check to Iran's ambitions, Iran's hostility and warlike behavior would probably even increase. In any event, if things got that hot the Israelis might very well resort to some drastic means to win out...and we might not like the results.

Another thing about cutting all ties with Israel has to do with how it would affect the geo-political balance. Most Israelis understand that the chief benefit of their relationship with the U.S. is not financial but American back up strategically and in international forums like the UN. If that ends, as President Obama and Secretary Kerry have hinted, how would that affect America?

Israel has very good strategic and trade ties with China, and fairly decent strategic relations with Russia. Wouldn't  America cutting strategic ties be an incentive to Israel to form stronger ones with them? How would that affect the U.S.? And how would the spectacle of America dumping a long time ally affect how other U.S. allies looked at their own relationships with America?

Another allegation that's fairly common these days in DC is that al-Qaeda and ISIS use Israel as a recruiting tool. To a certain extent that's true to a degree now, but it's also true that neither group used 'Palestine' as a marketing tool until after it became a common talking point in certain circles emanating out of the White House and in media outlets like the NY Times. Osama bin-laden and al-Qaeda didn't even mention 'Palestine' until years after 9/11 and ISIS was far more interested in Basher Assad and the corrupt, oppressive Shi'ite dictatorship we put in power in Iraq. For that matter, ISIS wasn't even particularly hostile to the US until President Obama started bombing them.

Any casual examination of history shows the fallacy of abandoning a loyal, powerful ally to appease an enemy, especially during wartime. Nor would it meaningfully improve relations between the US and the Arab world. The proof of that is to examine the US relationship with the Arab World before we became one of Israel's main allies in 1970, after the `67 Six-Day War. President Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles pursued a pro-Arab, cool to Israel policy as part of their Cold War strategy to keep the Soviets out of the Arab world. As even Eisenhower admitted, it failed utterly.

Getting rid of what the Muslim world refers to as the Little Satan would just weaken the Big Satan, America and deprive us of one of our strongest and most valuable allies. And a victory over the hated Jews would only embolden America's enemies.

Take Israel out of the equation and America would manage. So undoubtedly would Israel without America as an ally. But nothing would change except we would have weakened ourselves to the delight of our enemies.

-Selah-

Israel's New Challenge: Defeating The Third Intifada

Israel once again finds itself fighting in Gaza.

The reason's fairly simple. The lust for Jewish blood among a substantial number of the Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians is simply their strongest impulse, their raison d'être. There is no peace, because one side simply wants the other dead.

There is not a single Israeli civilian or soldier in Gaza today, not since Israel removed the 8,000 Jewish residents who had lived there over 30 years from their homes and gave it to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians as a sacrifice 'for peace.'

The Palestinians could have built whatever kind of society they wanted in Gaza. But even before Hamas took over, Gaza's main export to Israel was terrorism. Israel, with Egypt's assistance, maintained a blockade on Gaza to curtail the import of heavy weapons, usually emanating from Iran that saved Israeli lives, but cost Israel deeply when it came to the 'international community', who always seem to have special rules when it comes to Israel defending itself. The carnage emanating from Gaza has slowed at times, but literally thousands of rockets, mortar shells and terrorist strikes have emanated from Gaza, and they've never ended. Israelis became used to running for shelter, especially in the south:

 

This latest onslaught saw over 100 rockets in 24 hours rained down on Israel, and with Hamas rejecting offers from Israel of 'quiet for quiet', that's where we stand now. The Israelis have carried out a number of decisive strikes and have called up 42,000 reserves, while Hamas has launched missiles at central Israel, at Jerusalem, and at Tel Aviv, a step they had to know was going to provoke an Israeli ground response.

So what's the story behind the story? Why is Hamas going for broke now, and what does it mean? Whether Israel realizes it or not, they are facing the Third Intifada, although how it unfolds is still developing. Of course, it doesn't look like previous intifadas because circumstances and tactics have changed. But the end goal is the same. And the chief strategist isn't Hamas, but Mahmoud Abbas.


 


Hamas has been isolated by Israel and the new Egyptian government of al-Sisi, who has declared Hamas' parent movement the Muslim Brotherhood an illegal terrorist organization. Weapons coming in from Iran have slowed considerably, and money is tight. A sign of this was the attempt by Hamas ally Robert Serry, the supposedly neutral UN Mideast envoy to illegally funnel $20 million to Hamas in Gaza from Qatar.

The current Hamas and Fatah unity government agreement came about, mostly on Abbas' terms, because of Hamas' sharply reduced fortunes, while Abbas has the UN, the Obama Administration and the EU funding and backing him, even with Hamas now on his team. According to my sources, part of the negotiations also involved joint efforts towards the goal both Hamas and Fatah agree on, the destruction of Israel.

