Atlas Shrugs

Iran's Election: Wolf vs Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Jonathan Galt saw this interview on Fox News this morning, and his points on understanding the significance of the Iranian election are very important... "particularly interesting that John Bolton made a distinction between the extremist and the moderate... take a listen and note the distinction starts around minute marker 1:30 in which he says the extremist builds nuclear weapons and announces his intentions to destroy Israel... while the moderate builds nuclear weapons and is smart enough to keep his mouth shut about his intentions to destroy Israel."

Yes, exactly. It reflects back on what I stated here: "....the leftopaths putting great stock in the outcome of the elections in Iran. Balderdash!"

"[...] In what can only be called political theater, some other plant will win, and they will con the world, the Perm 5, the UNSC, and the Muslim POTUS in one collective circle jerk while they finish their extensive, comprehensive nuclear weapons program. Not one nuke, not two nukes. Many nukes. The world wants so desperately to be fooled. Anything but react. And so the 'new' Iranian President will 'engage' in a 'new era,' 'new dialogue,' and 'diplomacy,' to Obama's evil delight.

"The election is irrelevant. The objective does not change, nor has it, since the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979. "

I'd almost prefer Ahmadinejad. At least he is honest. Either way, Obama is going to bow to these annihilationists.

Fox news interviewing John Bolton on Iran elections

John Bolton on Taking out Iran's Nukes: The Upside and the Downside .... uh, what downside?

Ambassador John Bolton has penned an excellent analysis of the various outcomes in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran to take out their nukes. Hindsight is 20/20, but an democracy loving administration (Bush) would have been far  more supportive than an anti-semitic one will ever be. Olmert did not have the testicular fortitude to save Israel from Islamic nukes. So now it's infinitely harder. So what? Everything for the poor beleagured Jew is infinitely harder -- but nothing was harder than Auschwitz. That is not going to happen again. Israel will not be turned into one giant oven.

What If Israel Strikes Iran? John Bolton, WSJ (hat tip Jane)
The mullahs would retaliate. But things would be much worse if they had the bomb.

Excerpt:

5) Iran launches missile attacks on Israel. Because all the foregoing options risk more direct U.S. involvement, Tehran will most likely decide to retaliate against the actual attacker, Israel. Using its missile and perhaps air force capabilities, Iran could do substantial damage in Israel, especially to civilian targets. Of course, one can only imagine what Iran might do once it has nuclear weapons, and this is part of the cost-benefit analysis Israel must make before launching attacks in the first place. Direct Iranian military action against Israel, however, would provoke an even broader Israeli counterstrike, which at some point might well involve Israel's own nuclear capability. Accordingly, Iran's Revolutionary Guards would have to think long and hard before unleashing its own capabilities against Israel.

6) Iran unleashes Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel. By process of elimination, but also because of strategic logic, Iran's most likely option is retaliating through Hamas and Hezbollah. Increased terrorist attacks inside Israel, military incursions by Hezbollah across the Blue Line, and, most significantly, salvoes of missiles from both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip are all possibilities. In plain violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, Iran has not only completely re-equipped Hezbollah since the 2006 war with Israel, but the longer reach of Hezbollah's rockets now endangers Israel's entire civilian population. Moreover, Hamas's rocket capabilities could easily be substantially enhanced to provide greater range and payload to strike throughout Israel, creating a two-front challenge.

Risks to its civilian population will weigh heavily in any Israeli decision to use force, and might well argue for simultaneous, pre-emptive attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas in conjunction with a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Obviously, Israel will have to measure the current risks to its safety and survival against the longer-term threat to its very existence once Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

This brief survey demonstrates why Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program is so unattractive, but also why failing to act is even worse. All these scenarios become infinitely more dangerous once Iran has deliverable nuclear weapons. So does daily life in Israel, elsewhere in the region and globally.

Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime. Most of the Arab world's leaders would welcome Israel solving the Iran nuclear problem, although they certainly won't say so publicly and will rhetorically embrace Iran if Israel strikes. But rhetoric from its Arab neighbors is the only quantum of solace Iran will get.

On the other hand, the Obama administration's increased pressure on Israel concerning the "two-state solution" and West Bank settlements demonstrates Israel's growing distance from Washington. Although there is no profit now in complaining that Israel should have struck during the Bush years, the missed opportunity is palpable. For the remainder of Mr. Obama's term, uncertainty about his administration's support for Israel will continue to dog Israeli governments and complicate their calculations. Iran will see that as well, and play it for all it's worth. This is yet another reason why Israel's risks and dilemmas, difficult as they are, only increase with time.

Israel has one priority. One. Self-preservation. Period.

UPDATE: One thing I meant to mention but failed to do so. The Iranian elections. I hear the leftopaths putting great stock in the outcome of the elections in Iran. Balderdash!

First off, the mullahs are running the mahdi madhouse. So I do not think Ahmadinejad will win. In what can only be called political theater, some other plant will win, and they will con the world, the Perm 5, the UNSC, and the Muslim POTUS in one collective circle jerk while they finish their extensive, comprehensive nuclear weapons program. Not one nuke, not two nukes. Many nukes. The world wants so desperately to be fooled. Anything but react. And so the "new" Iranian President will "engage" in a "new era," "new dialogue," and "diplomacy," to Obama's evil delight.

The election is irrelevant. The objective does not change, nor has it, since the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979. 

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident. -- Ayn Rand

Don't Hold Your Breath, Ambassador Bolton

Just as John Bolton predicted, the NORKs have dropped another nuke. A sales presentation to jihadis purchasing nukes. North Korea is the nuke go-to guys for the global jihad.

The crazy left said Bolton was crazy when he predicted the NORK's nuclear bomb test yesterday. Will they apologize? Ha! Will they finally say, Mr. Bolton, you must get tired of always being right? Ha! They never get tired of being wrong. It's a special kind of mental illness.

Will The Left Apologize To Bolton? Legal Insurrection

On May 20, 2009, John Bolton wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled "Get Ready for Another North Korean Nuke Test" in which he noted that the complacency of the Obama administration about North Korea's nuclear ambitions (and Iran's) was misplaced:

"The curtain is about to rise again on the long-running nuclear tragicomedy, "North Korea Outwits the United States." Despite Kim Jong Il's explicit threats of another nuclear test, U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth said last week that the Obama administration is "relatively relaxed" and that "there is not a sense of crisis." They're certainly smiling in Pyongyang."

As usual, the Left lashed out at Bolton, who may be third after George Bush and Dick Cheney in being portrayed as crazy and paranoid. Bolton has been derided as "the neocon's neocon" who "laps up the hosannas of fellow knuckle-draggers."

Allison Kilkenny at Huffington Post applied the left-wing attack on Bolton specifically as to Bolton's North Korea position, in a post titled, Update: John Bolton Still Crazy:

You have to hand it to the Wall Street Journal. At a time when the newspaper industry is desperately trying to remind America it's important and relevant, the WSJ has carved out a nice little niche for itself as a halfway house for discredited political figures. I think it's really humane of them. Their most recent charity case is John Bolton, America's former ambassador to the United Nations....

Today, Bolton chose to growl at the old, but reliable, enemy of North Korea. This is a particularly vintage move when one considers North Korea already tried to strike fear into the hearts of Americans last month when they tested a missile that fizzled and fell into the ocean 1,300 miles off the east coast of Japan. Bolton's stance is pretty brave because his frenzied ideology flies in the face of scholarly counsel.

It turns out that Ms. Kilkenny's post proved just who still is crazy, and it's not Bolton. Please read all of Ms. Kilkenny's anti-Bolton diatribe. It is a lesson in why we cannot, cannot, cannot, trust the Left with our national security.

RELATED: China Confidential has been ahead of the curve and the media. They have called it - both tests.

As shown by our reporting on North Korea and Iran, we are proving over and again that a small team of analysts and journalists (I have stringers and tipsters all over the world feeding China Confidential) can out-report and out-think the mainstream media. No wonder the major papers are going the way of general interest magazines like Look and Life. No wonder the brands Time and Newsweek no longer matter....

BOLTON ON ISLAM

Not sure if you caught Ambassador John Bolton's interview with Greta Van Susteren. He made some insightful remarks on Islam's takeover of Pakistan and the disastrous consequences for the free world.

GO HERE FOR A LINK TO BOTH INTERVIEWS!

At least he talks about it. No one else will.

One man's "radical Islam" is in fact, pure Islam. Robert Spencer coined it: Islamic supremacism.  Whatever, it's Islam, and it's spreading by brute force and stealth jihad.

BOLTON ON WORLD GOVERNMENT

Good segment: John Bolton's appearance on Glenn Beck discussing world government (though the Orwellians don't call it that anymore, instead they talk about "global governance" - same diff), supranational currency and the abdication of American self rule, and the leftopaths' new oxymoron: "responsible sovereignty". Bolton 2012! (Make that 2010!)

UPDATE: Geithner Confirms China Confidential Report that US is Open to New World Currency, Sending Dollar Down; Currency Rebounds After Affirmation

John Bolton on Iran's Axis of Nuclear Evil

When you listen to the garbage the O-bots and the left is spouting every day, all day, Bolton is like a frickin epidural when you are nine cm dilated and 80% effaced.

Bolton weighs in on the Iranian Defector who tipped Off the U.S. on the Syria Nuke Plant.

When I read the story of this huge intelligence failure I said worriedly, "This is  frightening. No one knew? What if this brave Iranian had not come forward, and if he came forward and revealed this to the Hussein administration, would they tell Israel?

What else is Iran doing that we don't know about?"

Obscured by the daily psy-op on the American people, Bolton explains the implications of the real story here, the huge story the media refuses to investigate. Certainly, the O-bambi  is not going to, he doesn't want to piss the mullahs off.

Iran's Axis of Nuclear Evil John Bolton Wall Street Journal

While President Obama's unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn't really this week's big news related to the Islamic Republic. Far more important was that a senior defector -- Iran's former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari -- disclosed Tehran's financing of Syria's nuclear weapons program. That program's centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran's active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to "negotiate" with Britain, France and Germany (the "EU-3"). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran's nuclear deceptions.

Sink in? To what?

That the Pyongyang-Damascus-Tehran nuclear axis went undetected and unacknowledged for so long is an intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. It represents a plain unwillingness to allow hard truths to overcome well-entrenched policy views disguised as intelligence findings.

Key elements of our intelligence community (IC) fought against the idea of a Syrian nuclear program for years. In mid-2003, I had a bitter struggle with several IC agencies -- news of which was leaked to the press -- concerning my testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Syrian program. Then Sen. Joe Biden made the Syria testimony an issue in my 2005 confirmation battle to become ambassador to the United Nations, alleging that I had tried to hype concern about Syria's nuclear intentions. (In fact, my testimony, in both its classified and unclassified versions, was far more anodyne than the facts warranted.)

Key IC agencies made two arguments in 2003 against the possibility of a clandestine Syrian nuclear weapons program. First, they argued that Syria lacked the scientific and technological capabilities to sustain such a program. Second, they said that Syria did not have the necessary economic resources to fund a program.

These assertions were not based on highly classified intelligence. Instead, they were personal views that some IC members developed based on public information. The intelligence that did exist -- which I thought warranted close observation of Syria, at a minimum -- the IC discounted as inconsistent with its fixed opinions. In short, theirs was not an intelligence conclusion, but a policy view presented under the guise of intelligence.

How wrong they were.

Read it all.

JOHN BOLTON ON PRESIDENT ALI-BAMA'S PROBLEM WITH ISRAEL

Why would America subject a close ally [Israel] to this dynamic, playing with the security of an unvarying supporter in world affairs? For America, Israel's intelligence-sharing, military cooperation and significant bilateral economic ties, among many others, are important national-security assets that should not lightly be put at risk. The only understandable answer is that the Obama administration believes that Israel is as much or more of a problem as it is an ally .....John Bolton

John Bolton writes  an op-ed on President Scary in the New York Post, which I like because Bolton needs to reach Joe Sixpack -- not just those elite asshats over the increasingly leftist Wall Street Journal. Bolton ought to start thinking seriously about 2012. Reagan may have been unthinkable in '79, but after four years of Dhimmi Carter he took the White House in a landslide.

Bolton writes of Obama's turn on Israel. Did President Hussein turn? Nah. He was never pro-Israel -- he just conned the Jews in the run up to his White House coup. I warned them.

TEAM OBAMA'S ANTI-ISRAEL TURN John Bolton, NY Post

THE Obama administration is increasingly fixed on resolving the "Arab-Israeli dispute," seeing it as the key to peace and stability in the Middle East. This is bad news for Israel - and for America.

In its purest form, this theory holds that, once Israel and its neighbors come to terms, all other regional conflicts can be duly resolved: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, fanatical anti-Western terrorism, Islam's Sunni-Shiite schism, Arab-Persian ethnic tensions.

Some advocates believe substantively that the overwhelming bulk of other Middle Eastern grievances, wholly or partly, stem from Israel's founding and continued existence. Others see it in process terms - how to "sequence" dispute resolutions, so that Arab-Israeli progress facilitates progress elsewhere.

Pursuing this talisman has long characterized many European leaders and their soulmates on the American left. The Mideast "peace process" is thus the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone - its mere existence being its basic justification.

And now the Obama administration has made it US policy. This is evidenced by two key developments: the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy for the region, and Secretary of State Hillary's Clinton's recent insistence on a "two-state solution" sooner rather than later.

Naming Mitchell as a high-level, single-issue envoy - rather than keeping the portfolio under Secretary Clinton's personal control - separates Israel from the broader conduct of US diplomacy. Mitchell's role underlines both the issue's priority in the president's eyes and the implicit idea it can be solved in the foreseeable future.

Obama and Mitchell have every incentive to strike a Middle East deal - both to vindicate themselves and, in their minds, to create a basis for further "progress." But there are few visible incentives for any particular substantive outcome - which is very troubling for Israel, since Mitchell's mission essentially replicates in high-profile form exactly the approach the State Department has followed for decades.

