Hezbollah Joining Mexican Drug Cartels

Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-SC) has formally requested that the US Department of Homeland Security investigate the involvement of Hezbollah with Mexican drug cartels.

This is not news to anyone who's been following Hezbollah and Iranian activity in Latin America, or who is aware that Hezbollah has long made narcotics a key part of its financing. The Hezbollah stronghold in the Bek'aa Valley in Lebanon is one of the largest drug producing areas on earth.

It's also well known that Hezbollah is deeply entrenched in the 'triangle', the area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, operating drug trafficking rings with tentacles that stretch all through Latin America.

A suspected Hezbollah financier, a Lebanese national named Moussa Hamdan was just arrested in exactly this area, in a city with a significant Arab population called Ciudad del Este.A US warrant is outstanding for his arrest and Interpol is still in the process of deciding whether to honor the US request to extradite him

Myrick, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee said that according to her information Hezbollah's agents have bases in Venezuela with the support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, where they learn Spanish, train and obtain false papers identifying them as Mexican citizens. She also cited reports that members of drug cartels imprisoned in South America have been spotted tattooing Persian script on their bodies.

Aside from involvement in the Mexican drug cartels, many of which were originally armed and trained by the US,there's another consideration. There are existing Hezbollah cells and sympathizers here in America, as terrorism expert Steve Emerson has documented in his book, American Jihad.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where Hezbollah fighters come in through our porous southern border armed with explosives and arms to link up with the cells and sympathizers already here.

Those of you who find this far-fetched might remember that two of the jihadis convicted of the attempted terrorist attack on Fort Dix were non-Hispanic Muslims who came into the US illegally in exactly that fashion.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Watcher's Council Results!

The Council has spoken! Here are the results of our weekly Watcher's Council contest.

This week's council winner was Bookworm Room for Israel hasn’t changed; the world has, an excellent and revealing look at world perceptions of Israel and the Middle East then and now.

Our non-council winning post was Pajamas Media/Zombie - Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland , an excellent example of how the Left and the Islamists are becoming involved in a dangerous alliance.


Here are the full results:

Council Winners

• First place with 1 2/3 votes! – Bookworm Room – Israel hasn’t changed; the world has
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Joshuapundit – Barack Obama’s Oval Office Speech – The Fiction Cracks
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Glittering Eye – No, We’re Still Paying
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Rhymes with Right – When Teachers Become Self-Absorbed
• Third place with 2/3 vote - The Colossus of Rhodey – I wonder if the folks at Newsweek really wonder why their readership is dwindling
• Fourth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Right Truth – Banning Sharia Law
• Fourth place *t* with 1/3 vote - Snapped Shot – Efficiency: Man Denied Doctor Appointment… Because He’s Dead

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! * - Pajamas Media/Zombie - Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland submitted by Bookworm Room
• Second place with 1 1/3 votes - LATMA – The Three Terrors submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Third place *t* with 1 vote - Jay Tea/Wizbang – The Scent Of Fear submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Not PC - The schadenfreude of the postmodern president submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Six Meat Buffet - Why Has The Federal Government Declared War On The States? submitted by Snapped Shot
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Joanne Jacobs – The right way to assess teachers submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – National Affairs – Crisis Economics submitted by The Provocateur
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – The Counterterrorism Blog - OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE – An Open Discussion submitted by The Watcher
  

As always, congratulations not only to the winners but to the participants.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Interesting Interview With Michael Hastings, Writer Of The McChrystal Piece

It's been some week for you. Were you surprised to see the impact your story would have? Did you anticipate that kind of reaction?

Yeah, it seems to have gotten some attention. No, I didn't expect it. It's unusual for Afghanistan to get any attention. What I thought was that it will probably cause a headache for [General] McChrystal for a couple of days but that it would only be watched by those who follow Afghanistan closely.

Where were you when you first started to hear about the story's ripple effects?

I was in Kandahar. It was Monday and I'd been on an embed all day. I was sun-burned as hell. I was on the Kandahar air base, interviewing pilots, who were basically fighting every day IN THEIR helicopters. I went to bed, plugged my phone in to charge and all of a sudden I got this text message saying the AP picked up the story. I thought that was interesting.

I went out the next day with these helicopter pilots and while that was happening, by the end of that day - Tuesday - [the story] appeared to take on some momentum. I spent a lot of time on the phone. Later that night, I went out on a helicopter mission. At 3 a.m., I had to go out and meet these helicopter guys again. That morning, it was a mission where I followed these helicopters called Kiowa Warriors -- and they get called down for this gun battle between insurgents and Americans. The fighting was intense, two insurgents were killed... Then we went back to base. I had no Internet. I knew that I was getting a lot of phone calls, I was running out of batteries and had horrible reception.

McChrystal had issued his apology earlier in the day and then I learned he had been called back to Washington. It was understood that it was due to my reporting in the story, and I figured it would be good to get back to Kabul because of the fact that it looked like Gen McChrystal would resign. On Wednesday evening, I went back to Kabul... Sometimes, it's hard to get flights out of military bases, but it was pretty easy this time. They were like, "This ride's for you, man!" I was late to the flight but they got me on the flight anyway. And there were soldiers reading the story around me, reading printouts, and they didn't know who I was. That was a strange experience...

Some of the soldiers must have made the connection, hearing your name and knowing that it was you?

It was funny -- one of the soldiers I was talking to said, 'Hey, did you hear this story about McChrystal. And I said, 'Yeah, I have. I wrote it. He just said, 'That's fucking crazy, man."...

What story are you working on now - the Kandahar offensive?

That's the story I've been working on.

How is that offensive going?

I think it's in trouble, in serious trouble. The fighting is really, really heavy and they've postponed the heaviest fighting till the fall. But it's going to be nasty. This June has been the deadliest month of the war. You have this problem where we told our Afghan partners, if you don't want it , then we don't have to do it, and they said no and we said, well, we're doing it anyway. Now we're in situation where we are eventually going to do it and we don't have the popular support of the locals.

What was your reaction to McChrystal's resignation? And Obama accepting it? Were you surprised?