 

The Israelis, already outraged at the unity agreement and the West's apparent willingness to fund a murderous terrorist group like Hamas were further energized by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by Hamas operatives, whose mutilated bodies were found shoved into a hole near Hebron. In response, the Israelis began to obliterate the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

But then, the subsequent murder of Arab teen Mohammed Abu Kheidr by what appear to be a trio of Jewish football hooligans suddenly presented Hamas and Fatah with a golden opportunity. It was used as a signal to launch what had already been planned. Vast riots, violence and destruction took place throughout Israel egged on by Fatah while Hamas stepped up its rocket and mortar attacks.

Hamas also had plans to join Fatah in the ground attack on Israel itself. They had a huge tunnel dug from Rafah under Israel's border fence for a massive planned assault on Israeli communities in the south, and tried an amphibious attack on Israel's coast. Both attacks were repulsed with heavy losses. Meanwhile, Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system and the IDF’s air strikes on Hamas' infrastructure were even more effective than Hamas had planned on and that Israel had hoped.

 

Israel's 'peace partner' Mahmoud Abbas has also been doing his part. Fatah has several hundred militiamen in Gaza, including members of the Palestinian Authority security forces who have their salaries paid by Western governments. They have eagerly joined in firing rockets at Israel's civilians. Abbas has done nothing to stop them.

Abbas has several huge assets his old boss Yasser Arafat could only have dreamed about, and they're key to understanding what's being planned. First and foremost, in Barack Hussein Obama, Abbas has a president in the White House who loathes Israel and who sees himself as Palestine's community organizer.

Second, even though Mahmoud Abbas was Arafat's right hand man when it came to terrorism, he was always more of a back room strategist and facilitator. Abbas was content to be the man behind Arafat, leaving the spotlight to the ranting old coward. Because he stayed in the background, he can now be presented as 'moderate Abbas', Israel's so-called peace partner and gifted with millions in aid money and concessions. Even the theft of much of that money by Abbas and the Fatah old guard, the partnership with the genocidal Hamas and the corrupt and anti-democratic rule of Fatah have not been allowed to get in the way of this narrative

And finally, the seeming separation of Hamas and Fatah is a major advantage. Not only can Mahmoud Abbas present himself as a 'moderate' alternative compared to Hamas. Abbas can talk vitriol and hatred towards Israel in Arabic ( or have his surrogates do it) to gin up the crowds while presenting himself as a peace maker to President Obama and the EU. With Hamas now officially part of his team and Abbas controlling the purse strings, his ability to mouth pleasantries about peace while orchestrating violence and war against Israel at the same time is enhanced in a way Arafat's never really was.

During this Third Intifada, Abbas has never once seen fit to condemn the Fatah-driven Arab violence in Israel or the Hamas rocket attacks, or to call for calm. With Hamas now losing the war it started, Abbas has opened up his second front:



He contacted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and got him to issue a statement demanding that Israel exercise 'maximum restraint':

 "I firmly condemn the multiple rocket attacks launched from Gaza on Israel. Such attacks are unacceptable and must stop." 

"I also urged (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu to exercise maximum restraint and to respect international obligations to protect civilians. I condemn the rising number of civilian lives lost in Gaza," he said. 

Maximum restraint, against an enemy firing missiles at its civilian population, an enemy who attempted to cause thousands of civilian casualties by targeting Dimona, where Israel's nuclear plant reportedly is?

And you'll notice Ban Ki-moon isn't condemning Hamas for using civilians as human shields, not that Hamas would care anyway, By the way, that's a major violation of the Geneva Convention that the Hamas-Fatah unity government is now a signatory to and promised to abide by. Ban himself took their application.

 


Ban convened a special meeting of the Security Council , but of course, the Palestinian violation of the Geneva Accords wasn't a topic of conversation. Instead, the talk is all about a ceasefire that leaves Hamas and its weaponry in place. Even President Obama suddenly called Israeli PM Netanyahu after weeks of silence, offering to mediate a truce to protect Hamas.

Abbas even had the gall to accuse Israel of 'genocide' against the Palestinian people

“It’s genocide — the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people,” he told the meeting of Palestinian leadership at his Ramallah bureau. “What’s happening now is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole and not against the factions.”

“Shall we recall Auschwitz?” he added.

Those words are almost comical in their hypocrisy to anyone who knows anything about Mahmoud Abbas' long history as a Holocaust denier.

Genocide? Imagine what the death toll would be if the IDF wasn’t dropping warning leaflets in advance and doing their best to avoid civilian deaths in an environment where Hamas is hiding behind those civilians in order to do their best to kill Israeli ones.


Ironically, it’s Abbas who has applied for 'Palestine' join the International Criminal Court (ICC) where he plans to charge Israel with war crimes in a sympathetic EU environment.

That's the strategy Abbas and his Hamas partners are going to use in the Third Intifada to attack Israel ..terrorist strikes, sabotage and Arab riots in Israel, continued rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, and increasing diplomatic and legal assaults via the 'International community'.

Here's how Israel can defeat it.

First of all, a ground assault and the defeat of Hamas is a necessity. It won't be pretty, it will not be without cost and it will require Israel to take steps that the usual suspects won't like. But there really is no choice.