When appointed, Mitchell said confidently: "Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings." This is true, however, only if the conflict's substantive resolution is less important than the process point of "ending" it one way or another. Surrender, for example, is a guaranteed way to end conflict.

[...]

Almost invariably, Israel is the loser - because Israel is the party most dependent on the United States, most subject to US pressure and most susceptible to the inevitable chorus of received wisdom from Western diplomats, media and the intelligentsia demanding concessions. When pressure must be applied to make compromises, it's always easier to pressure the more reasonable side.

How will diplomatic pressure work to change Hamas or Hezbollah, where even military force has so far failed? If anything, one can predict coming pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of these two terrorist groups, and to negotiate with them as equals (albeit perhaps under some artful camouflage). The pattern is so common that its reappearance in the Mitchell-led negotiations is what is really "inevitable" and "inescapable."

Why would America subject a close ally to this dynamic, playing with the security of an unvarying supporter in world affairs? For America, Israel's intelligence-sharing, military cooperation and significant bilateral economic ties, among many others, are important national-security assets that should not lightly be put at risk.

The only understandable answer is that the Obama administration believes that Israel is as much or more of a problem as it is an ally,  at least until Israel's disagreements with its neighbors are resolved. Instead of seeing Israel as a national-security asset, the administration likely sees a relationship complicating its broader policy of diplomatic "outreach."

No one will say so publicly, but this is the root cause of Obama's "Arab-Israeli issues first" approach to the region.

This approach is exactly backward. All the other regional problems would still exist even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got his fondest wish and Israel disappeared from the map: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, its role as the world's central banker for terrorism, the Sunni-Shiite conflict within Islam, Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda and other regional ethnic, national and political animosities would continue as threats and risks for decades to come.

Instead, the US focus should be on Iran and the manifold threats it poses to Israel, to Arab states friendly to Washington and to the United States itself - but that is not to be.

Read it all.

JOHN BOLTON AT CPAC

Visions of 2012 dancing in my head ..uh huh uh huh

Part II to follow................ complete video to follow.

NUCLEAR IRAN: BOLTON BLASTS O-BAMBI

Bolton is too kind to our frenemies. It's as if the West wants Iran to go nuclear. When Bolton writes, "European leaders are belatedly feeling hollow in the pits of their diplomatic stomachs", I disagree - I think the EU is in league with the butcher. He continues, "Imagine their dismay that President Obama is now 'opening' to Iran, thus eviscerating their tentative efforts to 'close' the diplomatic cover under which Iran has almost achieved the worst-case outcome, deliverable nuclear weapons" - I wish he were being sarcastic. If they were really dismayed, they would have behaved differently for the past four some years. I believe this was the desired outcome and the only hope for free men is/was America. With President Hussein in office, I wouldn't hold my breath for an "American" response.

U.S. Military Chief: Iran Has Enough Material to Make a Nuclear Weapon

Iran Clenches Its Fist John Bolton

As Iran prepares to fire up its Bushehr nuclear reactor -- and as the International Atomic Energy Agency governing board meets this week, again confronted with further progress by Tehran's nuclear program -- it is worth asking how the Obama administration is responding.

Well, the State Department recently named Dennis Ross, a seasoned Middle East negotiator, as a "special adviser" to the Gulf region -- a bureaucratic but important prerequisite for direct talks with Iran. Unfortunately, a new envoy and a new diplomatic tone cannot disguise the ongoing substantive collapse of U.S. policy and resolve in the teeth of the Islamic Republic's growing challenge.

Tehran welcomes direct negotiations with Washington. Why not, given the enormous benefits its nuclear programs have accrued during five and a half years of negotiations with Europe? Why not, with America at the table, buy even more time to marry its impending nuclear weapons with its satellite-launching ballistic missile capability?

We have yet to see any evidence that Barack Obama (any more than George W. Bush) knows how to stop Iran. Consider these four blunt threats to our interests that direct talks may only facilitate, not reduce.

First, diplomacy has not and will not reduce Iran's nuclear program. Ironically, European leaders are belatedly feeling hollow in the pits of their diplomatic stomachs, now that their failed diplomacy has left us with almost no alternatives to a nuclear Iran. Imagine their dismay that President Obama is now "opening" to Iran, thus eviscerating their tentative efforts to "close" the diplomatic cover under which Iran has almost achieved the worst-case outcome, deliverable nuclear weapons.

The West's collective failure to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions has persuaded Iran that it faces minimal risks in greater adventurism on other fronts as well. Mr. Obama's discovery of "carrots and sticks," after a half decade of European failure to make that mantra a successful policy, will lead Tehran's mullahs to one inescapable conclusion: They have won the nuclear race, absent imminent regime change or military action.

Second, dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as though they are unrelated to Iran's broader threat is exactly backwards. Mr. Obama is again following Europe's mistaken view that ending the Arab-Israeli conflict will help to resolve other regional problems. But concentrating on Gaza only increases Hamas's leverage, just as negotiating with Syria only enhances its (and thereby Iran's) bargaining power.

We should deal instead with diseases, not symptoms. Changing Tehran's Holocaust-denying regime could end its nuclear program, as well as eliminate its continuing financing of and weapons supplies for Hamas and Hezbollah, reduce its malign hold over Syria, and strengthen Lebanon's fragile democracy. Taming Iran is not a magical cure-all, but surely addressing the central threat is more sensible than haphazardly dealing with the symptoms separately.

UPDATE:

There's much more. All bad. Read it.

UPDATE: Obama Security Breached: Schematics for ‘Marine One’ Found at Iranian IP address Jihadwatch

BOLTON IN ISRAEL: 'With no likelihood of American use of force, that leaves Israel'

Excellent. The Jerusalem Post runs an insightful interview with John Bolton during his stint at the Herzliya Conference in Jerusalem. I have never seen anything like it. Read it all - extraordinary, really. His remarks on Condi (and Bush) are quite revealing. Looking forward, the outlook is ominous. Very tough choices must be made - imminently.

During an hour-long interview before leaving Herzliya's Daniel Hotel and heading to the first panel-packed day at the campus of the Interdisciplinary Center, Bolton gave his take on Gaza, Iran, Turkey and, of course, on the outgoing and incoming American administrations.

Operation Cast Lead was timed to end immediately before US President Barack Obama's inauguration. Since then, rockets have continued to be fired on Israel from Gaza, with limited retaliation, and preparations for a possible second round. Had Israel not pulled out, would that have put an automatic strain on Jerusalem-Washington relations?

I do think the Obama administration will be less friendly to Israel than the Bush administration. And I understand why the leadership in Israel might have wanted the operation finished by January 20. There may have been other reasons to stop, as well, although with the renewed launching of rockets, those reasons are less apparent.

Military operations like Cast Lead should be carried through to their own logical conclusions, and I think Israel has to calibrate its military actions based on its own self-interest. Trying to judge what it should do based on American politics is a perilous venture.

But doesn't Israel rely on the US? Can Israel "go it alone," without American approval?

Well, it has done so in the past. For example, it undertook the very important operation, in September 2007, to destroy the North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. That was done, if not over US opposition, certainly without US approval. Personally, I think that US policy was wrong. I think Israel's destroying of that nuclear facility was beneficial to international peace and security.

You're saying the US was actually against that operation?

Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice wanted very much to avoid that strike. In fact, when Israel came to the US and first proposed it in the spring of 2007, she urged that it be postponed indefinitely. The Israeli response was, "We'll postpone it, but not past the end of the summer."

And that's exactly what happened.

Speaking of Rice, she seemed to have shifted to the left over the course of the Bush administration, particularly in its second term, when she became secretary of state. Does it really make a difference, then, whether it's Bush running the show or Obama?

Sadly from my perspective, there will be a lot of continuity between the Obama and Bush administrations where Middle East policy is concerned - generally on Iran, and specifically on a range of other issues. That doesn't warm my heart. It shows that mistakes were being made, especially during the second term of the Bush administration, many of which were made at secretary Rice's behest.

Was this because Bush came to rely on her so heavily, or did he actually hold with her views?

He did trust and rely on her very extensively in the second term, when a number of major voices of the first term left the government in one way or another and others, like vice president Cheney, had a much lower profile. I believe historians will judge that Rice was the dominant - in fact, nearly exclusive - voice advising the president on foreign policy in his second term.

Was he personally under her spell in some way, or did he change his mind about his own doctrine?

I can't explain it, quite frankly. It was a big disappointment to see the changes that were made in a variety of policy areas. It was one reason for my not seeking another appointment at the UN, and I thought it appropriate to leave in December 2006, because the administration had shifted on too many important foreign policy issues.

At last year's Herzliya Conference, you responded cynically to the suggestion that Bush might bomb Iran before the end of his presidency. Why, at the time, were you so certain he wouldn't do it?

Well, I had changed my view on that subject. I originally thought that president Bush was prepared to use military force. He had said repeatedly during his first term that an Iran with nuclear weapons was unacceptable. And, being a man of his word, I thought that his use of the word "unacceptable" meant it was not acceptable, and therefore if diplomacy failed - which I was sure it would - that left the robust response as the only option. I think what happened was that the president was persuaded by secretary Rice that a military answer to the Iranian nuclear threat would have provoked Iran to respond in Iraq, by increasing its destabilizing activities. I happen to think that analysis is incorrect - that Iran, if it retaliated at all, would retaliate by having Hizbullah launch attacks on Israel. But I think that secretary Rice persuaded the president that his biggest legacy in Iraq could be threatened and undermined if Iran stepped up its destabilizing activities.

From what you know of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, do you think she will take a similar view, or is it possible that she, ironically, might take a more hard-line position on Iran?

Bill and Hillary were a year ahead of me at Yale law school. I've known them for a long time - not that we were close buddies. And my recollection of Hillary was that she was one of the most radical leftists among the students there. She has gone through a lot of changes since then, among them in her political awareness, but I think fundamentally her views have not changed. I would worry that she will fit right in to an Obama administration, whose views are very European when it comes to a wide variety of foreign policy issues.

The danger of a nuclear Iran is an issue around which there is consensus across the Israeli political spectrum. In the event that it becomes necessary, would it be legitimate for Israel to take military action alone, if doing so were technically feasible?

Absolutely. With the end of the Bush administration, the possibility of US use of military force against Iran's nuclear program has dropped essentially to zero. The diplomatic effort failed years ago, and I don't think any renewed American effort is fundamentally going to make any difference. Iran has all the scientific and technological knowledge it needs right now to create a nuclear weapon. We can tell from publicly available information from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has enough low-enriched uranium which, if enriched to weapons-grade levels, would allow it one nuclear weapon now, and possibly another one or two this year. Let me stress here: That's what we know publicly from the IAEA - no James Bond involved in that calculation - and there may well be additional activities we don't know about, which would make Iran's capability even more substantial. So, if the diplomatic option has failed, that leaves only regime change or the use of force. And with no likelihood of American use of force, that leaves Israel.

Of course, the military option is a very unattractive one. It's risky. You could end up with the worst of both worlds: taking action without breaking Iran's control over the nuclear fuel cycles, and yet incurring the disapproval of governments all over the world.

But you have to have the military option front and center, because the alternative is far more unattractive.

Now, there are people who will say that Israel can't do it without American approval, or that it's not possible technically. I don't believe any of that is accurate, though I don't mean to downplay the risk involved. But there's another thing that you have to keep in mind: The military option is declining over time. This is because Iran will undoubtedly take steps to disperse and harden its facilities even further. It will increase its air defense capabilities by purchases from Russia. It will do many things to make it even more difficult for the US or Israel to take military action in the future.

So there's a very narrow window. If it closes, then you have to contemplate what to do with a nuclear Iran. I've tried to stay away from theorizing about how you deal with a nuclear Iran, because once you start theorizing about it, in a way you're accepting it. But if the reality is that Iran is now unimpeded - except for the possibility of a military strike - then you have to start thinking about it. That's why regime change starts coming back into the picture. The only long-range way to deal with this problem is regime change. You can't contain a regime of religious fanatics. Their calculus on the value of human life is very different from ours. If you prize life in the hereafter more than life on earth, the deterrent value of retaliation isn't very persuasive.

Look at the people who carried out 9/11. What threat of retaliation would have deterred them from the suicide attack? The answer is none. So, we're at a very grave point here. There's not much time left to deal with Iran if you want to keep in non-nuclear. And once it becomes nuclear, the entire balance of power in the region shifts - not just for Israel, but for the Arab states in the Persian Gulf as a whole. It will be a dramatically different region, because of the substantial increase of influence that nuclear capability will give the Iranians.

What good can changing this or that specific radical regime do, when the forces of jihad are global and exceed borders?

By regime change in Iran, I don't mean switching a few figures at the top; I mean the elimination of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The few cases of countries' having given up their nuclear weapons programs have come at a time of regime change. For example, when South Africa moved away from apartheid toward a true democracy, that's when it gave up its nuclear weapons program. When the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus gave Russia back the nuclear weapons that had been left on their territory, because they wanted a non-nuclear future.

There's no guarantee that regime change in Iran would achieve the same objective, but if there's any chance for that to happen, it's when a new government says it doesn't want nuclear weapons, and does want peace and stability. If that doesn't work, then the options are even more unattractive. That's why this is such a critical point, without much time remaining before we find out what happens when Iran does get nuclear weapons.

It has been said that Iran's nuclear program is being set back by the global financial crisis and sanctions. Is that not true?

The fall in the price of oil globally has had a dramatic impact on Iran. There's little doubt about that. And Iran's economy is in very bad shape. There's little doubt about that, as well. But neither of these two factors has anything to do with sanctions. Iran's economy is in trouble because of nearly 30 years of misrule since the Islamic Revolution. The lesson is: Don't put religious leaders in charge of an economy. They have misinvested in Iran's oil infrastructure. They have subsidized fuel prices to the point where they're now dependant on importing refined petroleum products. You can see evidence of economic dissatisfaction all around the country. But, again, that's not because of the sanctions that have been imposed by the US or the Security Council. Those sanctions have had a very limited impact. 

[...]

What about UNRWA?