I was very surprised. I thought Gen. McChrystal was unfireable, that his position was secure. What is telling is that our story demonstrates this tense relationship between Pres. Obama and Gen. McChrystal and the way the WH responded confirms this. They could have swept it under the rug but they drove it... obviously McChrystal's political opponents took advantage of this opportunity to relieve him of his command, though that's just my speculation.

I didn't think Obama would do it. Essentially the story calls him out for being weak and not having control of his Afghan policy. If he had let him stay, it would have confirmed this idea in the story. He had to prove that he was in control. I wasn't sure that he was willing to do that. I was shocked that he was -- not because I don't think Obama is courageous, but because it involved some political drama... It was so fast, both right and left seemed to get together to call for his resignation. There was no one defending McChrystal.

Do you think it was the right decision?

Obviously, I have significant doubts about the [military] campaign anyway. The most important decision is not whether I think Obama made the right decision but whether his firing will satisfy the soldiers. Over here, soldiers were happy that he got fired. I've had a number of people come up to me, I got an email from Marine this morning [Thursday]: 'Hey man, you did great work. All the guys in my company think it's good McChrystal is not there because he was putting our lives at risk...

Petraeus is sort of a genius. He managed to turn what could have been catastrophic defeat in Iraq into a face-saving withdrawal. That's his mission in Afghanistan, to make it look like we didn't get run out. {emphasis mine - RM) He's a master at playing the game... the soldiers look up to him and respect him.

Will Petraeus continue this counterinsurgency offensive?

Yes. And Petraeus has the ability to communicate this strategy in a way that is more effective... I have a scene in the story [in which McChrystal goes to meet some soldiers in a unit who were angry with the general for putting them in harm's way by limited their range of responses, which led to the killing of one of their own]. The reason those guys are so angry [with McChrystal] is that Corporal Michael Ingram was killed because they weren't allowed to tear down this house [an abandoned home long considered a security risk in the area they were patrolling]. It was a total failure to communicate his vision.

The trash talking has gotten a lot of attention but the more damaging part [of the story] for McChrystal was how the soldiers would be portrayed. He pulled me aside after the meeting [at which McChrystal went to meet with Ingram's unit to hear their concerns and to explain his strategy] and said that for them the wound is still raw. They [McChrystal's staff] were under the impression that I would make the soldiers look like they did not understand counterinsurgency but what was clear to me instead is that McChrystal's command had an issue. They thought he won them over but he didn't. He knew they were angry and upset. I had a quote from a soldier saying, 'We don't even want McChrystal to come here' which I didn't include in the story.

Read the rest here. As my regular readers know, I agree with most of what Hastings has to say here.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

The Way Forward In AfPak

Now that President Obama has assigned General David Petraeus to command in Afghanistan, it's worth taking a look at what this entails and what the future is likely to hold.

Obama is being praised for making a brilliant choice, but its worth noting that this same crowd enthusiastically endorsed the idea not so long ago that General 'Betray us' was lying to Congress and the American people when he was advocating his strategy for the of the U.S.-led surge in Iraq.

Strange days, children...seeing General Petraeus photographed standing next to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, two ex-Senators who insulted him to his face almost at will and did everything they could to sabotage him only three years ago now calling on him to save our efforts in Afghanistan....


In truth, Obama had very little choice except to assign General Petraeus to pull things out of the fire. If he hadn't selected General Petraeus, Obama was pretty much limited to the following list:

General Ray Odierno, our current commander in Iraq

General Martin Dempsey, in charge of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia

Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, the current commander of the Army's Installation Management Command

Lieutenant General William Caldwell, McChrystal's deputy in Afghanistan

General James Mattis, the Marine who directed the Fallujah campaign in 2004.

Ordierno is still badly needed in Iraq, Dempsey, Lynch and Mattis would need a certain amount of time we don't have to get a feel for the ground and adjust to Afghanistan and Caldwell is tainted by being part of McChrystal's team. So General Petraeus was pretty much the only real choice.He is, after all, the author of the COIN strategy we're now following, for better or worse. And if anyone is going to be able to implement it on the ground or modify it so it would work in a place like Afghanistan, it will be General Petraeus.

Additionally, General Petraeus is well known and respected not only in the military but by the American public at large. If things go badly in Afghanistan in spite of General Petraeus' best efforts and we need to do a precipitous pull out, Obama will be able to derive political cover for a failure the president engineered by sharing the blame with America's best known commander.

What Obama is really hoping for, of course, is that General Petraeus will in fact be able to replicate his feat in Iraq, where he came into a failed situation and engineered not a victory, but something that looked enough like one so that we could begin to pull out honorably.

President Obama wants the same result in Afghanistan, so he can pound his chest and take the credit.

General Petraeus is going to have quite a challenge ahead of him.

First of all, he's going to have to come up with some realistic, clear cut strategic objectives that President Obama can sign off on. At present, we don't have them. And as that granddaddy of strategic thinking Clauswitz wrote years ago, going to war without them is a recipe for disaster.

He's going to have to take a good look at the restrictive Rules of Engagement and see about revising them, again by convincing President Obama. Not only have they resulted in more US casualties without any appreciable increase in pro-US sentiment among the Afghans, they have seriously affected the morale of our troops.Indeed,he may have to take a look at the entire COIN strategy.

He's going to have to somehow resurrect a decent relationship with Hamid Karzai, and/or our own relationship with the Afghan warlords and tribal chiefs, something I suggested over two years ago. This will involve, among other things, cold hard cash just as it did with the Iraqi Sunni leaders who became part of the Awakening movement...except it will be more difficult, because the Taliban are fellow Pashtuns and respect the local tribal chiefs that don't obstruct or fight against them to a certain degree. In Iraq, the al-Qaeda insurgents had a large complement of foreigners and brutally terrorized the locals to the point where throwing in with the Americans became a better option when the price was right.

One avenue for this might be our getting involved in controlling the opium trade to choke off a major part of the Taliban's financial support.