Israel doesn't have the luxury of leaving Hamas in place with a secure base to attack her from. This time, the rocket fire penetrated much further north than expected into central Israel. The attempted attack on Dimona, the suspected site of Israel's nuclear facility was nothing less than a real attempt at genocide by Hamas, which fortunately failed. And now that Hamas has demonstrated it can attack the populated areas of Israel, can Israel afford to roll the dice that they'll get lucky again when the next outbreak of attacks by Hamas occurs in a year or so?

Hamas simply cannot be allowed to hang on to its weaponry. The only conditions under which Israel should even consider a ceasefire is demilitarization, with Israel in charge of making sure it's carried out, and an insistence by Israel of the non-recognition of the Hamas-Fatah unity government by the UN, EU and the other western powers. Since that’s unlikely, the next step is to destroy Hamas militarily, and that will take boots on the ground. For all of Israel's attempts to minimize civilian causalities, they are going to occur in fighting an enemy who uses civilians as human shields. Nevertheless, it should be done as quickly as possible, and Hamas' leaders either killed or arrested, tried and imprisoned.

Since Hamas is embedded in Gaza City with a large civilian population, the quickest and easiest way to defeat Hamas is not to send tanks and ground forces into the streets of the city itself, but to drop leaflets giving Hamas 24 hours to surrender and then cut off the water, electricity, food shipments and communications lines to the city while continuing pinpoint air strikes and using loud speakers to demand that Hamas allow the civilians to evacuate. The lack of water in particular will force Hamas to come out to fight on Israel's choice of terrain, not theirs. And Hamas will be defeated and decimated.

At that point, Mahmoud Abbas will likely demand that Gaza be turned over to him. That demand should be refused outright. Instead, Gaza should be annexed by Israel, and at least half to two thirds of its population either transferred to Area A, the part of Judea and Samaria under Arab occupation and ruled by Abbas. Or perhaps some of them could be sent to Egyptian jurisdiction for a suitable quid pro quo by Israel. Gaza, over time can be repopulated with Jews, who will make it the Singapore it always had the potential to be. Repatriation of foreign nationals to their country of origin is not against the Fourth Geneva Convention per se, especially since the UN, to all intents and purposes is treating Palestine like a state. But if necessary, Israel should resign from the Convention, since no one they are likely to be fighting with in the future honors it anyway.

Israel needs to take some advice from an unlikely source, President Obama's White House Mideast chief, Phillip Gordon. This piece of work was speaking at a conference put on by the far Leftist paper Ha'aretz in Tel Aviv Wednesday, and blamed Israel (of course!) for not being serious about peace while rockets were actually hitting the city:

“How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity?

As an ironic side note, the conference itself had to be moved because of the rocket attacks by Israel's 'peace partners.'

Still, as stupid, bigoted and offensive as Green is, he's actually on to something.Israel does need to delineate a border and allow the Palestinians sovereignty.The only problem is allowing Palestine's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas any part in it. The Israelis are constantly told in tones that suggest a used car salesman desperate to close a sale that this is the most moderate Palestinian leader Israel is ever likely to get. If that's true, than the real problem is that Israel actually has no peace partner. It might occur to Green and his ilk that this is the reason why years of negotiations have failed, not Israel's intransigence. Abbas is no Anwar Sadat.

Delineating a border and Palestinian sovereignty are excellent ideas, but it will need to be done by Israel.Once Hamas is militarily defeated, Israel can mark out its borders in Judea and Samaria, annex those areas and relocate any Jews living outside them to Israel, while repatriating any Arab non-citizens living in the Israeli areas to the new borders of Palestine, perhaps with some financial compensation. That’s certainly more than the Arabs gave the almost one million Jews they ethnically cleansed from their countries after 1948.

The ironic thing is that while Abbas will now have the contiguous, Jew free reichlet he wanted, something will become apparent quite quickly.The only real chance for Palestinian sovereignty was always close relations with Israel. 'Palestine' under Arafat and Abbas has always been a corrupt kleptocracy and an international welfare case. All of Palestine's useful infrastructure, the schools, the hospitals, Bir Zeit University, even the zoos were all built by Israel.Fatah has never been able to govern and 'Palestine' will almost certainly collapse anyway in short order unless it gets funding from the EU, the Saudis or Qatar, and they all have other places to spend their money.

At that point of collapse, a new generation of Palestinian leaders may very well be a position to change things, although I have my doubts. In the meantime, 'Palestine' is unfortunately going to have to be treated not as a neighbor but as a hostile entity to be closely watched, and told in no uncertain terms that any aggression, lawfare or otherwise will lead to serious consequences. That’s how a hostile divorce works. They brought this on themselves.

The usual suspects from the international community will certainly squawk, but all one has to do is look at their behavior over the past few years to realize that anything Israel does to protect itself is going to get an adverse reaction. For all their condemnations of Palestinian violence directed against Israel, they were still prepared to support and finance a government containing Hamas as a partner, an organization all of them admit is a terrorist group. They are doing it as I write these words.

