Israel 'An Ungrateful Ally'???

According to some unnamed sources, newly retired SecDef Robert Gates apparently opened fire on Israel , referring to them as 'an ungrateful ally'. And of course,the usual suspects throughout the blogosphere picked up on it, most notably Obama defender sine pari Jeffrey Goldberg in his new sinecure at Bloomberg News:

Goldberg quotes the usual 'unnamed senior officials':

Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee. {...}

Dislike of Netanyahu has deepened in a way that could ultimately be dangerous for Israel. Time after time, the White House has taken Israel’s side in international disputes -- over the UN’s Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza; over Israel’s confrontation with the pro-Hamas Turkish “flotilla,” in which nine people were killed; and on many other issues.

Yet the Netanyahu government does little to dispel the notion among its right-wing supporters that the Obama administration is at best a wavering friend. This is self- evidently foolish, especially at a time when Israel faces an existential threat from its menacing neighbor Iran.

*chuckle* Assuming Gates actually said this, and with Goldberg you never know, I wouldn't be at all surprised. Let's examine some inconvenient facts, shall we?

Robert Gates took over as Secretary of Defense in Bush's second term, precisely the time the Bush Administration's relationship with Israel changed for the worst.

Gates is an old Arab ally who was a recipient of what we'll call 'The Arab government pension augmentation plan' before he got back into government...you know, six figure fees for speeches and 'consultation', that sort of thing for services rendered while serving in government. He'll certainly go right back to it now that he's retired and if in fact he said it, this screed might very well be his first new assignment.

Gates talking about the danger to Israel from Iran is particularly hypocritical and obnoxious if he indeed mentioned it, because Robert Gates was one of the chief opponents in the Bush Administration along with Condi Rice of supporting a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear sites when it would have been far more feasible, involved less collateral damage and been far more effective.

Not only did Gates and Rice successfully stop the US from carrying out that mission, but they were instrumental in blocking US support for Israel doing it...and that was well before Netanyahu took over. Their animus even extended to unsuccessful opposition to the Israelis taking out an illegal nuke site in Syria.

In fact, Gates' appeasement mentality has gotten even more blatant, which is precisely why President Obama wanted him on the team.

Gates has always been a huge proponent of increased arms sales to his old friends the Saudis, and Rice and Gates also enthusiastically endorsed the Saudi 'Peace' ultimatum to Israel. In short, Robert Gates has never exactly been a huge fan of Israel, to be polite about it.

Characterizing Israel as 'an ungrateful ally' in view of what the US gains from the US/Israel relationship as opposed to what it gives is also as demonstrably wrong factually as the phony 'demographics' argument for trying to force Israel back to indefensible borders, which Goldberg has apparently swallowed and claims Gates has too.

I also have to laugh at anyone characterizing the Obama Administration's attitude towards Israel as friendly. That particular point is disproved on its face by referring to Israel as 'an ungrateful ally' for behaving like a nation with its own valid needs and interests instead of a colony. The nerve of those Jews!

President Obama had the Pentagon change the rules on military aid to restrict how the IDF could use it, made blatantly anti-Israel appointments to his cabinet and his advisers,. He explicitly violated the Road Map by endorsing the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum and reneging on the Bush Administration's agreement with former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria(AKA the West Bank) that were part of the guaranties President Bush gave Sharon for signing on to the Roadmap and retreating from Gaza.

The Obama Administration has given unprecedented aid to Hamas, pressured Israel to make one-sided and unsafe concessions to both Fatah and Syria, botched the peace negotiations by getting the Palestinians to up the ante unrealistically and attempted to humiliate the country's democratically elected leader.

I wouldn't exactly call these the actions of a friend, would you?

Like a lot of other figures on the Left, Goldberg's wet dream is a left-leaning Israel run by Tzipi Livni that asks 'how high?' whenever President Obams says jump, gives up all of Judea and Samaria including East Jerusalem and cringes hoping that the appeasement strategy of land for peace works, even though it never has.

It isn't going to happen, simply because the Israelis aren't suicidal. But that doesn't stop some people from pleasuring themselves with the fantasy.

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SecDef Gates:"Iran Policy? What Iran Policy?"

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just revealed what I have suspected for a long time now...Obama has no Iran policy worth mentioning!

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, touched off an intense effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a revised set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course…

Pressed on the administration’s ambiguous phrases until now about how close the United States was willing to allow Iran’s program to proceed, a senior administration official described last week in somewhat clearer terms that there was a line Iran would not be permitted to cross.

The official said that the United States would ensure that Iran would not “acquire a nuclear capability,” a step Tehran could get to well before it developed a sophisticated weapon. “That includes the ability to have a breakout,” he said, using the term nuclear specialists apply to a country that suddenly renounces the nonproliferation treaty and uses its technology to build a small arsenal…

Mr. Gates’s memo appears to reflect concerns in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well-prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed.

Zero's 'unclenched fist' diplomacy fail? With Khamenei and Ahmadinejad? Who woulda thunk it?

Meanwhile, Iran has a new generation of centrifuges happily spinning away and is already enriching uranium to weapons grade at 20%. Russia and China are nowhere near on board for any meaningful sanctions (as if they would do any good at this point), the Russians are telling us that Iran's Bushehr reactor will be online by August and Ahmadinejad is already crowing that the Iranians are past the point of no return.

As a matter of fact, the Iranian government, in an interesting side story is calling for up to five million people to move out of Tehran and is offering generous subsidies for them to do it.

The reason given is that Tehran sits on earthquake faults and diluting the population would make it easier to deal with what Ahmadinejad calls 'an incident'.

But at the same time,the official Iranian Fars News Agency is reporting that Iran will 'join the nuclear club' within a month's time:

No country would even think about attacking Iran after Iran’s membership in the club,” Deputy Head of AEOI for Research Behzad Soltani said on Tuesday.

Behzadi, who is also Secretary of the AEOI’s Scientific Cooperation Council, further pointed to the construction of 360 MW nuclear power plant and a 40 MW research reactor in Iran’s central city of Arak, and added that the projects are complete by 70%.

Are the Iranians planning a nuclear test and want to evacuate the population to avoid casualties if an earthquake occurs as a result? It could very well be later than we think.

It's been obvious to me for some time that the Obama Administration not only had no concrete plan to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons but had apparently decided at some point that they could live with a nuclear armed Iran. What that means is that the Israelis are going to have to do the job for their own survival - after which of course, Prez Zero will undoubtedly lead the charge against them in the UN for daring to defend themselves.

Allah however, makes a point worth noting:

No need to put all the blame on Obama here, though. Bush knew what it would mean to hand this issue off to a Democratic president and he went ahead and did it anyway. Invading Iraq necessarily left him with fewer military options against other threats; now the bill is coming due. As for Europe, Russia, and China, here’s the Times’s almost poignant description of the White House’s naivete: “Administration officials had hoped that the revelation by Mr. Obama in September that Iran was building a new uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near Qum would galvanize other nations against Iran, but the reaction was muted.” The fact that western powers had been waltzing with Iran over its nuke program for fully seven years at that point might have given them a clue that no action would be taken, but that’s “smart power” for you.

Gates memo was written in January, but is only being leaked now,presumably by elements in the Obama White House, even though it's horrifically embarrassing for Prez Zero. That's another indication that the hour is late and certain people want to cover their bureaucratic behinds before the nasty stuff hits the fan.

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