He will need to solve the problem of Pakistan, a failed basket case of a state that shares a 1600 mile border with Afghanistan where the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies have essentially regrouped and are able to attack us in Afghanistan at will - and then fade back over the borders to bases they maintain there, with the connivance of Pakistani army, ISI intelligence service and political figures. Billions in bribes have not been effective so far at anything much beyond keeping the major supply artery of the Pakistani port of Karachi to the Torkum Pass open for our convoys.

Almost 80% of our war supplies come over this route through hostile territory, there's no effective alternative and the Pakistanis know they have us over a barrel.

Finally, he's going to have to win the war waged behind his back at home. He's under the command of Democrats who bear him no great love and who cheerfully tried their best to stab him and our troops under fire in the back not so long ago out of sheer partisan political expedience. Rest assured that there will be similar efforts going on now, and some of them may even emanate from the White House. President Obama and General Petraeus have never exactly been chummy.

All in all, this is going to be the greatest challenge of the general's military career. It's going to be a difficult rabbit to pull out of the hat, but if anyone can do it, it's General David Petraeus, and even Obama recognizes that.

I can only wish General Petraeus good luck and G-dspeed in trying to make something positive out of this mess. He's going to need it.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Obama's SCOTUS Nominee - Sharia Friendly?

Yet another interesting factoid has surfaced about President Obama's prospective Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan. It appears she has an unduly tolerant view of sharia law...which of course directly contradicts our Constitution in numerous ways.

As I've mentioned before, Ms. Kagan, as Dean of Harvard Law School sued to keep military recruiters off campus in violation of the Solomon Amendment because she was so incensed over the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy towards gays.

But as Senator Jeff Sessions, the top ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary revealed, at the same time she was throwing a tantrum over military recruiters, Elena Kagan had no problem with the University accepting $20 million from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi Royal family to establish a center for 'Islamic Studies' and shariah law.

According to shariah, homosexual activity is a capital crime, and in countries like Iran gays are routinely hung. But Elena Kagan had nothing to say about Harvard accepting a huge check to promote shariah. Is hostility towards gays OK with her provided the pay out is big enough? Do we want that kind of selective morality sitting on the highest court of the land - for life?

Even worse, there's a more direct connection to Elena Kagan and the advancement of sharia. She personally officiated in 2003 over the creation of an "Islamic Finance Project" at the law school itself. It's express purpose is to promote shariah-compliant finance by training and indoctrinating law students at Harvard to be advocates for it. As Frank Gaffney reveals, this is a lot more insidious than it seems, and is thought of by jihadists as a gateway agenda, a way to introduce sharia concepts as a way to later encourage submission to the entire agenda:

Shariah-Compliant Finance dates back to the 1940s, when it was invented by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. This international organization has as its stated mission "destroying Western civilization from within...by its own miserable hand." SCF is designed to further these seditious purposes by: legitimating Shariah in non-Muslim societies; compelling non-Shariah adherent Muslims to use SCF, rather than conventional financial products (in particular, arrangements that involve charging or paying interest); and diverting funds through techniques known as "zakat" (tithing) and "purification" to support jihad. In fact, one of the driving forces behind the SCF industry, Qatari Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi has actually called SCF-generated zakat "jihad with money."

Ms. Kagan's Islamic Finance Project has also played a prominent role in encouraging the U.S. government to endorse Shariah-Compliant Finance. Notably, a founding advisor to the Project, Harvard professor Samuel Hays III, conducted a "seminar for the policy community" in November 2008. It was sponsored by a former Goldman Sachs executive-turned-Assistant Treasury Secretary, Neel Kashkari, who at the time was responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The signal thus sent could not have been clearer, either to Kashkari's colleagues in government or those in the financial sector: At a moment when the very viability of major banks and investing institutions critically depended on this individual's favor, it would be advisable to embrace Shariah-Compliant Finance.

I wonder if Kagan went on any of the lavish Saudi-paid junkets that were doled out to select members of the Harvard faculty during this period?

This just adds something else to the accumulating evidence that Elena Kagan is not only unqualified for the Supreme Court, she might just be downright dangerous.

(hat tip to Debbie over at Right Truth for steering this my way. And click on the link to read her fine piece on the State of Oklahoma's efforts to ban sharia law)

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Blago Trial Bombshell: Obama Knew Price For Senate Appointment Of Valerie Jarret

Heh! I knew this would end up being entertaining:

A top aide to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he believed Barack Obama knew of Blagojevich's plot to win himself a presidential Cabinet post in exchange for appointing Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate.

John Harris, Blagojevich's former chief of staff, testified Wednesday in the former governor's corruption trial that three days after the Nov. 4, 2008, presidential election, the ex-governor told Harris he felt confident Obama knew he wanted to swap perks.

"The president understands that the governor would be willing to make the appointment of Valerie Jarrett as long as he gets what he's asked for. . . . The governor gets the Cabinet appointment he's asked for," Harris said, explaining a recorded call.

Harris said Blagojevich came away believing Obama knew what he wanted after having a conversation with a local union representative, who in turn spoke with labor leader Tom Balanoff, with whom Blagojevich met to discuss a Jarrett appointment. Jarrett, now a White House adviser, was seeking the appointment to Obama's Senate seat.

Defense lawyers say Harris' testimony contradicts the government's previous public statements that Obama knew nothing about deal-making involving the Senate seat appointment.

The defense on Wednesday moved to force the prosecution to turn over FBI reports of Obama's interview with federal agents in December of 2008. Obama is not accused of wrongdoing.

"Testimony elicited by the government from John Harris and wiretaps played in court raise the issue of President Obama's direct knowledge and communication with emissaries and others regarding the appointment to his Senate seat," lawyers wrote in the filing.

The filing came on the trial's third day of the extensive playback of recordings in which Blagojevich is heard repeatedly discussing ways to personally capitalize on his Senate seat appointment power. Blagojevich could be heard plotting to try to head up a charity; swearing and snapping at his wife, Patti, and dismissing the possibility of a federal position that pays $190,000 a year.

"I make $170 . . . So Fred, that has no appeal to me . . . I want to make money," Blagojevich tells national Democratic consultant Fred Yang. "I might as well go out and find a way to make money."