But between the EU's financial crisis and the difficulties with Syria, Iran and Iraq, the international community has its hands full. They will voice the usual, expected sentiments, but the fact that there is actually a Palestinian state in part of Area A will mitigate much of it as some time goes by. They have other,much more serious concerns and are will move on after a few weeks.

It is Israel's responsibility alone to defend its people and ensure their national rights, especially given the genocidal enemies they face. Anyone who quibbles at this should remember all of the supposedly iron clad guarantees Israel was given when it retreated from Gaza by United States, the EU and UN, all whom pledged that Gaza would never be allowed to become a security threat to Israel. In the end, none of those guarantees were worth the paper they were written on, and the same thing is true about any proposed security guarantees on Judea and Samaria today.

Many in Israel have an unvoiced, guilty realization as the rockets fall on Israel. They know now that Oslo was a huge mistake, and that ripping 8,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza was not the panacea they thought it was, but an immoral, hateful act that led to the war Israel finds itself in today. I take no pleasure in saying this, but everything those of us predicted who opposed the 'disengagement' has come to pass, and it has left Israel with a choice - to rule Gaza or to suffer repeated carnage from those whom inhabit it now who want every Jew is Israel dead.

That is the truth of the matter, and Israel will have to face up to it if they wish to live in peace.

US Pressures Israel Out Of $13B Contract For Missile Sales To Poland

Israel has been forced by U.S. pressure to bow out of a contract worth $13 billion to build a missile defense system for Poland.

The Poles were interested in buying David's Sling, manufactured at Israel's state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It is an advanced system designed to shoot down heavy rockets and cruise missiles using interceptor missiles.

Since the system uses missiles that  are produced by Raytheon, a U.S. company, the U.S. quietly exercised  an 'export veto'  to force Israel to withdraw and allow Raytheon to get the lucrative contract.

Israel apparently went along with the veto even though Rafael is capable of producing its own interceptor missiles, according to what one of my Notorious Little Birdies told me. Based what a source identified as an Israeli defense official told Reuters, Israel's Rafael will be allowed to have a lesser role in a future U.S.-led arms sale to Poland.

"The Americans will be happy, the Poles will be happy, and there'll be something left over for us," he said.


Why is this story important? I just want the usual Israel haters who whine about 'all that money the U.S. gives Israel' to see some of what that $3 billion, almost all of which is spent here in the U.S. on American weapons buys.

Nor is this the only time this has happened.

Now you know one reason why America's alliance with Israel is one of the greatest U.S. foreign policy bargains in history.

New US Intelligence Report - Iran's Missiles Could Reach America By 2015

 

A new intelligence report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center states that Iran could develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015.

The report, the Foreign Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat Assessment, was prepared by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center with significant contributions from the Defense Intelligence Agency Missile and Space Intelligence Center and the Office of Naval Intelligence. The report's authors could not determine how many ICBM's the Iranians currently possess.

The report states that since 2008, Iran has conducted multiple successful launches of the two-stage Safir space launch vehicle and has also revealed the larger two-stage Simorgh SLV, which could serve as a test bed for developing ICBM technologies. Since 2010, Iran has revealed the Qiam-1 SRBM, the fourth generation Fateh-110 SRBM, and claims to be mass-producing anti-ship ballistic missiles. Iran has modified its Shahab 3 medium-range ballistic missile to extend its range and effectiveness and also claims to have deployed the two-stage, solid-propellant Sejjil MRBM.

The Iranian Shahab 3 MRBM is based on the North Korean No Dong missile. Iran has modified the Shahab 3 to extend its range and effectiveness, with the longest range variant reportedly being able to reach targets at a distance of about 2,000 kilometers. Iran also claims to have mass-produced Shahab 3 missiles. Iranian solid-propellant rocket and missile programs are also progressing. Iran has conducted multiple launches of the Sejjil, a solid-propellant MRBM with a claimed range of 2,000 kilometers. In addition, Iran has conducted multiple launches of the Safir, a multistage SLV that can serve as a test bed for long-range ballistic missile technologies.

Meanwhile the centrifuges keep spinning.

It's also important to remember that we're not really sure what Iran has hidden away, and that this report is based on what can be verified.

Kerry Attempts To 'Solve' Korea - By Offering Major Missile Concession To China

 

Senator Kerry is turning out to be quite an interesting Secretary of State, as I knew he would be.

Secretary Kerry is in China today in an attempt not to solve the problem of North Korea, but simply to reduce tensions.

Kerry's suggestion? Bribe China by removing our missile defense systems in the region.

The Obama Administration has waged a four year war on our missile defense systems,but you would think that they would have learned something from the recent events in Korea.

Our CIA has already concluded that the Norks have enough technology to attach a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile in compact enough form to make a viable weapon able to threaten our allies and U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, the western Pacific and possibly even Hawaii or Alaska.

Even worse, the North Koreans would have no problem putting this technology up for sale to the highest bidders.

The Kim regime only survives because of China's enablement. That needs to end, now.