UNRWA is an example of an organization that should have ceased to exist long ago, because its functions were transformed over time from humanitarian to largely political. The idea that refugee status can pass down through the generations is contrary to the principles of international humanitarian law that the High Commissioner for Refugees operates on elsewhere. And it shows why single-purpose organizations like this often are self-defeating.

Apropos the passing down of refugee status through the generations, if Hamas and Hizbullah are proxies of Iran, how can Israel eliminate the threats they pose with this or that territorial compromise, or this or that military operation?

It is a mistake to think that you can deal with the problem of Hamas, Hizbullah or even the regime in Syria separately from the problem of Iran. And neither of those three is disconnected from the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. Nor am I sure that you can deal with all at once, without regime change in Teheran. This is not to say that you have to have a macro solution to everything before you can have a micro solution to anything. It is to say that as you approach these threats and problems, you have to understand the linkages between them.

[...]

According to polls Binyamin Netanyahu - like you, a former ambassador to the UN - is going to win Tuesday's election. Is it true, as his opponents have been claiming, that Obama will not be able to relate to him or his worldview?

I don't want to put myself in the middle of an Israeli election, but it's a mistake to think that Obama won't deal with whomever becomes prime minister of Israel, as he would deal with the leader of any country, from whatever side of the political spectrum.

I do think, however, that how Israel should deal with the Obama administration is to appoint a counterpart to George Mitchell as the Israeli "special envoy" handling the Middle East peace process. I think it's a mistake for the prime minister to deal directly with Mitchell. He or she should deal with President Obama; the next foreign minister should deal with Secretary of State Clinton; and Mr. or Ms. X should deal with George Mitchell.

Mitchell has said that all conflicts can be solved, pointing to Northern Ireland as his prime example. What can Israel expect from his efforts on this front?

The Good Friday Agreement did not solve the Northern Ireland conflict, which, after all, in one form or another, had been going on for 500 years. It was solved by the British army thrashing the IRA. What was negotiated in the Good Friday Agreement were the terms of surrender. That hasn't happened in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, which in any case is a very different environment. As for what to expect, well, this is probably the last major assignment of Mitchell's career, so he has a strong incentive to reach a deal and do it quickly. This means that its substance will be less important than the deal itself, and that if reaching it drags out too long, it will be seen as a failure on his part. This should be of particular concern to Israel.

Read the whole thing.

THE THREE CARD MONTY OPTION

The day before yesterday Ambassador John Bolton declared the two state solution an abject failure, which was a very good thing.  He went on to suggest a three state policy where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank (in some configuration) reverts  back to Jordan. I vehemently disagreed. This is JEWISH LAND. Period. Further, Jordan doesn't want it - they threw the  "Palestinians" out and murdered thousands of them - which is why Arafat set up camp in southern Lebanon (and we know how well that worked out).  And the last thing Jordan wants is Hamas setting up shop in its borders. Egypt clearly does not want Gaza (who would?)

The Nutsrallah and his nazis hate it, btw.

My friend and colleague John gave the proposal considerable thought after a furious flurry of  email exchanges. He has fleshed out the argument and I think it quite good. It's lengthy, so grab a coffee. Forgive Mr. Jay's seeing contempt for capital letters .....

if it aint' broke ......

there are several ways to look at a political status quo, especially if it is a less than desirable situation.  the current goings on between israel and gaza provides such a choice in view.—either chaotic descent into further decadent failure, … , or, the attempt of events nominally out of control to impose an odd sort of rationality upon themselves.  neither view implies stasis, and both views acknowledge a fluidity of events.  it seems to me that the best view of a less than desirable situation is that view which admits of some further approach to rational control of events, and here we apprehend human intervention into the flow of events, and posit a viable approach to the imposition of the constraints of rationality upon them.

this last additional element moves us from an objectifying abstraction to considerations of policy, and the intervention of considerations of human wills and aims.

and so, we come to my reactions to a very interesting paper written by former john r. bolton, former united states ambassador to the united nations, entitled “the three-state option” and appearing in washingtonpost.com, the post’s own transition to a more rational tomorrow given the decadent spiral of the printed newspaper into oblivion: even the post looks to a viable approach to a changing future.  the post may not like it, but it has chosen rational change.

ambassador bolton  advocates change, a frank abandonment of the theory of the palestinian authority  ever being viable governance over the “gaza territory,” and a re-absorption of gaza into egypt, and of the west bank into jordan.  ambassador bolton’s thesis finds encapsulation in these brief sentences, from which all else of his argument flows:

“among many anomalies, today’s conflict lies within the boundaries of three states nominally at peace.  having the two arab states re-extend their prior political authority is an authentic way to extend the zone of peace and, more important, build on governments that are providing peace and stability in their own countries.”

and, in an economy of exposition much lacking in the world, we have no further to go in see whether ambassadors bolton’s argument stand or fail than the assumptions built into the last sentence of the above excerpt.  and though i have unbounded respect, admiration and affection for mr. bolton and for the forthrightness of his argument, i think his view lends itself to further decadence of the gaza situation, and does not lend itself to rational constraints upon the violence found there.

what are the assumptions in that last paragraph?  they are:

1.)the exertion of governance by jordan and egypt over these territories somehow achieves a peace not achievable by the exertion of governance over them by israel, and

2.)this governance over the palestinian entities by the arab states somehow lends greater peace and stability to egypt and jordan.

i think the logic & argument premised on these assumptions flawed, as these assumptions fail under examination and question, at the very least to the extent, that ambassador bolton has a whole lot of further exposition to do, in order to convince the careful and cautious thinker that the “virtues” of the status quo be abandoned, and there are some, in order to seek some sort of quixotic refuge in a plan that very few people would adopt enthusiastically, and that many see as seriously flawed from the standpoint of their own naked self interests.  the two greatest objections to this three-state scheme coming, of course, from the two entities absolutely needed to agree to it, … , that being jordan and egypt. ambassador bolton recognizes this, and further recognizes that the only way around it is naked bribery, and a bit of overt pressure from the united states.  he writes:
“this idea would be decidedly unpopular in egypt and jordan, which have long sought to wash their hands of the palestinian problem.  accordingly, they should not have to reassume this responsibility alone.  they should receive financial and political support from the arab league and the west, as they both have for years from the united states.”

these sentences are brilliant, not (in my view) because of the policy in them, but because they at once recognize neither jordan nor egypt can be forced to take this bastard child back into a welcome home, and that the “carrot” to do so is the promise of more money and the “cudgel” applied if they choose not do so is to have the money they are receiving now cut off.  please read those sentences again, with a critical eye, and see if i have not explained them accurately. 

in short, ambassador bolton quite nakedly says that the currency of his solution to the problem is united states currency.  (one might well expect israel would be a recipient of such inducement as well.)  i am going to explain in just two words why his notion of the value of this currency to egypt and jordan is very grossly inflated, and i do this with both clarity and celerity.--

TWO STATE SOLUTION: R.I.P.

Ambassador John Bolton writes a long overdue eulogy for the "two state" solution and pronounces it DOA. Halivay! Yes, it's long dead, and I am glad that the notoriously leftarded Washington Post has dared publish it.

I do not agree with Bolton's three state solution - the only real solution is Israel keeps Israel's land. Judea and Samaria is Jewish land. Period. Stop expelling Jews from Jewish land. It is the Arabs in Israel that must be expelled.

Israel must have defensible borders. Enough catering to savage annihilationists.

And none of this is even remotely possible until Islamic jihad is routed.

The Three-State Option John R. Bolton Washington Post

War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed. Terrorists financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians are suffering the consequences of regional power struggles played out through them as surrogates.

Israel isn't a happy place, either. It endures opprobrium from the world's High-Minded for defending itself from terrorism yet still finds itself subjected to terrorist attacks from Hamas and terrorists based in Syria and Lebanon. Israel's domestic politics are increasingly muddled, and its way forward obscure.

Neighboring countries also suffer. Egypt has walled off its boundary with Gaza; Lebanon remains under threat of a Hezbollah coup enabled by Iran; Syria slides further under Iranian hegemony; and Jordan is trapped in the general gridlock. Other Arab countries search for solutions, but their attention is increasingly diverted by the growing threat from Iran and the downturn in global oil prices.

Given this landscape, we should ask why we still advocate the "two-state solution," with Israel and "Palestine" living side by side in peace, as the mantra goes. We are obviously not progressing, and are probably going backward. We continue poring over the Middle East "road map" because that is all we have, faute de mieux, as they say in Foggy Bottom.

The logic to this position is long past its expiration date. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine a new approach that the key players would receive enthusiastically. If the way out were obvious, after all, it would already have been suggested. So consider the following, unpopular and difficult to implement though it may be:

Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection.

BOLTON ON PALIN'S FOREIGN POLICY CRED

From the expert, Bolton speaketh: (from WND hat tip Jon)

"I don't understand why the Obama campaign would want to make that an issue, which to me just calls attention to his own lack of experience in foreign policy," Bolton told WND at the Republican National Convention.

Shortly after Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his running mate Friday, the Obama campaign pounced on the issue, charging the presumptive Republican nominee had "put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency."

The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss wrote yesterday "it's been hilarious this week watching Republican spokesmen trying to put a positive spin on Palin's utter lack of foreign policy experience."

What's hilarious and pathetic is how afraid the left is of this powerhouse of a woman.

"You know Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that what is critical to the success of our system of government is what he called energy in the executive," Bolton said. "And she has been energetic on a range of issues, particularly on issues involving energy, energy security."

Energy security may be thought of as a domestic issue when American's fill up their gas tanks, Bolton said, but it also should be regarded as a national security issue.

"No ticket ever has every quality in both candidates that it wants," Bolton said. "And the main thing is who's going to be president on January the 20th, because I don't think we can afford having somebody who's not ready from day one."

Bolton also argued that if the Republican ticket wins, Palin will have an opportunity in the administration to increase her knowledge and involvement in foreign affairs.

"I think you put your strength at the number one position and groom your successor in the number two position," Bolton said. "You don't do it the other way around."

Read it all.

Read Mark Steyn's The Hostest with the Moosest

Media on Palin - a sudden case of 'family values'?
Conservative analyst Bob Knight says the media are currently in a feeding frenzy, trying to assert that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is unfit to be vice president because her teenage daughter is pregnant. And pro-family leader Wendy Wright says the way liberal media is reporting the story exposes a "rank hypocrisy."

UPDATE:Media Bias?

Photo: Texas rainmaker

BOLTON ON ZOA RADIO: "Hegemony of Islam"

Live now - excellent interview with John Bolton on ZOA radio speaking of Israel, Georgia, Russia and Iran ......... if Israel was removed it would not stop the pursuit of "hegemony of Islam". Yes, someone of great stature and importance finally said it.
Great stuff. Listen now or listen to the podcast later.

The guy yelling 'we need you' is priceless.

UPDATE: It's their final show.*sigh*

More Asshats with TV Shows: Bolton takes on Lewis on Al Jizz

Remember the pompous schmuck Ayaan Hirsi Ali crushed on Canada TV a few months back (if you missed the video go here).

Well, the bloviater made the organic move to Al Jazeera - perfect! - and interviewed John Bolton. It's delish and good for you too. The Sheik has the video. Watch it. But you'll need a strong stomach to listen to Lewis wax poetically and  equivocate on despots, killers and the idyllic life under Saddam Hussein.

Money quote on Lewis's contention that the US is operating on Iran, Bolton: "I don't read a lot of fiction"
heh
and this gem  citing Seymour Hersh is like citing the Easter Bunny"
lol

Fruitcake indeed.

GEORGIA: BOLTON ON THE BLOODY BEAR AND THE DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS

They are waving American flags ....  poor bastards. Counting on America is like counting on Paris Hilton  (with friends like us)

Watch this video. Who is next indeed?  

Bolton eviscerates the administration and the West for its spinelessness in dealing with Russia. It's lengthy but it's the best analysis out there - so go here and read it:

Excerpt:

After Russia's invasion of Georgia, what now for the West?  John R Bolton (hat tip Van)

At least for now, the smoke seems to be clearing from the Georgian battlefield. But the extent of the wreckage reaches far beyond that small country.

As bad as the bloodying of Georgia is, the broader consequences are worse. The United States fiddled while Georgia burned, not even reaching the right rhetorical level in its public statements until three days after the Russian invasion began, and not, at least to date, matching its rhetoric with anything even approximating decisive action. This pattern is the very definition of a paper tiger. Sending Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice to Tbilisi is touching, but hardly reassuring; dispatching humanitarian assistance is nothing more than we would have done if Georgia had been hit by a natural rather than a man-made disaster.

The European Union took the lead in diplomacy, with results approaching Neville Chamberlain’s moment in the spotlight at Munich: a ceasefire that failed to mention Georgia’s territorial integrity, and that all but gave Russia permission to continue its military operations as a “peacekeeping” force anywhere in Georgia. More troubling, over the long term, was that the EU saw its task as being mediator – its favourite role in the world – between Georgia and Russia, rather than an advocate for the victim of aggression.

Even this dismal performance was enough to relegate Nato to an entirely backstage role, while Russian tanks and planes slammed into a “faraway country”, as Chamberlain once observed so thoughtfully. In New York, paralysed by the prospect of a Russian veto, the UN Security Council, that Temple of the High-Minded, was as useless as it was during the Cold War. In fairness to Russia, it at least still seems to understand how to exercise power in the Council, which some other Permanent Members often appear to have forgotten.

The West, collectively, failed in this crisis. Georgia wasted its dime making that famous 3am telephone call to the White House, the one Hillary Clinton referred to in a campaign ad questioning Barack Obama’s fitness for the Presidency. Moreover, the blood on the Bear’s claws did not go unobserved in other states that were once part of the Soviet Union. Russia demonstrated unambiguously that it could have marched directly to Tbilisi and installed a puppet government before any Western leader was able to turn away from the Olympic Games. It could, presumably, do the same to them.