Obama's 2008 internal report about his staff's contacts with Blagojevich at the time indicates that Balanoff relayed to Jarrett that Blagojevich was interested in a Health and Human Services Cabinet post.

Now I wonder...does Rahm Emanuel's connection with all this have anything to do with persistent rumors that he's going to be leaving the White House after the midterms?

After this, I find it very difficult to imagine that a judge wouldn't want the president at least deposed under oath.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

A New Definition Of 'Liberal'

Unwittingly revealed by the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, discussing General McChrystal's firing:

Even more about McChrystal: now it can be told. The story about him voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters.

Yup, banning ...that's sooo liberal in the modern, corrupted sense of the word. Ambinder just told us something about himself.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

A Palace Coup In Oz As Australia Gets Its First Woman PM

(Eh, I just cut down the Tall Poppy!)

The Labour Party savaged its own leader yesterday, with PM Kevin Rudd resigning in an emotional farewell less than three years after his 2007 election victory as he was ousted in favor of 45-year-old Julia Gillard, who will be Australia's first female prime minister.

Gillard is widely credited with engineering her party leader's Rudd's demise.

What cut Rudd down was controversy over his shelving of a carbon-trade scheme of the type beloved by the Left everywhere and his attempt to implement a huge tax increase on Australia's mining industry that sparked widespread protests among companies, workers and members of Rudd’s own party. Another issue was Rudd's failure to move against an influx of boat people illegally entering Australia.Rudd was tanking in the polls, and his fellow Labour Party members were concerned about being tossed out in the next election.

Gillard has pledged to resurrect the carbon trade initiative and negotiate with the miners, which has made her popular with her own party. Also , as Australia's first female PM, she's something of a novelty and likely to attract the votes of the sheilas, who are quite excited at her ascendancy to power.

If this sounds a bit like Obama, I note the similarity, but being as it's Australia, the Labour Party generally is not quite as far Left as our Democrats, although Gillard is definitely in the party's Left wing.

In terms of Australia's chief trading party, China and its chief security partner, the US, things are unlikely to change much.

Gillard will be squaring off in the elections against the Liberal Party’s Tony Abbott, a former Rhodes scholar and priest trainee. Remember, in Oz the Liberals are the conservative party.

Her success may very well depend on whether she can negotiate successfully with the mining industry and to what degree she's willing to moderate her views more towards the center.

UPDATE: According to Isi Liebler Gillard is a proven friend of Israel.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Dems: 'Faggedabout Obama's $250K Tax Ceiling Campaign Pledge .. Squeeze 'Em All!'

They're not even making a pretense of lying about it anymore:

The majority party on Capitol Hill does not feel bound by that pledge, saying the threshold for tax hikes will depend on several factors, such as the revenue differences between setting the threshold at $200,000 and setting it at $250,000.

“You could go lower, too — why not $200,000?” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “With the debt and deficit we have, you can’t make promises to people. This is a very serious situation.”

Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, concurred, saying, “I don’t think there’s any magic in the number, whether it’s $250,000, $200,000 or $225,000.

“I’m not hard and fast on $250,000,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “Quite frankly, it could be somewhat lower than that. $250,000 — is that the top 1 percent of Americans, or half a percent? I mean, come on!”

Household income data compiled by the Census Bureau in 2008 shows that families earning over $250,000 fall into the top 2 percent.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted in a speech Tuesday that House Democrats do not consider family incomes of $250,000 an inviolable threshold, despite Obama’s pledge.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted in a speech Tuesday that House Democrats do not consider family incomes of $250,000 an inviolable threshold, despite Obama’s pledge.

He said at the event sponsored by the Third Way think tank that “at a minimum,”the House would not extend the tax cuts to taxpayers above $250,000.

Hoyer argued that higher taxes would be necessary to address the $1.5 trillion federal deficit and downplayed threats that such action would hamstring the economic recovery.

“The Democrats used all the revenue in this place on healthcare reform and they can’t do anything else unless there’s more revenue,” said a senior Republican aide.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) acknowledged that using popular offsets to pay for healthcare reform has made it tougher to find ways to pay for other legislation

No mention of course on where that huge deficit came from.

What we have here is an out of control Democrat administration and Congress that simply think your money is rightfully theirs, to spend on whatever they like.

Just remember that most of it can be undone with the right results in November.Don't get fooled again.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

McChrystal Relieved Of Command..Petraeus Demoted To Take His Place

Well this turned out in an interesting way.

McChrystal being fired was no surprise, and I actually think it's what he wanted. But General David Petraeus taking his place...I have to wonder if he was given any choice in the matter or was simply ordered to do do by Obama, his commander-in-chief.

Actually, this is a step down for General Petraeus, who will go from being commander of CENTCOM to being our commanding General in Afghanistan as Obama appoints a new commander of CENTCOM who will be Petraeus' superior.

In a sense, Obama is doubling down and covering himself on Afghanistan by putting America's best known general in direct command.If it fails, Petraeus will share the onus.

Thus the question on whether Petraeus agreed to take this on or was simply ordered to do so. If he took it on voluntarily, he has to believe that this war can somehow be won. The first thing I'll be looking for is to see whether Petraeus changes the ridiculous Rules Of Engagement when he gets in. I'll also be watching to see what he does with the tribal chiefs and the opium traffic.

A key to understanding Petraeus' thinking is to look at his testimony before Congress on Afghanistan just last week about Obama's written-in-stone July '11 deadline.

"It's important that July 2011 be seen for what it is, the date when a process begins based on conditions, not the date when the U.S. heads for the exits," said Petraeus. "Moreover, my agreement with the president's decisions was based on projections of conditions in July 2011.

From Obama's standpoint, if things go seriously south in AfPak he has a scapegoat. If they go well and Petraeus comes back next year to report on whether conditions are right to start withdrawing next year, Congress and the American people are going to believe him.

Best of luck, General.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Amnesty For Illegal Aliens By Executive Order?

If Obama is capable of holding border security hostage for amnesty votes, why wouldn't he create amnesty for illegal aliens by decree? Via Michelle Malkin , Numbers USA has the story:

Several Senators have learned of a possible plan by the Obama Administration that would provide a mass Amnesty for the nation's 11-18 million illegal aliens. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), eight Senators addressed a letter to the President asking for answers to questions about a plan that would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to provide an amnesty if they can't secure enough votes for a bill in the Senate.