A strong U.S. policy stance would be to tell the Chinese that this state of affairs is unsustainable any longer, that it affects our relationship, and that their assistance is needed to depose the Kim regime and destroy North Korea as a threat, illegal proliferation source and a possible user of nuclear weapons.In exchange, the U.S. could offer to allow China to put in place a regime of its choosing in North Korea to protect its borders, which is China's main interest anyway.

Instead, Kerry's immediate response is to offer to disarm American interests.

Let's take a look at Secretary Kerry's negotiating style:

In Beijing, Mr. Kerry met with the new president,Xi Jinping, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Premier Li Keqiang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

Mr. Yang said at a dinner with Mr. Kerry on Saturday night that China was committed to “the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula.” But the Chinese state councilor also stressed that the “issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation.”

To encourage the Chinese to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem, Mr. Kerry said that he had shared “very in-depth” information illustrating the danger of how a nuclear North Korea could promote the proliferation of nuclear arms in Asia and the Middle East.

Mr. Kerry said his aim was to find a way to revive the goals of the six-party talks on the North’s nuclear program, which have been stalled since 2009 when North Korea withdrew. The talks have included North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.

Kerry offered to remove our missile defense batteries, shared “very in-depth” and probably classified information with the Chinese and has a goal of reviving the Six Party talks which have gone absolutely nowhere, and merely resulted in North Korea ending up with oil, food and trade concessions while giving up nothing in return.

In exchange, he got the Chinese to sign on to a vague, a pro forma statement about de-nuclearizing the Korean Peninsula with no concrete actions involved, and even that was qualified with a waffling commitment about how it should only be done “peacefully through dialogue and consultation.”

Secretary Kerry was far more effective at negotiating this sort of thing back in the Vietnam days, when he, Jane Fonda and others met in Paris in 1970 with North Vietnamese diplomats and agents to plot 'political strategy' to sabotage the U.S. war effort at home. As FBI files record, he made a second trip in 1971, accompanied by other members of Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW), a group he was the spokesman and leader of.

Kerry himself admitted that he had made the trips and negotiated with the North Vietnamese and representatives of the 'Provisional Governemnt ( AKA The Viet Cong) in congressional hearings held April 22nd, 1971.





What else would you expect, even forty odd years later?

Now We Know What Obama Meant By 'More Flexibility After The Election '

 

In 2012 President Obama was caught on a hot mic telling Russian President Medvedev to tell 'Vladimir' (Putin) that after the election, President Obama would have a 'a lot more flexibility'.

Today, Pravda-on-the Hudson is reporting on what President Obama meant.

And I'm sure this is just the beginning.

At this point, I'm going to censor myself and let you react on your own.

'Oh, How Do We Solve The Problem Of Korea' ?

 

Not exactly the sound of music, is it?

Now that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has announced that the armistice that ended the Korean War is over and is openly making threats to attack the U.S. and 'other enemies', the Obama Administration is springing into action.

New Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the U.S. would move 14 new ground-based missile interceptors to Alaska in response.

The new interceptors will be based at Fort Greely, an Army launch site about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, and are projected to be fully deployed by 2017, Hagel said. The additions will bring the U.S.-based ground interceptor deployment from 30 to 44, including four that are based in California.

That will boost U.S. missile defense capability by 50 percent and "make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression," he said in a briefing at the Pentagon.

2017?

2017?

After four years of downgrading U.S. missile defense, the Obama Administration appears to have decided that it's a useful bugger to have around after all. The reason it's going to take until 2017 is because we still have to build them and their launch sites.

Kim, meanwhile,  isn't waiting.Today he essentially fired a shot across Japan's bow by conducting another weapons test and launching some short range KN-02s into the Sea of Japan.

North Korea already has missiles that can reach America's West Coast, although such an attack is at the limits of their current technology as far as we know.U.S. Ally Japan is just short hop by comparison, and as Scott Kirwan points out in this article, Japan might end up proving to be the target Kim has in mind:

The North Korean regime would really like to hurt the United States. An attack on the US would contain the element of surprise, and is ideologically the best target. But it’s also the hardest to hit. The continental US is over 9000 km away, meaning the North would have to rely upon its longest range missile to fly in a suborbital trajectory, providing ample time for the US to determine its trajectory and likely target and to employ its anti-missile defense systems. It has tested such a missile twice, and neither test was a complete success as far as our intelligence has learned, so not only would the missile have to survive US countermeasures, it would also have to avoid falling apart.

If the North Koreans are rational even in their apparent craziness, the only target is Japan – likely a sprawling metropolis such as the Kanto containing Tokyo and Yokohama or the Kansai area where Nara, Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka sit. These areas would not require precision guidance systems beyond current North Korean capabilities and fall well within range of its Taepodong 1 missile that North Korea fired over Japan in 1998. An attack on Japan would temper the response by both China and South Korea: China would be hard pressed to punish the regime for attacking a foe China itself is threatening war against over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and both North and South Koreas hold deep historical animosities towards Japan for its treatment as a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945.

If Japan was nuked by North Korea it cannot retaliate. It lacks nuclear weapons and its conventional forces do not have the capability for an invasion. Japan would therefore have to rely upon the United States. Would the US launch a nuclear attack against North Korea on Japan’s behalf? It’s not a given, and such uncertainty increases the risk of an attack on Japan.