Fear was one reaction Russia wanted to provoke, and fear it has achieved, not just in the “Near Abroad” but in the capitals of Western Europe as well. But its main objective was hegemony, a hegemony it demonstrated by pledging to reconstruct Tskhinvali, the capital of its once and no-longer-future possession, South Ossetia. The contrast is stark: a real demonstration of using sticks and carrots, the kind that American and European diplomats only talk about. Moreover, Russia is now within an eyelash of dominating the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the only route out of the Caspian Sea region not now controlled by either Russia or Iran. Losing this would be dramatically unhelpful if we hope for continued reductions in global petroleum prices, and energy independence from unfriendly, or potentially unfriendly, states.

[....]

Europe’s rejection this spring of President Bush’s proposal to start Ukraine and Georgia towards Nato membership was the real provocation to Russia, because it exposed Western weakness and timidity. As long as that perception exists in Moscow, the risk to other former Soviet territories – and in precarious regions such as the Middle East – will remain.

Obviously, not all former Soviet states are as critical to Nato as Ukraine, because of its size and strategic location, or Georgia, because of its importance to our access to the Caspian Basin’s oil and natural gas reserves. Moreover, not all of them meet fundamental Nato prerequisites. But we must now review our relationship with all of them. This, in effect, Nato failed to do after the Orange and Rose Revolutions, leaving us in our present untenable position.

By its actions in Georgia, Russia has made clear that its long-range objective is to fill that “gap” if we do not. That, as Western leaders like to say, is “unacceptable”. By drawing the line clearly, we are not provoking Russia, but doing just the opposite: letting them know that aggressive behaviour will result in costs that they will not want to bear, thus stabilising a critical seam between Russia and the West. In effect, we have already done this successfully with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Accordingly, we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. 

Second, the United States needs some straight talk with our friends in Europe, which ideally should have taken place long before the assault on Georgia. To be sure, American inaction gave French President Sarkozy and the EU the chance to seize the diplomatic initiative. However, Russia did not invade Georgia with diplomats or roubles, but with tanks. This is a security threat, and the proper forum for discussing security threats on the border of a Nato member – yes, Europe, this means Turkey – is Nato.

Saying this may cause angst in Europe’s capitals, but now is the time to find out if Nato can withstand a potential renewed confrontation with Moscow, or whether Europe will cause Nato to wilt. Far better to discover this sooner rather than later, when the stakes may be considerably higher. If there were ever a moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall when Europe should be worried, this is it. If Europeans are not willing to engage through Nato, that tells us everything we need to know about the true state of health of what is, after all, supposedly a “North Atlantic” alliance.

Finally, the most important step will take place right here in the United States. With a Presidential election on November 4, Americans have an opportunity to take our own national pulse, given the widely differing reactions to Russia’s blitzkrieg from Senator McCain and (at least initially) Senator Obama. First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved, are always the best indicators of a candidate’s real views. McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack, and the need for a strong response, whereas Obama at first sounded as timorous and tentative as the Bush Administration. Ironically, Obama later moved closer to McCain’s more robust approach, followed only belatedly by Bush.

In any event, let us have a full general election debate over the implications of Russia’s march through Georgia. Even before this incident, McCain had suggested expelling Russia from the G8; others have proposed blocking Russia’s application to join the World Trade Organisation or imposing economic sanctions as long as Russian troops remain in Georgia. Obama has assiduously avoided specifics in foreign policy – other than withdrawing speedily from Iraq – but that luxury should no longer be available to him. We need to know if Obama’s reprise of George McGovern’s 1972 campaign theme, “Come home, America”, is really what our voters want, or if we remain willing to persevere in difficult circumstances, as McCain has consistently advocated. Querulous Europe should hope, for its own sake, that America makes the latter choice.

PHOTO: Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili reacts during a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008. Some thousands of Georgians gathered Tuesday in an emphatic show of support for President Mikhail Saakashvili after the country came under attack from Russian forces.

UPDATE: Read it all, and then after sufficient frustration read Glick and weep:

In their statements Wednesday on Russia's invasion of Georgia, both US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice openly acknowledged that Russia is the aggressor in the war and that the US stands by Georgia.

This is all very nice and well. But what does the fact that it took the US a full five days to issue a clear statement against Russian aggression tell us about the US? What does it say about Georgia and, in a larger sense, about the nature of world affairs?

Russia's blitzkrieg in Georgia this week was not simply an act of aggression against a small, weak democracy. It was an assault on vital Western security interests. Since it achieved independence in 1990, Georgia has been the only obstacle in Russia's path to exerting full control over oil supplies from Central Asia to the West. And now, in the aftermath of Russia's conquest of Georgia, that obstacle has been set aside.

Georgia has several oil and gas pipelines that traverse its territory from Azerbaijan to Turkey, the main one being the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Together they transport more than 1 percent of global oil supplies from east to west. In response to the Russian invasion, British Petroleum, which owns the pipelines, announced that it will close them.

This means that Russia has won. In the future that same oil and gas will either be shipped through Russia, or it will be shipped through Georgia under the benevolent control of Russian "peacekeeping" forces permanently stationed in Gori. The West now has no option other than appeasing Russia if it wishes to receive its oil from the Caucasus.

Russian control of these oil arteries represents as significant a threat to Western strategic interests as Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait and his threat to invade Saudi Arabia in 1990. Like Saddam's aggression then, Russia's takeover of Georgia threatens the stability of the international economy.

While Russia's invasion of Georgia is substantively the same as Saddam's attempt to assert control over Persian Gulf oil producers 18 years ago, what is different is the world's response. Eighteen years ago, the US led a UN-mandated international coalition to defeat Iraq and roll back Saddam's aggression. Today, the West is encouraging Georgia to surrender.

Whether due to exhaustion over the domestic fights about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, dependence on Russian oil supplies, a residual and unjustified belief that Russia will side with the West in a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, or the absence of an easy option for defending Georgia, it is manifestly clear that today the West is fully willing to accept complete Russian control of oil supplies from Central Asia.

Notwithstanding the strong statements issued Wednesday
by Bush and Rice, the West has taken two steps to make its willingness to accept Russia's moves clear. First, there was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's photogenic mediation-tour to Moscow and Tbilisi on Tuesday. And second there was the US's response to Sarkozy's shuttle diplomacy on Wednesday.

Sarkozy's mediation efforts signaled nothing less than Europe's abandonment of Georgia. During his visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Putin's Charlie McCarthy doll, "President" Dmitry Medvedev, Sarkozy agreed to a six-point document setting out the terms of the cease-fire and the basis for "peace" talks to follow.

The document's six points included the following principles: The non-use of force; a cease-fire; a guarantee of access to humanitarian aid; the garrisoning of Georgian military forces; the continued deployment of Russian forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and anywhere else they wish to go; and an international discussion of the political status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

As a reporter for France's Liberation noted, by agreeing to the document France abandoned the basic premise that Georgia's territorial integrity should be respected by Russia. Moreover, by leaving Russian forces in the country and giving them the right to deploy wherever they deem necessary, Sarkozy accepted Russian control of Georgia. By grounding Georgian forces in their garrisons, (or what is left of them after most of Georgia's major military bases were either destroyed or occupied by Russian forces), Sarkozy's document denies Georgia the right to defend itself from future Russian aggression.

[...]

"We shouldn't make any moral judgments on this war. Stopping the war, that's what we're interested in," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner explained, adding, "Don't ask us who's good and who's bad here."

Then there is the fact that Georgia has gone out of its way to liberalize and democratize its society and political system and to be a loyal ally to the US. It sent significant forces to Iraq and Kosovo. Far from returning the favor, in Georgia's hour of need, all the US agreed to do was give Georgian forces a free plane ride home from Iraq. That the administration has no intention of defending its loyal ally was made clear Wednesday afternoon when the Pentagon sharply denied Georgian claims that the US would defend Georgian airports and seaports from Russian aggression.

The Pentagon's blunt denial of any plan to restore Georgian sovereignty was one of the first truly credible statements issued by the US Defense Department on the conflict. It took the US four days to acknowledge Russian aggression beyond South Ossetia. Even as convoys of journalists were shelled, civilian's homes were bombed, and Georgian military bases were destroyed by Russian forces in Gori, a Defense Department official said, "We don't see anything that supports [the Russians] are in Gori. I don't know why the Georgians are saying that."

The general lesson that emerges from Washington's claims of ignorance is that reality itself is of no concern to policy-makers bent on ignoring it. Through its obvious lies, Washington was able to justify taking no action of any sort against Russia and not speaking out in defense of Georgia until after Russia forced Georgia to surrender its sovereignty through the French mediators.

The US and European willingness to let Georgia fall despite its strategic importance, despite the fact that it has operated strictly within the bounds of international law, and despite its obvious ideological affinity and loyalty to them will have enormous repercussions for the West's relations with Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland and the Czech Republic. But its aftershocks will not be limited to Europe. They will reverberate in the Middle East as well. And Israel, for one, should take note of what has transpired.

[...]

If nothing else comes of it, the West's response to the rape of Georgia should end that delusion. Georgia did almost everything right. And like Israel was, for its actions Georgia was celebrated in the West with platitudes of enduring friendship and empty promises of alliances that were discarded the moment Russia invaded.

Georgia only made one mistake, and for that mistake it will pay an enormous price. As it steadily built alliances, it forgot to build an army. Israel has an army. It has just forgotten why its survival depends on our willingness to use it.

If we are unwilling to use our military to defeat our enemies, we will lose everything. This is the basic, enduring truth of international affairs that we have ignored at our peril. No matter what we do, it will always be the case. For this is the nature of world affairs, and the nature of man.

Bolton calls Obama's Speech in Berlin "Radical and Naive"

The brain speaketh!(Mark you calenders, Mr. B will be joining me on the Voices of Freedom radio show in Phoenix KFNX  on August 21st.)

One world? Obama's on a different planet
The senator's Berlin speech was radical and naive  John Bolton LA Times (hat tip Van)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it "allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer."

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama's thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign's carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.

First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.

The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.

Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."

This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries.

Read it all. You know you want to :)

UPDTE: Thanks to Larwyn for sending me this gem.

The gall:

"American presidential elections are not 'home affairs'. American decisions have repercussions all over the globe…. Hence, the world should be given the right to vote."

Bolton on Iran's "Point of No Return": "global, balance of power changes in potentially catastrophic ways"

Mr. B sums it up rather nicely - and rather deadly. But I don't believe that Bush and co. will  sign off on decisive, courageous action as he limps out of office. He will attempt to stop Israel. Pathetic, all of it.

So it rests on the crooked shoulders of Olmert, a hack, clearly out of his league with the very real weight of the world on his back. *sigh*

Israel, Iran and the Bomb  By JOHN R. BOLTON

[...] Then the decision to weaponize, and its timing, is Tehran's alone. We do not know if Iran is at this point, or very near to it. All we do know is that, after five years of failed diplomacy by the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), Iran is simply five years closer to nuclear weapons.

And yet, true to form, State Department comments to Congress last week – even as Iran's missiles were ascending – downplayed Iran's nuclear progress, ignoring the cost of failed diplomacy. But the confident assumption that we have years to deal with the problem is high-stakes gambling on a policy that cannot be reversed if it fails. If Iran reaches weaponization before State's jaunty prediction, the Middle East, and indeed global, balance of power changes in potentially catastrophic ways.

And consider what comes next for the U.S.: the Bush administration's last six months pursuing its limp diplomatic efforts, plus six months of a new president getting his national security team and policies together. In other words, one more year for Tehran to proceed unhindered to "the point of no return."

We have almost certainly lost the race between giving "strong incentives" for Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and its scientific and technological efforts to do just that. Swift, sweeping, effectively enforced sanctions might have made a difference five years ago. No longer. Existing sanctions have doubtless caused some pain, but Iran's real economic woes stem from nearly 30 years of mismanagement by the Islamic Revolution.

More sanctions today (even assuming, heroically, support from Russia and China) will simply be too little, too late. While regime change in Tehran would be the preferable solution, there is almost no possibility of dislodging the mullahs in time. Had we done more in the past five years to support the discontented – the young, the non-Persian minorities and the economically disaffected – things might be different. Regime change, however, cannot be turned on and off like a light switch, although the difficulty of effecting it is no excuse not to do more now.

That is why Israel is now at an urgent decision point: whether to use targeted military force to break Iran's indigenous control over the nuclear fuel cycle at one or more critical points. If successful, such highly risky and deeply unattractive air strikes or sabotage will not resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. But they have the potential to buy considerable time, thereby putting that critical asset back on our side of the ledger rather than on Iran's.

With whatever time is bought, we may be able to effect regime change in Tehran, or at least get the process underway. The alternative is Iran with nuclear weapons, the most deeply unattractive alternative of all.

But the urgency of the situation has not impressed Barack Obama or the EU-3. Remarkably, on July 9, Sen. Obama, as if stumbling on a new idea, said Iran "must suffer threats of economic sanctions" and that we needed "direct diplomacy . . . so we avoid provocation" and "give strong incentives . . . to change their behavior." Javier Solana, chief EU negotiator, was at the time busy fixing a meeting with the Iranians to continue five years of doing exactly what Mr. Obama was proclaiming, without results.

John McCain responded to Iran's missile salvo by stressing again the need for a workable missile defense system to defend the U.S. against attacks by rogue states like Iran and North Korea. He is undoubtedly correct, highlighting yet another reason why November's election is so critical, given the unceasing complaints about missile defense from most Democrats.

Important as missile defense is, however, it is only a component of a postfailure policy on Iran's nuclear-weapons capacity. In whatever limited amount of time before then, we must face a very hard issue: What will the U.S. do if Israel decides to initiate military action? There was a time when the Bush administration might itself have seriously considered using force, but all public signs are that such a moment has passed.

Israel sees clearly what the next 12 months will bring, which is why ongoing U.S.-Israeli consultations could be dispositive. Israel told the Bush administration it would destroy North Korea's reactor in Syria in spring, 2007, and said it would not wait past summer's end to take action. And take action it did, seeing a Syrian nuclear capability, for all practical purposes Iran's agent on its northern border, as an existential threat. When the real source of the threat, not just a surrogate, nears the capacity for nuclear Holocaust, can anyone seriously doubt Israel's propensities, whatever the impact on gasoline prices?