The letter that was sent to Pres. Obama earlier today asks the President for clarification on the use of deferred action or parole for illegal aliens. The executive actions are typically used in special cases and are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but if 60 votes can't be secured in the Senate to pass a mass Amnesty, the Administration may use the discretionary actions as an alternative.

Here is the text of the letter signed by Sens. Grassley, Hatch (R-Utah), Vitter (R-La.), Bunning (R-Ky.), Chambliss (R-Ga.), Isakson (R-Ga.), Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Cochran (R-Miss.).

Dear President Obama:

We understand that there’s a push for your Administration to develop a plan to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. We understand that the Administration may include aliens who have willfully overstayed their visas or filed for benefits knowing that they will not be eligible for a status for years to come. We understand that deferred action and parole are discretionary actions reserved for individual cases that present unusual, emergent or humanitarian circumstances. Deferred action and parole were not intended to be used to confer a status or offer protection to large groups of illegal aliens, even if the agency claims that they look at each case on a “case-by-case” basis.

While we agree our immigration laws need to be fixed, we are deeply concerned about the potential expansion of deferred action or parole for a large illegal alien population. While deferred action and parole are Executive Branch authorities, they should not be used to circumvent Congress’ constitutional authority to legislate immigration policy, particularly as it relates to the illegal population in the United States.

The Administration would be wise to abandon any plans for deferred action or parole for the illegal population. Such a move would further erode the American public’s confidence in the federal government and its commitment to securing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books.

We would appreciate receiving a commitment that the Administration has no plans to use either authority to change the current position of a large group of illegal aliens already in the United States, and ask that you respond to us about this matter as soon as possible.

Would Obama try an end run around Congress like this? Absolutely. Like his lawsuit against the State of Arizona, it's designed to endear the Democrats to the pro-Amnesty constituency. The lawsuit may be tossed out of court and the Executive order might be overturned successfully by legislation if the Republicans take back Congress, but this is about political positioning and branding.

And the will of the people be damned.

Via: Memeorandum

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Obama Administration Stops Sand Berm Dredging Off Gulf Coast

Despite pleas from local and state officials, the feds are shutting down the dredging that was being done to build protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico to keep the oil off the coasts.

Governor Bobby Jindal had asked for the feds permission to do this within days after the Gulf oil spill erupted, but received no answer from Washington until just before President Obama's Oval office speech, when Jindal erupted and said he was going ahead with the dredging regardless of whether he go the fed's approval..after which, of course, he got the approval.

But now, the feds have yanked the approval again and stopped the dredging, citing 'environmental concerns'..as if the oil wasn't an environmental concern!

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.

Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.

"Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote to Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.{..}

The California dredge located off the Chandelier Islands has pumped more than 50,000 cubic yards of material daily to create a sand berm, according to Plaquemines Parish officials.

Nungesser's letter includes an emotional plea to the president.

"Please don't let them shut this dredge down," he wrote. "This requires your immediate attention!"

Absolutely amazing. And yet another chapter in the Obama Administrations farcical response to this disaster...

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

McChrystal meeting With Obama; Resignation Likely Tomorrow

At least that's what CNN is saying:

Embattled Gen. Stanley McChrystal is meeting with President Barack Obama at this hour -- a meeting that may decide McChrystal's fate in the wake of politically explosive remarks the general and his aides made about key Obama administration officials in Rolling Stone magazine.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to make a list of possible replacements for McChrystal because Obama wants to be ready if he decides to fire the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, a senior administration official told CNN Wednesday.

McChrystal is unlikely to survive the fallout from the Rolling Stone story, a Pentagon source who has ongoing contacts with the general told CNN earlier.

He will likely resign Wednesday, the source said. Obama was "angry" after reading the general's remarks, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

What's unclear is whom Obama is going to pick as a successor to run his war. I have a feeling that;s a sandwich with a particular aroma that very few people are going to want to take a bite out of. it's also true that out of the US government officials involved, only General McChrystal had anything like a decent relationship with Hamid Karzai.

There's been a lot of talk about getting 'resignations' from Ambassador Eikenberry and Obama's special envoy Richard Holcombe. Possible, but I doubt it.

I'll repeat again what I said yesterday... McChrystal is definitely not stupid. This was basically self-induced career seppuku, a way for him to exit. honorably

There are no 'wins' to be had in Afghanistan, a lot of our warriors on the ground recognize that COIN is a failure there, and that the 'hearts and minds' rules of engagement are causing unnecessary casualties and risking their lives.

By now McChrystal knows COIN is a failure too, but given the dynamics of the Obama Administration and its stake in appeasing the Muslim world, he knew he wasn't going to be able to change what needed to be changed.

It probably got to the point where he was unable to face the troops in the field any more. So he decided on his own exit strategy.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Watcher's Council Nominations, 6/23/10

The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

So, let's see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• Joshuapundit - Barack Obama’s Oval Office Speech – The Fiction Cracks
• The Colossus of Rhodey – I wonder if the folks at Newsweek really wonder why their readership is dwindling
• The Glittering Eye - No, We’re Still Paying
• Snapped Shot - Efficiency: Man Denied Doctor Appointment… Because He’s Dead
• Rhymes with Right – When Teachers Become Self-Absorbed
• Right Truth – Banning Sharia Law
• Bookworm Room - Israel hasn’t changed; the world has
• The Provocateur – Man Caused Disaster

Non-Council Submissions

• LATMA – The Three Terrors submitted by JoshuaPundit
• The Chronicle of Higher Education – In Praise of Tough Criticism submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Jay Tea/Wizbang - The Scent Of Fear submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Six Meat Buffet - Why Has The Federal Government Declared War On The States? submitted by Snapped Shot
• Joanne Jacobs - The right way to assess teachers submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Las Vegas Review Journal/ WAYNE ALLYN ROOT - Obama’s agenda: Overwhelm the system submitted by Right Truth
• Pajamas Media/Zombie – Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland submitted by Bookworm Room
• National Affairs - Crisis Economics submitted by The Provocateur
• The Counterterrorism Blog - OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE – An Open Discussion submitted by The Watcher
• Not PC - The schadenfreude of the postmodern president submitted by The Watcher

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Do Loose Lips Sink Generals?