The entire Korea situation is an example of how weakness and appeasement in response to aggression only brings on more of the same..and always at a higher cost.

There was no reason for the West to agree to a partition of Korea after WWII, just as there was no reason not to demand that the Soviets pull their armies out of Eastern Europe after the Nazis were defeated.In Europe, President Roosevelt,steered by Soviet agents like Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Curtie and Alger Hiss chose to believe Stalin's assurances, and so did Harry Truman, who kept the Roosevelt advisers in place after FDR's death.

There's no question that America, as the sole Atomic Power after WWII couldn't have sent the Red Army packing back to Russia and freed Eastern Europe.The Soviet victory in WWII would not have happened without substantial U.S. aid, and even Stalin knew that the Red Army was not ready for another war.

The rationale for allowing a partition of Korea was similar. It was a bribe to the Russians to aid the U.S. in what Truman supposed was the prospective invasion of the Japanese home islands. Once that proved unnecessary after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no reason to allow the partition of Korea and had Truman stood up to Soviets, they would have had no choice but to withdraw.

Truman later compounded the error by ignoring South Korean leader Sygman Rhee's frantic request for heavy weapons, artillery and increased military assistance as Rhee watched the Nork's Soviet sponsored military  buildup on his borders. When the North Koreans invaded, our troops on the ground in South Korea lacked even enough basic ammo, let alone anti-tank weapons and they were completely overwhelmed.

Korea has been called the Forgotten War, but it was also an unnecessary one.

Even after the war started and General MacArthur had pushed enemy forces back to the Chinese border, Truman declined to take the steps that would have enabled victory - diplomatic negotiations with the Chinese that would have resulted in clear borders and a united Korea. That solution was possible even after the Chinese came in (as China always has when what they consider enemy forces are too close to their borders), although it might have required a few strikes on Chinese military installations as necessary once that happened to underline the need to Mao Tse Tung for a diplomatic solution.

It's worth remembering in this context that China only came in after Soviet assurances that they would back them..assurances which later proved as empty as the ones Stalin made to Roosevelt and Truman.

Instead of that, we settled for an armistice that left a poisonous regime in place.

The Kim regime has been gaming the West ever since...seizing the odd U.S. ship here and there, making agreements it had no intention of keeping, issuing numerous threats, attacking South Korean ships and territory, and acting as a major nuclear weapons proliferator - all without any significant action by the West,and especially by the U.S.

 



It's the Iranian story all over again.Aside from enabling the Kim regime to survive in the first place after blatant aggression, we've never made the North Koreans suffer any significant cost for their actions since. Is it any wonder they're upping the ante? Or that they have no fear of U.S.response whatsoever?

The WSJ Washington Wire Misrepresents In Order to Slam Romney

Now that Mitt Romney is touring overseas, he's fair game for the dinosaur media, and anything he says that can remotely be said to be a gaffe is sure to be spun and get headlines.

Somehow, we never saw this approach when President Obama was talking about people speaking 'Austrian.'

A case in point, in today's Washington Wire blog. The headline reads, 'Slovak Foreign Minister Chides Romney on Missile Defense'.

It quotes Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak critical comments on Mitt Romney's remarks on missile defense:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama’s administration this week for abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic by altering plans for an American missile defense system in Europe.

But the Slovak foreign minister, in Washington this week for meetings with U.S. officials, said Thursday that Europe has fully embraced the new approach to missile defense and said Mr. Romney was dredging up settled debates.

“People have moved on,” said Miroslav Lajcak, the minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We are in a different situation now. We are discussing a different project. I see no reason to revisit discussions from three years back.”

Next note this part:

Mr. Romney, in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday, said the Obama administration had failed to “nurture” America’s alliances, specifically citing Poland and the Czech Republic. Mr. Romney is due to visit Poland on Monday.

“It began with the sudden abandonment of friends in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Mr. Romney said. “They had courageously agreed to provide sites for our anti-missile systems, only to be told, at the last hour, that the agreement was off.”

No where in the article is it made clear that Slovakia and the czech Republic are two entirely different countries, something most Americans aren't aware of.

They also aren't made aware that Slovakia has a very different relationship with Russia than the Czech Republic does...or about Miroslav Lajcak close personal ties with Russia and its leaders.

Instead, the article is written so as to imply that the Czech Republic itself is critical of Governor Romney's remarks, and if you aren't reading very carefully and are unaware that Slovakia and the Czech Republic are two entirely separate countries, that's exactly the impression you get.

Biased, dinosaur media journalism at its best.

Obama Administration Ignoring Russia's Supplying Ballistic Missile Goods To Iran

The Obama Administration is ignoring violations of UN sanctions on Iran by Russian arms manufacturers who are providing the Iranian with materials needed for the manufacture and navigation of ballistic missiles.