Thus, instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran. We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible. At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can.

Related:  Obama blames Iranian attacks on American troops on Americans being in their neighborhood More of  oxyObama's "aggressive diplomacy"

 

Let's Not Be Provocative!  Obama's Iran nonsense. Weekly Standard

These subjects are decidedly unpleasant. A nuclear Iran is more so.

UPDATE: Astute Bloggers: "PREEMPTIVELY ATTACKING IRAN: "LET'S GET IT ON" - OR - "WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF!"

Bolton: Obama a danger to the world

What he said.

JERUSALEM – A Barack Obama presidency would spell danger for the Middle East and for America's interests in the region, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told WND in an interview.

Bolton expressed concern Obama will not support the use of force to fight terrorism by U.S. allies, such as Israel.

"Obama may cause a real problem with our friends or allies who see the world as a more difficult place, such as those dealing with terrorist acts in Gaza, the West Bank or Hezbollah in Lebanon," said Bolton.

"All these things can be handled by talks, according to Obama. But when it is necessary to resort to force or self defense, Obama would look on in disfavor," Bolton said.

Bolton argued Obama holds a "broad conviction" that "everything can be negotiated and can be solved through negotiations."

"He has a faith in the negotiation process as matter that drives policy and not as one aspect of policy only when negotiations make sense," Bolton told WND.

Asked if he believes an Obama presidency will be dangerous for the U.S. as far as the Middle East is concerned, Bolton replied: "Yes. I think so. Although his views seem to change fairly rapidly, if you look at what he says unprompted in response to questions, and not just when he is reading speeches, he has a very naive view of how one deals with adversaries around the world."

Obama has drawn much criticism on some of his stated policies regarding the war on terror, such as advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and sit-downs with the leaders of terrorist-supporting states such as Iran.

Sen. John McCain, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee, claims Obama approaches the war on terror from a crime-fighting perspective after Obama last month said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden should be given access to U.S. courts if he is captured.

"There seems to be more concern about the rights of terrorists or alleged terrorists than the rights that the American people have to safety and security," said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking to reporters last month on behalf of the McCain campaign.

Emphasizing the terrorism issue, McCain has numerous times quoted a WND exclusive interview in which Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' chief political adviser in the Gaza Strip, said he "hopes" Obama becomes president. Yousuf also compared Obama to John F. Kennedy.

BOLTON ON BUSH'S NORK NUCLEAR COLLAPSE

....or many erstwhile administration supporters, this is a moment of genuine political poignancy. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse.

Tragic for us. The worst of all possible scenarios.

The Tragic End of Bush's North Korea Policy Ambassador John Bolton, Wall Street Journal hat tip Van

North Korea has consecutively broken every major agreement with the U.S. since the North's creation. The Bush administration provides no reason why this one will not be added to that long list except the audacity of hope. Where have we heard that recently? Barack Obama and John Kerry both announced support for the deal, and Mr. Obama said he intended to apply Bush's policy to other rogue states, thus confirming the early start of the Obama administration.

The Feb. 13, 2007, agreement states explicitly that North Korea was to provide "a complete declaration of all nuclear programs" within 60 days. This it manifestly did not do, either in timing or substance. The declaration, more than 14 months overdue, and which is not yet public, has long been forecast not to include information on weaponization, uranium enrichment, or proliferation activities such as cloning the Yongbyon reactor in Syria. Although the North provided less than it agreed 16 months ago, we compensated by giving up more than we agreed, which is typical of decades of U.S. negotiation with the North.

The extent to which Yongbyon's aggregate plutonium production has been weaponized and concealed is one critical unresolved issue. Moreover, analysis of the much-touted 18,000 pages of Yongbyon documentation previously turned over has uncovered significant gaps in information, especially concerning the reactor's early years of operation, that preclude making a truly accurate calculation. This is essentially the same problem that the International Atomic Energy Agency faced during its years of monitoring Yongbyon under the failed 1994 Agreed Framework, showing that the North is nothing if not consistent in its cover-up strategy.

Ironically, the documents themselves are contaminated with particles of highly enriched uranium, probably from that enrichment program North Korea still denies. This program's extent is crucial, because if it is production scope, the North will still have a route to fissile material no matter what Yongbyon's ultimate fate, proving yet again that leveling those aged facilities was a nonconcession.

Bush administration officials contend on this and other unresolved issues that they will insist on verification, but inside the government there is little or no planning on what that means precisely, let alone agreement on the details with North Korea. Given the North's record of maskirovka, the extent of open and intrusive verification we should demand would likely undermine the very foundations of the regime itself, which Kim Jong Il will obviously not accept.

The North's proliferation, such as the now-flattened Yongbyon twin in Syria, are important not only for what they prove about the North's ongoing duplicity, but for their potentially central place in the North's continuing nuclear weapons program. This is emphatically not, therefore, merely a matter of filling out the historical record, but rather an avenue of inquiry that focuses directly on the North's current capabilities and intentions. Pooh-poohing proliferation in this way, as the administration has done, is evidence of its desperation not to allow the deal to come unstuck.

The administration argues that these criticisms are unwarranted because it has always contemplated that the North's denuclearization would play out in phases. This is no answer at all. Instead, it graphically reveals one of the deal's central problems. There is no advantage to the U.S. in proceeding by phases. To the contrary, North Korea alone benefits by phasing, by stretching out a process that enables Kim Jong Il to stay in power and to maximize the political and economic benefits he can extract through each excruciatingly lengthy and painful phase.

Consider, moreover, the deal's corrosive impact on the very concept of the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Removing North Korea from the list for political reasons unrelated to terrorism simply provides ammunition for those who argue that the existence of the list itself is purely political. Critically, since the North's nuclear and ballistic missile programs materially assisted Syria and Iran, two other states on the terrorism honor roll, it is hard to see what remains of President Bush's doctrine that those who support terrorists will be treated as terrorists.

Consider also the palpable damage our mishandling of the terrorism issues has caused to our alliance with Japan, whose citizens, along with many South Koreans, were abducted by Pyongyang's agents. One might quibble that this is not state sponsorship of terrorism, but rather direct state terrorism. (Perhaps we should create a new list for North Korea.) It is hardly a reason to remove Japan's most effective leverage to get a straight accounting from the North about its citizens. Of course, why should we expect North Korea to be any more honest on the abductee issue than on anything else?

The only good news is that there is little opportunity for the Bush administration to make any further concessions in its waning days in office. But for many erstwhile administration supporters, this is a moment of genuine political poignancy. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse.

Bolton photoshop (maybe it's not) hat tip Bill

Bolton: "North Korea Can Out Negotiate the US without Raising a Sweat"

"This is a very sad day for supporters of the President"

John Bolton on Hannity and Colmes (CLICK BELOW FOR VIDEO)

I was mortified to learn early yesterday that the Bush administration inexplicably removed the nuke proliferater North Korea  from the State Department's list of nations that sponsor terrorism......

Ambassador John Bolton called it  "a clear victory for North Korea".

Colmes: IS SHE [CONDI] WRONG? ....

BOLTON: IT IS WORKING, FOR NORTH  KOREA

BOLTON: OBAMA WIN IMPELS ISRAEL EXISTENTIAL ATTACK ON IRAN'S NUKE WEAPONS

For bloggers sifting through the daily verbal diarrhea of politicians, pundits, and asshats, John Bolton is a frickin' gift from the universe. Check out his latest remarks (hat tip Carl)

Ex-U.S. Envoy Bolton: If Obama Wins, Israel Will Attack Iran    by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(IsraelNN.com) John Bolton, former American Ambassador to the United Nations, told a London newspaper Tuesday that Israel will attack Iran if Senator Barack Obama is elected President. He predicted the attack would take place between the day after the elections, in early November, and January 20, when the next president succeeds George W. Bush.

"The argument for military action is sooner rather than later," he told the Telegraph. Bolton asserted that the Arab world would be "pleased" if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear site although he added there would be "public denunciations.

And everyone knows how oil humgry American loves to please her Arab masters :)

He said he has given up on the Bush administration's efforts to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb. "I don't think it's serious any more," he said. "If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards."

Bolton told the newspaper that if Senator Obama is elected in November, Israel cannot afford to wait until he takes office on January 20, before taking action. "An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy," according to Bolton, who served as ambassador to the U.N. for less than two years until 2006.

"My judgment is they would not want to do anything before our election because there's no telling what impact it could have on the election," he added. "The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defenses by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations."  

He said that Israel might be able to delay a strike if Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain is elected. Bolton said the Republican candidate's position is "much more realistic than the Bush administration's stance."

An Obama presidency - what a bloody nightmare.

BOLTON FIGHTS THE ONE WORLDERS: SAY NO TO LISBON TREATY

The political elites in Europe mean to have their way despite the will of the pople. The people voted down the EU constitution but that won't stop the Europpeasers. They will circumvent what the people want with the imposition of the Lisbon Treaty. They sugarcoat the cyanide pill and tell the people to eat up. Thank G-d John Bolton gives a rat's ass about them. He went over there. He explained. Let's hope the good folks listen.

John Bolton: Lisbon Treaty will undermine democracy Telegraph

The Lisbon Treaty poses a threat to Nato and undermines democracy by handing more power to Brussels, a former senior advisor to President George W Bush has warned.

John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN who served under Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior, said the new Treaty could hurt the military alliance between Europe and the US.

He was speaking only days before Ireland hold a referendum on the EU Treaty, the only member country to do so, with the latest polls showing the Yes campaign slightly ahead.

But an Irish vote No on Thursday will mean the Treaty, which abolishes dozens of national vetoes and creates the new post of EU president, cannot come into force in any of the 27 member states.

I like the sweater.... very 'father knows best.'

Mr Bolton has previously warned the deal threatens Britain's special relationship with the United States and yesterday said he would not understand the Irish giving "more powers to bureaucrats."

He added: "The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people."

Speaking before he delivered a speech on transatlantic relations at University College, Dublin, Mr Bolton warned the Treaty could "undercut" Nato, something that would be a "huge mistake".

He argued that if the EU has its own military capability, people will think Nato is redundant and Europe "can take care of their own defence".

The latest referendum opinion poll, published by the Sunday Business Post yesterday, indicated a tight contest with the Yes vote at 42 per cent compared to 39 per cent for the No campaign.

The result is a blow for those opposed to the Treaty  a similar poll conducted on Friday gave them a five-point lead  but the overall trend is a surging No vote.

Gordon Brown has said Britain will not get a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, although the House of Lords will vote on this decision this week.

But Stuart Wheeler, the millionaire businessman and major Conservative donor, will today (mon) begin a High Court challenge, attempting to force the Prime Minister to call a public vote.

Previously at Atlas: Atlas Shrugs: LISBON TREATY: END OF NATIONS, RISE OF STATISM

Atlas Shrugs: Instituting Eurabia Project

BOLTON NAILS OBAMBI

The man who should be running weighs in on the radical left's nominee. Bolton dissects and shatters  Obambi's silly policy statements with surgical precision. This should be required reading for the electorate. Seriously.

Obama the naive John (the bomb) Bolton hat tip jon s

His views on world affairs ignore history and imperil the U.S. and our allies.

Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea "without preconditions" is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy's first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War's most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. ... Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Let's dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union's threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in "tiny" countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro's Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never "civilizational." But to say that these "asymmetric" threats were "tiny" would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom's reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An "asymmetric" threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, "tiny."

What is implicit in Obama's reference to "tiny" threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: "And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah."

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran's own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world's ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the "San Francisco Democrats," after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that "they always blame America first" for the world's problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

JOHN BOLTON ON ATLAS RADIO NOW

Ambassador John Bolton, natural warrior, joins me Thursday at 12:oo pm on Atlas on the Air. His book is coming out in paperback - so now you have NO EXCUSES. Pre-order it here: Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations. Or why wait? This is one of those books you ought t own in hardcover  - buy it at an obscenely reduced price here.

I intend to cover - the moonbat's "arrest" attempt (if moonbiat wants so much attention he ought to work the pole), Iran, Iraq, 9/11 ................. no holds barred. Ya know .......... Atlasian.

Read Straws in The Wind: The Atlantic Alliance Daniel Johnson

LONDON — Will senior members of the Bush administration ever set foot on British territory again? I ask this question in all seriousness, and it could well apply to future American administrations too.

BOLTON ESCAPES MOONBIATS

MOONBAT Monbiot is held off by security guards

John Bolton escapes citizen's arrest at Hay Festival

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has escaped an attempted citizen's arrest as he appeared at the Hay Festival. George Monbiot is held off by security guards

Held off with a feather I am sure. Let's see Moonbiat get tough with the jihad. I'd pay to see that.

Security guards blocked the path of columnist and activist George Monbiot, who tried to make the arrest as Mr Bolton left the stage.

The former ambassador - a key advisor to President George W Bush who argued strongly in favour of invading Iraq - had been giving a talk on international relations to more than 600 people at the literary festival.

Mr Monbiot was blocked by two heavily-built security guards at the end of the one-and-a-half hour appearance, before he could serve a "charge sheet" on him.

A crowd of about 20 protestors, one dressed in a latex George Bush mask, chanted "war criminal" as Mr Bolton was ushered away.

Dressed in a condom.

During Mr Bolton's talk, to a packed-out audience, Mr Monbiot had asked Mr Bolton what difference there was between him and a Nazi war criminal.

Mr Bolton said the war was legal, partly because Iraq had failed to comply with a key and binding UN resolution after the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

He answered him? He's a better man than me. Talking reason to the irrational is futile.

On the war's legality, he added: "This is not my personal opinion, this is the opinion of the entire legal apparatus of the US government."

Bad dah bing, bad dah boom.

Earlier, festival director Peter Florence had said they had sought legal advice and been told carrying out such an arrest would be "completely unlawful" given the circumstances.

What pussies.

A spokesman for The Guardian, for which Mr Monbiot writes a regular column, said he was acting in a "personal capacity".