Maybe, in this case.

By now, you've mostly heard that General Stanley McChrystal, our commander in Afghanistan is in a world of hurt over an in depth profile of him in Rolling Stone magazine entitled 'Runaway General'.

According to the piece,written by Michael Hastings, McChrystal and a number of unnamed aides engaged in serial mockery of a number of Administration figures including Obama, NSC James Jones,( "a clown") VP Joe Biden("who?"), Ambassador Eikenberry and Special Envoy Richard Holcombe( "a wounded animal").

The story also includes a description of McChrystal's staff boozing it up at an Irish pub in Paris, "two officers doing an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance," and singing slurred, intoxicated songs about "Afghanistan, Afghanistan."

Once the profile hit the streets, the fit really hit the shan. McChrystal was promptly called home, where he is scheduled to meet personally with President Obama.

A number of the usual suspects are calling for McChrystal to be fired.

Certainly in terms of what almost amounts to insubordination, it would be justified and the word is that McChrystal has already tendered his resignation and Obama is mulling over a substitute.

So...was this just poor judgment on the general's part? I don't think so.

Someone who goes through West Point, Ranger training, survives combat and rises in the ranks the way McChrystal has is definitely not stupid. He had to know who the writer was, who Rolling Stone was and what was likely to come out in the article.

What this was in my opinion was a deliberate move on his part, a sort of career sepukku, a way for him to get of it honorably.

Our war in Afghanistan is a car driving on the freeway with its wheels coming off. The part of the RS article no one is discussing much concerns the failure of our strategy there. Obama's campaign promises about getting our European allies to put more troops into 'the good war' were nothing but unicorn fantasy, as anyone who observed Obama's competency in handling a Senate committee charged with exactly that could have noticed. Our EU allies are leaving - Canada and The Netherlands, two of the few who actually have combat troops on the ground have already announced that they're departing.

The Afghans are either hostile or indifferent to yet another group of ferenghi infidels occupying their country, and the Karzai government despises Obama and pretty much every US government functionary except McChrystal.

The Kandahar offensive is bogged down, al-Qaida and the Taliban have pretty much regrouped in Pakistan and come over at their leisure and a lot of our warriors on the ground recognize that COIN is a failure, and that the 'hearts and minds' rules of engagements are unnecessarily endangering their lives.

At this point, McChrystal knows COIN is a failure too, but given the dynamics of the Obama Administration and its stake in appeasing the Muslim world, he knows he isn't going to be able to change what needs to be changed

The only reason it worked to some degree in Iraq was because al-Qaeda was mostly composed of non-Iraqi foreigners and were incredibly brutal to the locals, to the point where bribing the leaders of the Sunni Awakening movement seemed like the lesser of two evils. And Iraq is a lot more of a cohesive country than Afghanistan has ever been.

As those of you whom read me regularly know, I've had a number of things to say about Afghanistan, a lot of it based on what I'm hearing from men on the ground. The incredible things our warriors have accomplished there are almost beyond belief, but the fact is that there is no 'win' there, no objective to obtain. The only reason for the surge was because of Obama's chest thumping campaign rhetoric about the 'real war', as opposed to Iraq - where ironically, things are relatively quiescent.

Assuming McChrystal is history, I'm not sure whom Obama is likely to get to replace him. Hopefully, a change in command will result in an entirely new strategy for the AfPak region, but given who's in the White House these days I have my doubts.

(via Memeorandum)

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Obama Administration To Sue Arizona Over Illegal Alien Law

Lessee now...the last time I looked, we had an occupation in Iraq to wind down, major problems in Obama's war in Afghanistan, Iran, a huge oil spill in the Gulf, 9.7 percent unemployment across the country and a government so mired in debt that the Democrat Congress isn't even going to bother submitting a Congressional budget this year.

So what does Obama do?Declare war on Arizona:

Obama administration sources tell ABC News that Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to file a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for its immigration law, likely next week.

The suit has been expected for some time now. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a South American television interviewer that the president had told the Justice Department to file the suit on the basis that it's the constitutional responsibility of the federal government -- not states -- to set immigration policy.

"President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy," Clinton told the interviewer on station NTN 24. "And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.”

Holder is expected to also claim in his suit that the Arizona law will be enforced in a way that could cause discrimination based on race and nationality.

Some commentators like the Weekly Standard's John McCormack evidences some surprise at this move. The law was well constructed to survive a court challenge, and as he points out for the most part previous state immigration laws have been upheld anyway so there doesn't seem much substance to the suit. Aside from the Arizona law's huge popularity nationwide, the Feds will also have a problem with the argument that only the feds are allowed to enforce immigration laws when Arizona brings up the federally offered Basic Immigration Enforcement Training (BIET) for local law enforcement, an online program that teaches them how to enforce the federal statutes that SB1070 mirrors.

If the locals aren't supposed to enforce federal immigration laws, why are the Feds teaching them how to do so? And if SB1070 is discriminatory and leads to 'profiling' then the federal laws are discriminatory too.

It's going to be a difficult legal argument to pull off..but a successful legal outcome isn't the reason for the suit. Just like everything else withthis president, it's all about politics.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Democrats have almost entirely lost the majority of White, senior, middle class and independent voters beyond all redemption.

With the midterms coming up in a few months, the Democrats are desperately trying to mobilize the youth and minority vote to counteract this.

No matter how the court challenge goes, the very fact that it's being launched is designed to secure points with what I will politely refer to as the pro amnesty constituency and get them to the polls to pull the lever for the Democrats.

Seen from that standpoint rather than law, justice or what might ultimately be best for the country, the move makes perfect sense.

(hat tip, memeorandum)

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

SCOTUS: No Such Thing As 'Moderate Terrorists'

In a major decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the "material support" laws designed to criminalize aid to designated terrorist organizations.