That's the conclusion of an assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sent to Congress:

“We assess that individual entities have provided assistance to Iran’s ballistic missile programs,” the DNI statement by legislative director Kathleen Turner said.

The new assessment differs from an earlier intelligence statement supplied to Congress that was more categorical on the transfers and did not contain legalistic references included in an apparent effort to avoid linking the Russian government to recent missile-related transfers.

The assessment could affect a requested presidential waiver sought by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that is needed prior to the next U.S. payment to Russia for the International Space Station.

A State Department official said the Russia-Iran missile trade has not been raised in recent meetings between U.S. and Russian officials.

Current law requires the president to certify that it is Russia’s policy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear and missile technology and systems.

This comes at a time when the Obama Administration is pushing Congress to pass permanent normal trade relations legislation for Russia.

Here's the punchline - the statement finishes by saying that the Russian government is incapable of implementing a policy to halt exports of missile and nuclear technology to Iran or to stop state-owned arms manufacturers from selling it to Iran or providing training.

According to the DNI, currently headed by James Clapper ( you know, the man who claimed The Muslim Brotherhood is a 'secular organization'), the U.S. intelligence community's official word is that “Moscow almost certainly is not pursuing an official policy of providing support to Iran’s ballistic missile program.”

I'd love to know the thought processes that went into that kind of 'intelligence' since all Russian arms exports are rigidly controlled by the state-owned company Rosoboronexport.

In 2008, U.S. sanctions were imposed on Rosoboronexport for sales of TOR-M1 air defense missiles to Iran. The Obama Administration removed them as part of the president's 'reset'. Since then, there have been massive trtansfers of Russian hardware and technology to Iran, sanctions or no sanctions.

Among other toys Rosoboronexport is now interested in providing to the Iranians and other interested parties is technology Russia has developed aimed at covering up the tracks made by mobile missile launchers from their hiding place to the launch point, making the missiles' locations impossible to find by satellite.

And it gets better. A Senior House Republican is calling on President Obama to explain fully what sort of arrangements he has with Russia on missile defense.

“There is still a great deal of concern about what you meant when you were overheard during a recent meeting in Seoul with Russia’s former President Dmitri Medvedev, that after this election, your ‘last election,’ you ‘would have greater flexibility’ to make a deal with Russia concerning U.S. missile defenses,” said Rep. Michael R. Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, which oversees missile defense programs.

“What is it you and your administration are concerned the American people would object to in such a deal with Russia?” Turner asked. “Would it be limitations, unilateral or bilateral, with Russia on the speed, range, or geographical deployment of U.S. missile defense interceptors?”

Turner also asked the president in a May 23 letter to explain plans for up to an 80 percent cut in deployed U.S. nuclear warheads as part of the nearly completed Nuclear Posture Review implementation study.

“Many in Congress, me included, are deeply troubled that you may be willing to further trade or give away U.S. missile defenses to get closer to your goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” Turner said.

Turner called on the president to make public several draft missile defense agreements with the Russians that have been reported in news accounts but which remain secret.“Such transparency would be the best way to resolve concerns in the Congress about your statement to President Medvedev … about your intentions for missile defense,” Turner said.

Ellen Tauscher, the administration’s special envoy for missile defense, has denied any secret agreements with Russia—draft or otherwise—exist.

However, U.S. officials said Tauscher drafted an agreement meant to be signed by Obama and Medvedev at the 2011 summit meeting in Deauville, France, that was withdrawn from consideration by White House lawyers amid concerns that the draft contained legally binding constraints on U.S. missile defenses.

You may remember Ms. Tauscher from a previous mention on these pages...she's been in charge of gifting the Russians with our most advanced missile technology as an appetizer to that 'more flexible' missile defense agreement Prsident Obama promised the Russians once he's re-elected.

Russia Threatens NATO With Military Strikes Over Missile Defense System

General Nikolai Makarov, Russia's chief of staff threatened NATO with pre-emptive military strikes if it went ahead with installing an American missile defense system. So much for President Obama's famous 'reset'.

"A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," he said. "The deployment of new strike weapons in Russia's south and northwest – including of Iskander systems in Kaliningrad – is one of our possible options for destroying the system's European infrastructure."

Attempts to negotiate a compromise of some sort are dead in the water:

Anatoly Serdyukov, the Russian defence minister, warned on Thursday that Russia-Nato negotiations on the anti-missile system had reached an impasse.

"We have not been able to find mutually-acceptable solutions at this point and the situation is practically at a dead end," he said.

The system is designed to protect NATO countries from possible missile attacks originating from Iran, which is a dead giveaway that the Obama Administration has no plans to neutralize the Mullah's illegal nuclear weapons program but is going to make the huge error on letting things go and relying on containment. The Russians see the system as capable of taking out their own ballistic missiles as well, which leads to an obvious question...are the Russians planning on launching any? If they're right, certainly a missile defense system based in Eastern Europe would preclude the Russians using their missiles as a threat to try and get their old empire back.

More likely, it's a psychological reaction to the old Russian paranoia about 'encirclement'. Nor is it the first time Putin has threatened the West with a military attack over this issue. With President Obama in the White House, such threats have become much more commonplace.