 

UK: Arresting Bolton?

A goon over at the Guardian, George Monbiot,  is vowing to make a  citizen's arrest of Ambassador John Bolton when he appears at Hay Market. Consider this the ultimate act  of hatred of the good for being good.

I, for one, will start a collection to raise funds to purchase a one way ticket to to make Hay at Hay. I wil unselfishly  offer up my services to torture Ambassador Bolton, a la Israel style torture (go here ) or perhaps gitmo style torture - ya know, Madonna dancing around in her underwear) . I will perform these selfless duties fiercely until  J to the B  cracks and  divulges why we didn't complete the mission put forth in the Bush Doctrine and take out those annihilationist asshats in the Islamic Republic of Iranian oppression. Onward and upward men and women!

Just for knowing "global warming" is Monbiot's thang - shocka! Just how large an asshat is he? (think swiss ball size)

Monbiot believes that drastic action coupled with strong political will is needed to combat global warming, Monbiot asserts that climate change is the "moral question of the 21st century" and that there is little time for debate or objections to a raft of emergency action he believes will stop climate change, including: setting targets on greenhouse emissions using the latest science; issuing every citizen with a 'personal carbon ration'; new building regulations with houses built to German passivhaus standard; banning incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other inefficient technologies; constructing large offshore wind farms,  scrap road-building and road-widening programmes, redirecting their budgets to tackle climate change; reduce UK airport capacity by 90%; closing down all out-of-town superstores and replace them with warehouses and a delivery system

Bolton out to be enormously flattered to be reviled by such an evil maroon.

Let's book Bolton at Hay Guardian

Hay festival 2008:

An architect of the Iraq war is coming to the literary festival. How should he be greeted?

Printable version

We have all but forgotten the war with Iraq. We tend to see it now as little more than a "political mistake", like the 10p tax fiasco or Labour's mishandling of the byelection campaign in Crewe. The press and public attention have moved on and focused on more pressing matters, like the price of property.

Uh, I don't see it that way. One of the  world's biggest terrorist is dead. Long may he rot.

But this mistake has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people in a country that was doing us no harm. Mistakes of this kind - an unprovoked war of aggression - were characterised by the Nuremberg tribunals as "the supreme international crime". Mistakes of this kind would, in any regime governed by international law, see their perpetrators put behind bars for the rest of their natural lives. But the great crime of the Iraq war has been normalised and domesticated.

And the hundreds of thousands Saddam killed? Ah, why split hairs with a leftard?

So successful has this process of normalisation been that in three days' time one of its perpetrators will be coming here - to Hay-on-Wye, the epicentre of polite society - to promote his book and sell some copies. I do not regret the fact that he is coming here - far from it - but I see it as a sign of the extent to which the great crime he helped to commit is viewed as an ordinary part of the political process.

John Bolton first made the demand for a war against Iraq as a signatory of an open letter sent to President Clinton by the Project for a New American Century in 1998. In 2001 he joined the Bush administration as the hilariously-titled Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control in the State Department. He appears to have been imposed on the department by Dick Cheney, to play the role of Colin Powell's minder.

The greatest Ambassador ever. Sorry Jeane.

Only when those who help to launch illegal wars fear punishment will future governments desist from launching them. As citizens I believe we have a duty to try to deter future war crimes. So I propose that we allow John Bolton to speak here, and then carry out a citizen's arrest.

Protest warriors start counting your frequent flyers.

Section 24A> of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 permits any citizen to "arrest without a warrant ... anyone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be guilty" of an offence.

I do not want to advocate something I am not prepared to do myself. I was planning to stay at home on Wednesday, but I now intend to come back, listen to Mr Bolton speak, and then carry out this arrest. I hope that others at Hay might join me.

Calling on the Trans Atlantic countern jihad movment. Calling all cars.

BOLTON ON OBAMA:"A BREATHTAKING NAÏVETÉ"

Yidwith Lid caught a Bolton interview earlier today. America needs a champion of America's values and  best/self interest on foreign policy. John McCain, call your office.

Anybody know if the Jews in South Florida were bamboozled by the snake oil salesman.

John Bolton: Obama's Foriegn Policy "REFLECTS A BREATHTAKING NAÏVETÉ"

Earlier today John Bolton was interviewed on the National Journal Radio show on XM radio. The focus was on Senator Obama's foreign policy feud with Senator McCain and President Bush. As you would suspect the former UN Ambassador did not agree with the Junior Senator from Illinios. In the direct Bolton style that we have grown to appreciate, he went a lot further than disagreeing, especially when he talked about Obama's "backtrack" about preparatory meetings before engaging Iran:

I must say that is a silly, indeed, embarrassing statement for a candidate for president of the United States to make. Obviously, you make preparations before you engage in any meeting. You made preparations before this interview. Of course there are preparations. The notion that you meet without precondition, however, is not a process point. It’s a substantive point, and for him to try to align the distinction that way -- I just think that’s embarrassing. I think the American people are a lot smarter than that.

Bolton felt that Obama has to learn to weigh the positives and negatives of any meeting BEFORE promising one and lays out the case against any meeting without pre-conditions:

Well, I think the question you always have to ask yourself in a situation like this is what are the cost and benefits of negotiation. I think it is far too facile, as Senator Obama has said, to simply sit down without precondition with leaders like the leaders of Iran and North Korea.

I’ll just name a couple of costs you have to weigh in the balance. First, the legitimacy you confer on leaders like that -- legitimacy from meeting as equals with the United States that they can use both in their own internal political situation and externally in the broader world. And secondly -- and this is particularly important in the case of states that are seeking or already have weapons of mass destruction -- time works on the side of the proliferators. They use negotiations -- and the Iranians and North Koreans have both proven this -- to perfect the complex science and technology they need to master having these weapons. So simply sitting down with them gives them an asset -- time -- that they couldn’t otherwise obtain.

So when you look at this and say, it’s not a question of do you talk with adversaries or not -- the question is, what’s the cost-benefits analysis? And in these cases, I think Senator McCain clearly has the better of the argument.

He then went to talk about WHEN America SHOULD negotiate with a country like Iran or North Korea and pointed to the fact that an Isolated Libya gave up its Nukes:

I’m not sure that, really, the question of the president meeting should even enter into the picture. That is something that you do when everything is arranged for success, and we are far from that circumstance with respect to Iran, North Korea and a lot of others. The better question, I think -- when do you negotiate, under what circumstances, with a rogue state, for example, to see if they might give up their nuclear weapons?

The case of Libya is instructive here. Libya, reacting to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, reacting to the seizure of a critical shipment of their nuclear weapons program, and ultimately reacting to the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, gave up their weapons program. Not because we negotiated with them, not because it was the negotiations that persuaded them, but because external reality had changed in a way that convinced Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons. On a cost-benefit scale, I think it clearly made sense to enter into the negotiations, and they proved successful. We have seen no sign from either Iran or North Korea that they have truly made a strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program, which is basically what Libya did.

Bolton is NOT against negotiation, it just has to be part of an overall tactical strategy:

Senator Obama is trying to make this into a debate between his reasonable willingness to talk with adversaries on the one hand, and the approach of Senator McCain or the Bush administration on the other being a bunch of unilateralist cowboys who never talk to anybody. That’s not the dispute at all. Every negotiation is an individual decision, whether it’s in our interest to talk or not to talk. And, I think, here’s the key point: Negotiation is not a policy. It’s a technique. It’s something you use when it’s to your advantage, and something that you don’t use when it’s not to your advantage.

Today Obama said that Iran is supporting terrorists because we aren't talking to them, John Bolton said that Obama is naive and suggested that he doesn't understand history

Senator Obama made today, that Iran is supporting Hamas and Hezbollah -- two terrorist groups -- is pursuing nuclear weapons, because we are not talking to them. That reflects a breathtaking naïveté, and lack of appreciation as to what the Islamic Revolution in Iran has been up to since 1979.

And that an Iran/US President meeting at this point would be damaging to Israel

I think it will make Israel’s security situation more difficult. I think an effort to negotiate with Iran will be seen by the mullahs as a sign of weakness on the part of the United States. I think that was their clear reaction when former Secretary of State [Madeline] Albright apologized to Iran for the 1953 coup that the CIA sponsored there against Prime Minister [Mohammad] Mosaddeq. She thought it was a way to show that we were trying to move away from our past policies, and they took it as a sign of weakness and reacted accordingly.

And I think an effort to negotiate with them would be treated the same way. I suspect, as they look at our public opinion polls -- and you can bet they are watching our election very carefully – their reaction to this is to say, we’re just going to sit tight until the American election and see what happens.

To paraphrase Chris Matthews, Man that guy is good, he makes me feel "Weak in the knees"

Related: Petraeus Slams Obama's Loony Plans For Iraq hat tip Larwyn

Bolton on Obamacide

Bolton assails Obama on his pathetic attempt to grovel to our enemies.

"The issue with most rogue states like and Iran like North Korea by talking with them you are giving them legitimacy and you're also giving them time, which proliferators need"

"Iran wants hegemony in the Islamic world for their brand of shia Islam."

"The problem with the administration is  that the State department hasn't followed what the President has been saying".

"I think that President Bush hit the nail on the head in Jerusalem and I think the nails are complaining."

Sean to Bolton: "Is the Obama doctrine a doctrine of appeasement?"

J to the B: "I think it is and I think it's an election issue. It should be."

BOLTON TO OBAMA: BRING IT ON!

John Bolton crushes Obama's silliness, naivety and addresses the grave consequences of King B. Hussein's foreign policy platform. Man, what I wouldn't give to see J to the B  debate this cardboard cutout of a candidate.

Bring On the Foreign Policy Debate John R Bolton, Wall Street Journal

President Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset, where he equated "negotiat[ing] with the terrorists and radicals" to "the false comfort of appeasement," drew harsh criticism from Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. They apparently thought the president was talking about them, and perhaps he was.

Wittingly or not, the president may well have created a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. And Mr. Obama stepped right into the vortex by saying he was willing to debate John McCain on national security "any time, any place." Mr. McCain should accept that challenge today.

The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. This divide also opened in 2004, when John Kerry insisted that our foreign policy pass a "global test" to be considered legitimate.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the "what can we lose?" mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.

When the U.S. negotiates with "terrorists and radicals," it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.

Moreover, negotiations – especially those "without precondition" as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush's reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.

In today's world of weapons of mass destruction, time is again a precious asset, one almost invariably on the side of the would-be proliferators. Time allows them to perfect the complex science and technology necessary to sustain nuclear weapons and missile programs, and provides far greater opportunity for concealing their activities from our ability to detect and, if necessary, destroy them.

Iran has conclusively proven how to use negotiations to this end. After five years of negotiations with the Europeans, with the Bush administration's approbation throughout, the only result is that Iran is five years closer to having nuclear weapons. North Korea has also used the Six-Party Talks to gain time, testing its first nuclear weapon in 2006, all the while cloning its Yongbyon reactor in the Syrian desert.

Finally, negotiations entail opportunity costs, consuming scarce presidential time and attention. Those resources cannot be applied everywhere, and engaging in true discussions, as opposed to political charades, does divert time and attention from other priorities. No better example can be found than the Bush administration's pursuit of the Annapolis Process between Arabs and Israelis, which has gone and will go nowhere. While Annapolis has been burning up U.S. time and effort, Lebanon has been burning, as Hezbollah strengthens its position there. This is an opportunity cost for the U.S., and a tragedy for the people of Lebanon.

President Bush is not running this November, no matter how hard Mr. Obama wishes it were so. Mr. McCain will have the chance to set out his own views on when and where diplomacy is appropriate, and where more fortitude is required. In any event, from the American voter's perspective, this debate on the role of negotiations in foreign policy will be critically, perhaps mortally, important. Bring it on.

MCCAIN'S MAJOR MISTAKE: BLUNDERING ON BOLTON

First, let me say it was Bolton that calmed the restive, disgruntled crowd at CPAC when he spoke and endorsed McCain. I was there. I had the displeasure of going on to introduce Steyn right after Romney withdrew from the race. Conservatives were not happy. Certainly not with McCain. It was was as if the air had been sucked out of the room.  When McCain spoke he had to pack the room with his peeps. Someone who would know in the CPAC organization had told me that McCain took 500 tickets for his speech. 500 tickets ......... and he filled them.

And anecdotally, I know that people were literally thrown out of their seats, asked to move to accommodate McCain's manufactured cheerleaders.

CPAC attendees were not cheering, they were booing but they were relegated to the sides of the ballroom, not the middle where the mics and the plants were. And no one was wearing McCain pins or stickers except folks that worked for him.

Bolton corralled the conservatives. Bolton insisted and explained, cajoled the crowd to back McCain. He didn't have to. He could have furthered the a case of  impeding the ominous threat of NORK nukes, Iranian nukes etc. But he didn't. He put his enormous reputation as a conservative to work  to create a cohesive Republican tent in support of ..... McCain. He turned the conference for McCain. And frankly, only he could have done it.

I have previously queried as to Bolton's status (or lack thereof) in the McCain camp. It confounded me. The conservatives trust Bolton. McCain exploited this trust. Bolton gave McCain conservative cred. Surely he would lead his foreign policy staff (personally I think he belongs on the ticket). McCain's misstep is major. Real Clear Politics is reporting Bolton is not part of the McCain circle. WTF?

Bolton saved him.

How this?

Dissing Bolton?  RealClearPolitics (hat tip Dave)
John Bolton, who as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-2006 became a conservative icon, has not connected with Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, though he desires to help out.

Friends say Bolton was puzzled when his offers of assistance got no response from the McCain campaign. He did receive a late request to be a spokesman for McCain Tuesday in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the candidate addressed selection of federal judges. However, Bolton got the impression that he was merely being asked to attend the event and declined the invitation.

Bolton's treatment did not appear to signify disrespect for him by McCain but rather disorganization at the candidate's headquarters.

Dave nailed it, "Man, this guy is a total loser".