In a 6-3 opinion announced by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court affirmed that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and that speech, fundraising and other kinds of advocacy in support of designated terrorist groups is illegal, even if it's supposedly for the group's 'humanitarian' efforts or its 'political' wing.

Needless to say, the three dissenters consisted of Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a certain Wise Latina newly elevated to the Court by President Obama.

The case was brought by a far Left ACLU clone known as the Humanitarian Law Project and involved aid and advice they wanted to give to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) both of whom have been on the US terrorist groups list for years.

The Court decided that the law forbids any type of aid to terrorist groups because it could help to legitimize them and because the terrorist organization can then conserve its resources for terrorist activities. Roberts said Congress had made it clear that the intent of the support was irrelevant, and that only the end result - support for the known terrorist organizations mattered when it came to criminal charges.

"Congress chose knowledge about the organization's connection to terrorism, not specific intent to further its terrorist activities, as the necessary mental state for a violation," Roberts wrote.

Well, duh!

Now that we have this matter straightened out, I wonder - can anyone bring the Obama Administration up on charges for its material support of Hamas or of the Lebanese government, which is basically aid to Hezbollah?

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

White House Still Withholding 1600 Kagen Documents - GOP May Boycott Confirmation Hearings

The more we find out about Obama's prospective Supreme Court nominee, the less there is to like - which is precisely why the White House is stonewalling on releasing a number of documents dealing with her time in the Clinton Administration. So in response, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are apparently considering the unprecedented step of boycotting the hearings:

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, on Monday evening warned that Republicans may boycott the start of Elena Kagan's Supreme Court hearings if senators do not get to review scores of documents from the solicitor general's past.

"I don't feel like we're prepared yet," Sessions told POLITICO. "It's becoming more clear that this is not an easy thing to get ready this quick."

Sessions said there appeared to be 1,600 withheld documents, which cover Kagan’s time as a senior White House aide under President Bill Clinton but were not released because of confidentiality concerns. And he called for the Obama administration to at least provide key senators and staff with a chance to privately review the confidential documents so they could weigh in on the validity of the decision to withhold the documents.

Asked if Republicans would boycott the hearings if they did not get to review the documents, Sessions said: “If we feel like we can’t go forward with the hearings … because we don’t have sufficient documents, then yes, we may feel compelled to do whatever it takes to try to insist that the process be done right.”

If the GOP boycotts the hearings, they could still be held and there are certainly enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to move Kagan's nomination forward, and perhaps even enough to get her confirmed.But a GOP boycott would likely incur a firestorm of media attention, which something tells me is the last thing the Obama Administration wants right now.

The article also goes on to quote Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)on how many documents the committee has already received, blah blah blah.

But as Sessions points out, it ain't the quantity, but the quality and relevancy...especially when you're talking about a back room academic and political apparatchnik with no practical legal experience and a limited paper trail:

“Who gets to decide what’s private?” Sessions said. “President Clinton is involved in this and President Obama - and she did a lot of things like on the impeachment for Clinton, things that he may not want to be revealed that may be very important for the committee. I don’t know that; I'm just saying hypothetically. I'm worried about that many documents being withheld.”

We already know that Elena Kagan has some highly questionable anti-military and anti-Second Amendment stances, among other things. And as far as I'm concerned, the fact that she was President Obama's pick in the first place warrants suspicion in view of the other judicial nominees he's put out there.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Iran-Pakistan Pipeline Deal Signed - Gas For Missile Technology?

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi essentially defied US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and vowed that Pakistan plans to continue with a gas pipeline deal signed with Iran June 13th in spite of what were termed direct warnings form Holbrooke.

"The gas pipeline project with Iran is in Pakistan's interests, " the Pakistani Foreign Minister told a news conference in the city of Multan in Punjab.

Qureshi said that as far as Pakistan is concerned, the recent UN sanctions on Iran don't affect the gas pipeline project since it is a bilateral agreement between the two countries (!) and both countries have already finalized the deal.

The pipeline was initially supposed to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and then to India, but India withdrew from the deal last year as part of its nuclear deal with the United States.

So Iran and Pakistan are continuing with the pipeline project.

Just another boring commercial transaction...between an oil and natural gas producing Islamic state working very diligently on acquiring nuclear weapons and missile technology and another basket case, stony broke Islamic state with nothing much to sell except nuclear weapons and missile technology.

Nothing to see here, move along....

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

'Change Jordan's Name To Palestine': Was Geert Wilders Right?

Dutch politician Geert Wilders ruffled more than a few feathers by suggesting that one solution for the Middle East would be to change Jordan's name to Palestine and make that the Palestinian homeland.

"Jordan is Palestine," declared Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. "Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland."

Wilders also said that Israel deserved a special status in the Dutch government because of Jerusalem and called for the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

"If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next. Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting the West. It is not a conflict over territory but rather an ideological battle, between the mentality of the liberated West and the ideology of Islamic barbarism," he said.

According to the Saudi paper Al-Watan the Kingdom's embassy in the Hague was outraged, and said that the Dutch ambassador in Riyadh would be summoned to explain Wilder's remarks as well as how democracy works in all likelyhood.

Jordan's minister for media affairs and communications, Nabil Al Sharif, described Wilders' statements as "an echo of the voice of the Israeli Right" and "crows' screams".

"Jordan is an independent and secure country which supports the Palestinian issue, and these imaginings of finding them an alternate homeland are nothing but the delusions of a few people," he said.

Delusions, hmmm? *chuckle*

The fact is that Wilders is correct,both historically and demographically.

The Kingdom of Jordan was a made up country courtesy of the British Government, and it sits on over 80% of the original Palestine Mandate.The Brits received the Palestine Mandate in 1919 from the League of nations with the express, written responsibility of creating a Jewish homeland there.This was in accordance with Britain's Balfour Declaration of 1917, and aside from an expression of philo-semitism by Christian Zionists like Arthur Balfour was partially a reward for the services of the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli, the Jewish spy ring in Palestine and chemist Chaim Weitzman's discovery of a way to extract nitrogen from air, without which the Allies would have run out of materials to make gunpowder and would have had to sue for peace.