The Russians see Iran somewhat the way the Chinese see North Korea, as a rogue state they control to a degree that creates distraction and problem for the West. Which of course, helps them strategically. Where things differ is that North Korea is a miniscule state with no real influence on China. Iran's relationship with Russia is much more complex, because of Russia's growing Muslim population and Iran's influence over the oil and gas market, which is where a lot of Russia's wealth and influence is derived from. And unlike North Korea, Iran is a large nation with aspirations of regional influence and dominance of its own. As you may know if you read this site regularly, I think it's a pretty good bet that Russia's enabling of Iran is going to lead to disaster for Russia and the West in the same way Stalin's enabling of Hitler did.

This issue will likely remain at an impasse for now, at least until we get new leadership in the White House.

Russians: 'We Want Joint Command Of US Missile Defense Shield'

I'll say this for the Russians - they definitely know whom they're dealing with in the White House.

The Russians have a new demand for Obama as part of the START treaty. They want 'red button' rights - joint command on how, when and if it is used - to the proposed new US-backed missile defense system for Europe!

Sergey Ivanov, Russia's deputy prime minister, made the demand during his last visit to the United States where he met with top officials including Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.

"We insist on only one thing," he said of the nascent US-backed missile defence shield. "That we are an equal part of it."

"In practical terms, that means that our office will sit for example in Brussels and agree on a red-button push to launch an interceptor missile, regardless of whether the missile is launched from Poland, Russia or the UK." ( emphasis mine)

Caving in to that demand would, of course, render any missile defense system useless. What would happen if Russia's friends in Iran decided to launch a missile against London or Paris and the Russians said 'Nyet'? What would happen if Russia decided the Poles or Czechs weren't being servile enough and decided to make an example of them?

The Russians are already successfully gaming Obama and his clueless Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher for export of our most advanced US missile technology, something that will very likely come back to haunt us after President Obama is safely out of office just as Clinton's shipping advanced military technology via Loral to China did.

Will the Obama Administration give in to this new demand? Stay tuned.

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Russia Exploiting Obama's Eagerness For Missile Defense Treaty To Obtain Advanced US Technology

It just gets better and better with Obama, doesn't it?

Bestselling author and national defense expert Bill Gertz's column in the Washington Times tells the whole story of how Russia is using the Obama administration’s eagerness to conclude a missile defense deal as leverage to obtain advanced U.S. missile defense technology.

What the Russians are after is a defense technology cooperation agreement that will get them access to America's advanced hit-to-kill missile defense system, the key technology for our most current strategic long-range and tactical short-range defense systems.That's why they made a sudden U-turn in opposing US missile Defense systems.

The Russians love the idea of a 'swap' because they have have very little to throw into the mix except its strategic anti-missile interceptors around Moscow are armed with nuclear warheads — a system that is years behind Hit-to-Kill technology-wise and a likely target in future arms reduction talks based on Obama's START treaty anyway:

,

The notion that Moscow will share sensor data also is doubtful. Missile defense experts say Russia’s key radar are designed and deployed to detect U.S. submarine-launched missiles and are not useful in detecting Iranian missile launches, the main goal of the administration’s European-based missile defense plan.

Moscow also has problems getting U.S. technology because current law limits the transfer of technology under U.S. anti-proliferation law, specifically related to Iran, that bars Russia's government from access to U.S. high-tech exports based on its past and ongoing arms proliferation to Iran.

The Obama administration is loosening export controls as part of a major reform effort, and administration arms-control officials, including Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, are hoping the reforms will make it easier to reach her long-sought goal of concluding a missile defense or defense technology deal with Moscow.

“It’s the perfect storm: loosened export controls, reset with Russia and arms control fever by the administration,” said one official concerned about the pending Russian technology cooperation.

The Pentagon is said to be lukewarm at best over missile defense cooperation because of concerns the technology will be used to counter U.S. systems or sold covertly to U.S. adversaries.

Ms. Tauscher did not respond to emails seeking comment, and her spokesman, Jonathan E. Kaplan, declined to comment.

Ms. Tauscher, undersecretary of state for international security, told a conference Monday that talks with Russia on missile defense cooperation were progressing but that a final agreement was not assured.

According to the U.S. officials, Russians close to the government stated in recent talks that their main interest in any U.S. deal is getting access to military technology generally and missile-defense know how specifically.

The interest in U.S. technology followed a sharp turnaround in Moscow policy several months ago, when the Russians said they were no longer opposed to U.S. missile defenses. The Russian military hopes its engagement and a missile defense agreement will lead to obtaining strategic hit-to-kill missile technology.

Hit-to-kill involves ultra-high-speed, non-explosive guided warheads that destroy targets such as missile warheads in flight — by slamming into them.

Un-freaking-believable. And Prez Zero's supporters have the nerve call Sarah Palin stupid? I guarantee you she's a lot smarter than this.

At this point, the Republicans could run Daffy Duck in 2012 and I'd probably vote for him over Obama. Seriously.

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