UPDATE: More bad news. This is a reoccurring nightmare. From yidwithlid: Palestinians Told May Be Dealing With Rice AS VICE PRESIDENT

 

VIDEO: BOLTON BOMB iRAN KILLER CAMPS

"The idea here  is not to have much larger hostilities but to stop the Iranians from engaging in the hostilities that they are already doing against us inside in Iraq. And they are doing  much the same by aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan. So this is not provocative or preemptive, this is entirely responsive on our part."

"The other possibility is to tell the Iranians to stop and we've done that already in three successive meetings in Baghdad and just a few days ago the Iranians canceled the fourth meeting. So they're not interested in talking about it. They're getting what they want which is threatening Americans, increasingly our casualties  putting us and Iraqis and other coalitions members  and civilians in danger. And as long as they don't pushback they are going to continue to do it."

vid grab hat tip Eretz!

Holy Shia! لاستسلام ليس خيارنا» ... يوميات سفير أميرك

Bolton goes pan Arabic. How cute it is that?

Today is the first day of the serialization of  SURRENDER IS NOT AN OPTION in Al Hayat newspaper (go here). Either they are taking notes or corrupting the translation. Atlas Arabic translators tell all!

BOLTON: ""President Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan"

John Bolton, yet again, restates the obvious and outlines the imminent danger of a fantasy mongering US policy and a nuclear proliferating North Korea. Is such willful stupidity even possible after the Israelis took out the North Korea provided nuclear bomb making factory in Syria back on September 6th. Unfathomable.
The money quote? US Chief negotiator Christopher Hill , ""Some people imagine there is a building somewhere with a secret door they can open and find a group of scantily clad women enriching uranium." huh?
And yes, you can thank the usual  suspects, Hill, Hadley and Condappeaser. Clowns all.

Bush's North Korea Capitulation By JOHN R. BOLTON WSJ hat tip David

President George W. Bush is fond of comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. But as he meets with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Washington this week, his policy regarding North Korea's nuclear weapons program looks more like something out of Bill Clinton's or Jimmy Carter's playbook.

In dealing with the Soviet Union on arms control, Reagan was famous for repeating the Russian phrase, "Doveryai, no proveryai" (trust, but verify). Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly once complained to Reagan, "You use that phrase every time we meet." To which Reagan smilingly replied, "That's because I like it so much."

This administration appears to have forgotten that concept altogether. Although the Six-Party Talks have been sliding into dangerous territory for some time, the Bush administration has repeatedly said that North Korea's complete, verifiable disclosure of its nuclear program was a sine qua non of any deal. No longer.

Last week in Singapore, U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan reached a deal that rests on trust and not verification. According to numerous press reports and Mr. Hill's April 10 congressional briefing, the U.S. will be expected to accept on faith, literally, North Korean assertions that it has not engaged in significant uranium enrichment, and that it has not proliferated nuclear technology or materials to countries like Syria and Iran.

Indeed, the North will not even make the declaration it earlier agreed to, but merely "acknowledge" that we are concerned about reports of such activities – which the United States itself will actually list. By some accounts, the North Korean statement will not even be public. In exchange for this utter nonperformance, the North will be rewarded with political "compensation" (its word): Concurrent with its "declaration," it will be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and freed from the Trading With the Enemy Act.

President Bush has repeatedly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley not to make him look weak on North Korea. If the president accepts the deal now on the table, things will be far worse than that.

Although the U.S. public is not yet fully aware of every detail of this agreement, the administration's public and private comments effectively admit the substance. While briefing Congress, Mr. Hill said he expects the North's release from the long-standing U.S. constraints to be "simultaneous" with its "acknowledgment," which he described as a "win-win" concept.

The generals in Pyongyang must love that assessment. They can also relax, since they won't have to worry about concealing their ongoing nuclear work from any verification follow-up.

Our chief negotiator conceded, without blushing, that North Korea "won't allow snap inspections," which apparently justifies the Bush administration's immediate surrender. Indeed, Mr. Hill derided concerns about the North's enrichment effort by saying, according to an attendee, "Some people imagine there is a building somewhere with a secret door they can open and find a group of scantily clad women enriching uranium."

What a maroon!

So much for legitimate concerns about U.S. security and the equally legitimate concerns of our allies. Despite cryptic comments by Secretary of State Rice to the contrary, there is no verification mechanism whatever to explore and monitor the truth of what North Korea will say. We will be taking their word.

Ironically, the only hang-up is that North Korea is still lying about how much plutonium it has accumulated, proffering an amount well below what U.S. intelligence believes to be the case. In short, the Bush administration is focusing on what it thinks it knows (plutonium), ignoring what could be the far more dangerous activities (uranium enrichment) it has reason to suspect.

This is the same mistake as the drunk searching for his car keys near a lamppost, even though he admits to a passerby they are not there. Why keep looking near the lamp post? "Because the light is better," the drunk replies.

ha!

One can only imagine what Ronald Reagan would have said in his 1980 campaign, if Jimmy Carter had fallen so low. Similarly, in 1999, former Secretary of State James Baker called Clinton administration policy on North Korea "appeasement," writing in the New York Times: "Once again, we have been played for fools. . . . [I]t is hard to fathom how anyone could put credence in any agreement by North Korea."

Perhaps President Bush could at least read Secretary Baker's Times's op-ed before he signs off on this deal. Even Jack Pritchard, the Bush administration's former chief North Korea negotiator – who resigned five years ago because he believed our policy was too harsh – is critical of the current approach.

[...]

Last fall, President Bush rejected the idea of giving North Korea a pass on uranium enrichment and proliferation. Now, in the waning days of his term, he seems poised to accept it. If he does, and if this deal proceeds, we can well and truly say: "President Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan."

Please. Read it all.

CONDI'S LETHAL LEGACY

Condi has nothing on Iran as they race to build a nuclear arsenal. No plan. Gotz. She's got nothing on the NORKS  as they race to nuclear arm Syria and Iran and who the hell knows who else. She's got nothing ............so her leagcy will be the funding and arming of Islamic jihad under the auspices of a bloody, deadly, "peace" process. This headbanging has gone on long enough. How many Jewish kids, rabbis, believers have to die before the deadly reality of not backing Israel but backing our mortal enemies sets in?

The Jews are not the problem. Nuclear armed Islamic regimes are the most frightening of all possible futures.

Deconstructing the utter mess we are in begins we de-nuclearizing the North Koreans. Bolton has a plan.... is anyone listening?

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal Ambassador John Bolton writes:

At a minimum, President Bush should not bequeath to the next president only the burned-out hulk of the Six-Party Talks, and countless failed and violated North Korean commitments.

David Gothard

Since they were conceived in spring 2003, the Six-Party Talks have stumbled around inconclusively. And for the last 13 months, Pyongyang has ignored, stalled, renegotiated and violated the Feb. 13, 2007 agreement.

Throughout all this "negotiation," which has mostly consisted of our government negotiating with itself, North Korea has benefited enormously. It's been spared the truly punishing sanctions that concerted international effort might have produced. In large part because of the appeasement policies of the two previous South Korean governments, Pyongyang has not felt the full impact of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) on its outward proliferation efforts. The U.S. has muzzled its criticism of North Korea's atrocious oppression of its own citizens. And, perhaps most humiliatingly of all, the U.S., in a vain effort at chasing the mirage, gave up its most effective pressure point -- the financial squeeze -- allowing Pyongyang renewed access to international markets through institutions like Banco Delta Asia.

In fact, the protracted Six-Party Talks have provided Kim Jong-il with the most precious resource of all: the time to enhance, conceal and even disperse his nuclear weapons programs. Time is nearly always on the side of the would-be proliferator, and so it has proven here. In exchange for five years of grace to North Korea, the U.S. has received precious little in return.

Pyongyang is now stonewalling yet again on its promise to disclose fully the details of its nuclear programs, including its uranium enrichment efforts and its outward proliferation. The successful Israeli military strike against a Syrian-North Korean facility on the Euphrates River last September highlighted the gravity of the regime's unwillingness to do anything serious that might restrict its nuclear option.

Nuclear arming of Islamic regimes. The worst of all possible scenarios.

President Bush should spend the next 10 months rectifying the Six-Party concessions and put North Korea back under international pressure -- efforts that would be welcomed by Japan, and South Korea's new, far more realistic President Lee Myung-bak. Here are the steps to take:

- Declare North Korea's repeated refusal to honor its commitments, especially but not exclusively concerning full disclosure of its nuclear programs, unacceptable. This is the easiest step, and the most obvious. It can happen immediately. Accept no further partial "compliance," as the State Department continuously tries to do. Make public what we know about the North's Syria project, and its uranium enrichment and missile programs, so our 2008 presidential candidates can have a fully-informed debate.

- Suspend the Six-Party Talks, and reconvene talks without North Korea. Although the talks could be jettisoned altogether, continuing them without the North allows Japan, South Korea and the U.S. to begin applying real pressure to China, the one nation with the capacity to bring Pyongyang's nuclear program to a halt. China has feared to apply such pressure, worried that it could collapse Kim Jong-il's regime altogether -- an accurate assessment of the regime's limited staying power. Nonetheless, the effect of Chinese reticence has been to preserve Kim and his nuclear program. It is vital that China know this policy is no longer viable.

- Strengthen international pressure on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Ramp up PSI cooperation with South Korea. Remind Russia of its own voluntarily-assumed obligations as a PSI core member. Remind China as well to comply with the sanctions imposed on North Korea by U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718 (which followed the North's 2006 ballistic missile and nuclear tests), and honor its other counterproliferation obligations. Tell them we will be watching with particular care, and that Chinese failure to increase pressure on North Korea will have implications in Sino-American bilateral relations. We can make this point privately to China rather that trumpet it publicly, but it should be made without ambiguity.

- Squeeze North Korea economically. Return the regime to limbo outside the international financial system, and step up action against its other illicit activities, such as trafficking in illicit narcotics and counterfeiting U.S. money. These and other "defensive measures" are nothing more than what any self-respecting nation does to protect itself, and the U.S. should never have eased up on them. Even now they can have a measurable impact on Kim Jong-il's weak and unsteady regime.

- Prepare contingency plans for humanitarian relief in the event of increased North Korean refugee flows or a regime collapse. Both China and South Korea have legitimate concerns about the burdens they would face if the North collapsed, or if increased internal economic deprivation spread instability. America and Japan should make it plain that they will fully shoulder their share of providing humanitarian supplies and assistance if either happened. Moreover, President Lee should increase pressure on Pyongyang -- by reiterating that South Korea will fully comply with its own constitution and grant full citizenship to any refugees from the North, however they make their way to the South.

Doubtless there are other steps. President Bush will not likely be able to solve the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Nonetheless, he still has time to implement policies that will allow him to leave office with the nation back on offense -- thereby affording his successor the chance to vindicate a return to the original Bush administration national security strategy.

OT but related: Anybody know if McCain is talking to Bolton? I mean really.

Ali vs Frazier? Well, at least half ....

Bolton clearly floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee but Holbrooke is not Frazier. Hell he aint even Macho Camacho.  That said, I still would have liked to have been there. Read the student account in the Brown Daily Herald, clearly Bolton wiped the floor with this big pussy.

Bolton, Holbrooke '62 face off over U.N. at Janus Forum Brown Daily Herald

Former U.N. ambassadors John Bolton and Professor-at-Large Richard Holbrooke '62 outlined contrasting visions of the United Nations and its role in U.S. foreign policy to a crowded Salomon 101 Thursday afternoon. Bolton criticized the U.N.'s ineffectiveness, while Holbrooke highlighted its importance as a forum to advance U.S. interests.

The U.N. is flawed and often corrupt, Bolton said. The only solution to render it more effective and accountable is to allow member states to contribute funds voluntarily and for specific purposes they approve. Too often, the U.N. also seeks to exert influence on issues that should be left to the domestic political process, said Bolton, who was appointed to his post by President Bush in 2005.

Holbrooke, a Clinton appointee, said the U.N. is "a flawed but vitally important institution" whose effectiveness and influence is only as great as that of its component nations. The U.N. remains a useful forum for the United States to promote its security and other interests, he said, and should be strengthened, not undermined.

Still drinking the koolaid. Unbelievable.

[...]
Bolton began by describing the U.N. as a "vast and sprawling enterprise," one which too often oversteps its bounds by participating in "norming" - attempting to override domestic political processes "within constitutional democracies like ours" on issues such as gun control and the death penalty.

Bolton also criticized the U.N. Security Council, which he said "has done next to nothing" to combat terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks and will likely be too "gridlocked" to deal effectively with the major issues of the 21st century.

Because the Security Council isn't an impartial "guardian" of the international system, Bolton said, the United States should not consider Security Council approval a necessary condition for its foreign policies.

Bolton called the U.N.'s problems "endemic." The bribery and corruption that characterized the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program to help feed a population under heavy economic sanctions in pre-war Iraq is far from uncommon, he said.

Bolton also criticized the U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights, which he sought to reform during his term as ambassador, for being corrupt and ineffectual and for including human rights violators among its membership.

To achieve meaningful change at the U.N., Bolton said, the organization's funding structure must be completely overhauled.

Under the current system, countries must contribute a fixed amount to the U.N.'s annual budget, he said, about 22 percent of which falls to the United States. Meanwhile, about two-thirds of the countries in the U.N.'s General Assembly - a passing majority - collectively bear only about 5 percent of the cost.

Instead, Bolton proposed, contributions to the U.N.'s budget should be voluntary and targeted for specific programs or uses. "Let each member contribute as much as it wants to programs it considers effective," he said. "We will insist on a principle that I don't consider revolutionary, which is that we will pay for what we want and get what we pay for."

Sounds perfectly reasonable which means the lefatrds will despise and grand mal seize.

"Even the U.N.'s strongest advocates know it is a deeply flawed institution," said Holbrooke, stepping to the podium next. But he said he agreed with "a very small amount" of Bolton's statements.

Small man, small thinker.....seems fitting.

Bolton's proposal to make U.N. funding voluntary amounts to a "poison pill," Holbrooke said. "If you support that, you are supporting the death of the U.N."

Accountability is a "poison pill"? WTF?