What the British did five years later was to lop off 80% of Palestine, bar settlement to any Jews and remove those who had settled east of the Jordan River and install a Hashemite Bedouin monarchy over the Palestinian Arabs there under Abdullah, the son of the Bedouin Arab leader Feisal. Feisal's other son Ali, the one Lawrence of Arabia had the hots for, ended up with what was thought to be the far richer prize of another made up country, Iraq.




The idea behind the partition of Palestine aside from giving Abdullah a throne was to create both an Arab and a Jewish state there to eliminate any future tensions. Needless to say,even 80% of Palestine wasn't enough and the Arabs objected to any presence of Jews in the Middle East unless it was under sub-Jim Crow style dhimmi status.

Even worse from the Palestinian's view point, they were placed under the rule of what amounted to a foreign potentate and his henchmen, the minority Bedouin Hashemites who viewed these non-Bedouin local town Arabs with disdain.

Both the Bedouin and the Palestinians have recognized this reality in different ways.After the Jordanians and their British officers ethnically cleansed Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem of their Jewish populations, every 'Palestinian' residing there was made a Jordanian citizen. And even after Jordan lost these areas after attacking Israel in 1967, the Kingdom of Jordan passed laws stating that every inhabitant of these areas 'who was not a Jew' remained a Jordanian citizen.

Even more bizarre was the spectacle of Jordan keeping its own citizens out of what was supposedly their own country! The Palestinian 'Jordanian citizens' living there were restricted to Judea and Samaria by the Hashemite monarchy and forbidden to come into Jordan proper without special permission, which usually included depositing a substantial cash bond with the Jordanian government to make sure they returned.

The Palestinians, for their part attempted to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy and crate a Palestinian state in Jordan under Yasir Arafat in 1970.

The Palestinians might have succeeded in ousting King Hussein with Syrian help if it wasn't for the Israelis the Jordanians currently hate so much. When the Syrians began to move armor and troops into Jordan to support Arafat, the IDF mobilized at the request of President Nixon as a counterweight and the Syrians withdrew, leaving Arafat and the Palestinians at the mercy of King Hussein's Arab legion.

This event is known in Palestinian annals as 'Black September' because of the huge amount of Palestinians who were killed ( conservative estimates run at better than 10,000) and expelled with the PLO, mostly into Lebanon, where many of them still live in squalid camps like Ein-Al-Hewar.

Arik Sharon, in his autobiography 'Warrior' makes the case quite well that moblizing Israeli troops to protect the Hashemite monarchy was a major strategic error on both Israel and America's part, because it deprived the Palestinians of their actual and historic homeland in order to maintain what basically amounts to a foreign monarchy installed by the British over the local population.

At this point, the ratio of Palestinian to Bedouin is roughly 80% to 20%, respectively and the Bedouin monarchy is trying its best to even the odds even now by arbitrarily depriving Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship who have held it for years.

The entire idea of another Palestinian state has always been a fiction, which is why no one called for it or even mentioned the 'Palestinians' as a separate people until after Israel took over the areas west of the Jordan.

It's simply been a tool used to deligitimize Israel, because the idea of the hated Jews living in 'Arab Land' in peace and equality has always been the real issue.

The Arab countries not only got away with waging aggressive war on Israel in defiance of the UN in 1948, they also got away with not having to integrate into their countries the Arab refugees whose plight they were directly responsible for, or having to pay a dime for their keep ever since.

Wilders is entirely correct that integrating the 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria into Jordan where they're already a huge majority and then making a final border settlement with Israel would provide them with a homeland and go a long way towards effectively ending Arab-Israeli conflict.

Unfortunately, the only solution most of the Arabs would be interested in accepting involves Israel disappearing entirely.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Iran Bars Two IAEA Inspectors From Entering

The game continues...

Iran said Monday it has banned two U.N. nuclear inspectors from entering the country because they disclosed to the media the contents of a "false" report on the country's disputed nuclear program before the U.N. nuclear watchdog reviewed it.

A report posted on the Web site of the state broadcasting company quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, as saying the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, has been informed of the decision to ban the inspectors, whom he did not identify.

The ban is the latest twist in Iran's deepening tussle with the Vienna-based IAEA and the West over its nuclear program. The United States and Israel say Iran's program is geared toward making nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, insisting that it is for peaceful purposes only.

Earlier this month, Salehi rejected the report by the agency as "false with the purpose of influencing public opinion."

In January, Iran told the IAEA it had carried out pyroprocessing experiments, prompting a request from the agency for more information — but then backtracked in March and denied conducting such activities.

IAEA experts in May revisited the site — the Jaber Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Research Laboratory in Tehran — only to find out that the electrochemical cell had been "removed" from the unit used in the experiments, according to the report.

Iran has already threatened several times to end all cooperation with the IAEA. I'm surprised they still bother, but I suppose there enjoyment on a certain level for the regime to continue to game the West and show its contempt.

And really, none of it - the so-called sanctions, the IAEA or the 'diplomacy'- really matters.The mullahs want nuclear weaponry and the centrifuges are continuing to spin, so it's simply a matter of time.

(hat tip, memeorandum)

In a related development, according to an Arabic newspaper in London, Al-Quds al-Arabi a dozen American warships including the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier strike group and several Israeli warships crossed through the Suez Canal on Friday with the complete assistance of the Egyptian government.

The Israelis are likely along to deal with the Iranian flotilla ship, while the Americans are likely there to deal with Iranian attempts to interdict Persian Gulf shipping...and to conduct drills for contingency plans dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Sen. Kyl: Obama Told Me He Won't Secure the Border Unless He gets GOP Votes For Amnesty

Arizona GOP Senator John Kyl went public at a townhall meeting in Tempe, saying that during a private meeting in the Oval Office President Obama told him personally that the White House is deliberately ignoring securing our southern border because he's holding it hostage as a bargaining chip for his 'immigration bill:'

On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

Sen. Kyl also said he reminded President Obama that the President and the Congress has an obligation, a duty, to secure the border.

Do I believe this? 110%. Given how Obama has behaved in office, this is right in character.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!