The U.N. is too often criticized for inaction or ineffectiveness, when it is really a handful of influential nations who have failed to take the steps necessary to solve international problems, Holbrooke said. For example, the Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution calling for action to put a stop to the crisis in Darfur, he said, but influential countries like the U.S. have failed to follow through by committing resources.

I love it. BLAME AMERICA! Coming up BUSHCHIMPHITLUH!

"The U.N. can only do, tin cup in hand, what its member states want it to do," Holbrooke said. "If you're upset about Darfur, don't blame the U.N. Blame the United States."

OMG!~ There it is.

Holbrooke said he agreed with Bolton that there are many instances of corruption in the current U.N., and that the Commission on Human Rights is among them.

But, he said, "if we weaken the U.N. and at the same time turn to it for help," as in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "we only weaken ourselves."

Big pussy. It seems he is one chip away from pleading, "STOP MAKING SENSE!"

[...]
After the prepared remarks, in response to questioning on diplomatic engagement with Iran and North Korea, Bolton and Holbrooke advocated different approaches. Holbrooke stressed the importance of diplomacy, saying he believed that "you can and should talk to your adversaries" and that the current Bush administration diverged from historical precedent in not doing so.

We talked and talked and talked to the NORKS and they built a nuclear weapon.
We talked and talked and talked to IRAN  and they built a nuclear weapon.

Democrats. Love ideas, hate people. They define Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Grab a box of popcorn and read the rest. It's good Bolton. Delish.

Bolton: Bush Bailing on Nuclear Iran

Sad day my friends. If Bolton says it, I believe. sad day when the leader of the free world can't or won't defend that world.

Ironic that the security of the free world lies in the hands of the Jews. Atlas indeed.

Bolton: Chance Bush will okay strike on Iran is 'close to zero'
By Barak Ravid and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service

Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton said on Tuesday that there is almost no chance that U.S. President George W. Bush will approve a military strike on Iran before he leaves office in January 2009.

"It's close to zero percent chance that the Bush Administration will authorize military action against Iran before leaving office," he said.

[..]

He said the recent American intelligence assessment, according to which Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003, was a politically-motivated report intended to restrict the Bush Administration's room to maneuver.

"It seems that for the next few years the United States will be a bystander to the process," Bolton said.

Bolton also said that Israel's "stunningly successful" military strike on Syria last September could constitute a precedent for a similar attack on Iran in the future.

The Israel Air Force attacked a structure in northeast Syria that foreign media reports said was a nuclear facility built with North Korean assistance. Syria and North Korea both denied the reports, and Israel has remained silent. Bolton had warned of nuclear cooperation between the two countries before the strike.

"Why wouldn't the government of Israel want to take the credit for a stunningly successful military strike?" Bolton asked.

He is so fabulous. I mean really.

Bolton said Israel and the United States know very well that Syria's close relations with North Korea have not been severed, but refused to elaborate. He said North Korea might sell nuclear know-how and a ready-to-use nuclear bomb to the highest bidder.

"The proliferation of nuclear weapons in the middle east will start with North Korea. It counterfeits money, sells narcotics, and it will do anything for hard money," he said.

He insisted that Syria's nuclear efforts should be taken with the utmost seriousness, as North Korean expertise and Iranian willingness to fund are more available than ever.

He insisted that it be made known to the public that the facility that was hit was an offshoot of a joint Syrian, North Korean, and Iranian cooperation.

Mofaz hints at greater likelihood of military strike on Iran

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz hinted Tuesday that the probability of a military strike against Iran has increased given "the deterioration of efforts to stop Iran diplomatically."

"The diplomatic timetable is running short and thus the next two years are critical for stopping Iran through diplomatic means," Mofaz, who also served as defense minister as well as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said.

On Tuesday, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council proposed additional sanctions against Iran.

Are they kidding? You mean they've abandoned the strongly worded letter approach?

"Over the course of the last year, the Iranian train has been an express train while the international train has been a local train that experiences delays and stoppages at every station," Mofaz said. "The Iranian locomotive is galloping with strength towards a nuclear bomb and towards regional hegemony," Mofaz told a special session of the Herzliya Conference of the Institute for Policy and Strategy.

"Iran has made a mockery of the world and has bought precious time," Mofaz said. "There are two years left to stop Iran before it's too late. The Iranian nuclear program is not an end but a means. Iran hopes to turn into an Islamic superpower that will unite the entire Muslim world under its umbrella. In order to realize this goal, Iran needs a nuclear weapon."

UPDATE: John Bolton: It will be up to Israel to stop Iran

BOLTON: 'US intelligence has become politicized'

Bolton is in the Holy Land. Now that's hot. Perhaps the old man upstairs will whisper in his ear, "run John run"

'US intelligence has become politicized' Jerusalem Post hat tip Rut

The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, as well as the skewed reporting around it, is a sign of the "illegitimate politicization" of the American intelligence establishment, according to former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

The document reportedly said Iran stopped its nuclear weapons production program in 2003.

While "Iran's nuclear program is continuing and expanding," Bolton told The Jerusalem Post at a book-signing in a Tel Aviv Steimatzky on Sunday, "the NIE has had a devastating impact on our global efforts to try and constrain Iran."

"I know the people who wrote this intelligence estimate," Bolton continued. "They are not from our intelligence community. They're from our State Department. It was a highly politicized document written by people who had a very clear policy objective."

The former ambassador decried the lack of separation between "intelligence and policy."

"Generating intelligence should be separated from policy-makers, but it should also be separated from intelligence analysts who impose their own policy views on the intelligence they generate," insisted Bolton, who is in the country to attend the Herzliya Conference this week.

Furthermore, said Bolton, the NIE "doesn't say what you probably think it says. Once you get past the first sentence or two, it doesn't come out that different from the 2005 NIE. All of the attention was focused on the one finding that [Iran halted the weapons-building] aspect of the weapons program, even though later they say that they only have 'moderate confidence' that this suspension has continued. That's a polite way of saying they don't have a clue what the situation is."

The document also defines the weapons program as "actual weaponization, that is, fabrication - only a tiny sliver of the total activity required for a country to have a nuclear weapons program. It still remains entirely within Iran's discretion when and under what circumstances it proceeds to a nuclear weapons capability."

The release of such a politicized report by those responsible for American intelligence analysis was possible, Bolton believes, because "there is still no effective supervision over the intelligence community. It's been a problem for a long time. The [newly-established] director of national intelligence position didn't solve it. So it remains and will be a significant challenge for the next president to get under control."

Schmuckerbie Strikes again!

Bolton is a gentleman. Huckster is dishonest or perhaps Huckicide thought Bolton was talking about him  when  Bolton was asked who he was endorsing, he said "the Republican."  Over at The Corner;

Whoops!

In recent days, Mike Huckabee has tried to answer long-standing questions about who is on his foreign policy team. On Friday morning, he listed former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as someone with whom he either has “spoken or will continue to speak.”

At a Thursday evening press conference, Huckabee said, "I've corresponded with John Bolton, who's agreed to work with us on developing foreign policy.”

Bolton, however, has a different view. “I’d be happy to speak with Huckabee, but I haven’t spoken with him yet,” said Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

UPDATE: Another big Mike huck up

Bolton on Bhutto

Hot Air has the video: John Bolton on the Bhutto assassination

Ambassador John Bolton makes a point that I led off with in the Paul post, namely, that we pushed too soon for democracy in Pakistan. That push led to Bhutto’s return, which in turn led to what happened to her today. That’s not blaming America so much as noting that you can’t make democracy in a microwave.

Bolton goes on to note that beyond democracy or anything else, the paramount US interest in Pakistan right now is to make sure that the nukes are secure. That need supersedes thoughts of the January 8 election. He’s right, of course. The first candidate who enlists Bolton’s open support in the primary is highly likely to get my vote.

UPDATE: Here is the audio of Bolton with Tammy Bruce (Hat tip Eretz)

UPDATE: On Hannity and Colmes, Bolton expressed grave concern over Musharref's safety. He said the most serious threat now was  assassination of Musharref. (Click here for video)

"What we've got now is a prescription for chaos"

"This is exactly what the radical Islamists wanted"

Paraphrasing here:

His money is on Musharref. Otherwise the military will fragment. Not arguing that Musharref is a Jeffersonian Democrat (heh).

Difficult to sit in Washington or NY and discuss what General you'd like in charge. Musharref has been basically in line with what we've sought post 9/11.

What he worries about is Musharref being assassinated. A subsidiary threat is loss of command and control over their nuclear weapons......

UPDATE: ERETZ captured the vid for us. Mensch!

Bolton: State Dept Left Defeated Bush

Ken Timmerman conducts a jaw dropping interview (is there any other kind?) with John Bolton over at Newsmax.     Read his book, Surrender is not an Option. Abe Lincoln said, "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts." I believe this too, which is why what Bolton is critical to this nation's survival.

Resistance by partisan ”shadow warriors” at the Department of State has limited the president’s options and is bringing us dangerously close to a military showdown with Iran, former Bush administration official John Bolton told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. 

Bolton: State Department Leftists Have Defeated Bush

Excerpts from the interview:

NEWSMAX: Do you think we are heading for war with Iran.

JOHN BOLTON: I think there is little doubt that Iran has mastered the Science and technology it needs to enrich uranium. That means that the time and the manner in which it acquires a nuclear weapons capability is entirely within its discretion. It’s only a matter of resources, and with oil at 90 dollars a barrel plus, Iran doesn’t lack for resources. That means that if the president follows through on his view that Iranian nuclear weapons are unacceptable then we are at a decision point very quickly on whether to use military force.

My preference would be regime change in Iran. I think there is a real possibility that the different democratic regime would make the decision that pursuing nuclear weapons is not really in Iran’s interest. But that’s nothing you can turn on or off like a light switch. So because of the wasted time allowing the Europeans to try to negotiate Iran out of nuclear weapons, I think our options are very few. And if the choice is between nuclear Iran and use of force, I think we have to look at the use of force.

NEWSMAX: Why do we have so few options now?

BOLTON: Because by deferring to the EU 3 these last four plus, almost five years. we have limited our ability to do other things to see if we can get effective sanctions at the Security Council. I don’t think sanctions are going to have a chance of being effective any longer. Especially not UN sanctions. And this long period of time has put Iran in a much more favorable position. It’s a classic case study why diplomacy is not cost-free. If we had been working on regime change effectively over the last four or more years we would be in a lot different position today.

It’s not just the nuclear program. It’s Iran’s support for terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza strip, including their activity particularly against our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. So if steps are not taken soon, Iran and other nations in the region will draw the conclusion that we are not serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear program, we are not serious about stopping Iranian support for terrorism and they will draw the appropriate conclusions, all of which will be negative to American interest.

NEWSMAX: Why hasn’t [Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice] done anything to help the pro-freedom movement in Iran? Why has the $75 million program to help the pro-democracy movement had so little impact?

BOLTON: I think there is enormous bureaucratic opposition to doing anything overtly or covertly from both the State and CIA bureaucracies. And as on so many other issues, I think, Secretary Rice has adopted the prevailing view within the bureaucracy, which have been reflected in our deference to the Europeans and exclusively diplomatic approach for four years.

NEWSMAX: Do you think she is convinced we can do nothing to help the pro democracy movement? After all this was her program.

BOLTON: This is completely inexplicable to me. On the overt side she announced it with great fanfare, but as we can see with the recent resignation of the head of the program at the State Department, it has gone nowhere. The argument that identifying Iranian Diaspora groups as being linked to our program makes it disadvantageous for them is belied by the statements of many of these groups who say ‘we need the help and we’re pleased to have it.’ But the outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow the regime. So in effect, we have been doing nothing for getting on to five years now except deferring to the Europeans

NEWSMAX: So this leaves us basically with war, or a nuclear armed Iran--

BOLTON? --Or regime change, if we have the time. The problem is we likely do not have the amount of time that would be required. If we only had been more active over the past several years we might not be faced with the unhappy alternative of having to use force.

NEWSMAX: How do you see this scenario developing? How do we get to the point of using military force? What happens next?

BOLTON: I think we are very close to a decision point. There are all kinds of estimates of when Iran will actually have a nuclear capability. They are all based on assumptions. So if some of those assumptions turn out to be wrong, the Iranians can have the weapons capability much earlier than the estimates would lead you to believe.

I personally do not believe in just in-time non-proliferation. There’s too much of a risk there that intelligence and analysis can be wrong by understating the threat as well as by overstating the threat. Moreover the Iranians are obviously aware of the risk they run and I think every day that goes by gives them more of an opportunity to harden their existing facilities such as at Natanz, the uranium enrichment facility, or to build completely alternative facilities of which we have no knowledge. Our lack of reliable intelligence inside Iran is substantial. That doesn’t make me feel better; it makes me more nervous. Time is working against us. Every day the military option is postponed makes it riskier that we will actually use force but fail to achieve our objectives.

NEWSMAX: I’ve just written a book called Shadow Warriors that talks about people in the CIA and the State Department who have attempted to undermine the president’s policies. Do you think the $75 million that Condi announced to help the pro-freedom movement in Iran was undermined by people who don’t agree with the policy?

BOLTON: I don’t think there is any doubt of it. There are many people at the State Department who simply don’t like the concept of regime change whether done through pro-democracy groups or done clandestinely. They especially don’t like a program that could be said to undercut the European efforts of diplomacy. I think the failure of the $75 million program sends an enormous signal through out the bureaucracy that resistance can work. This is going to have negative consequences not just for the situation in Iran but for a range of other policy issues around the world.

NEWSMAX: So the shadow warriors won this round?

BOLTON: I think there is no doubt about it. I

\don’t profess to know everything that went on, but you can tell when the director of the program resigns and basically says, ‘I can’t make it work,’ that there is obviously something badly wrong.

NEWSMAX: How is this Administration’s track record on hiring and keeping conservatives in key positions?

BOLTON: I think it is unfortunately not very good. I talk about this in my book, about what happens when Presidential personnel doesn’t focus on the very difficult circumstances appointees face within the State department, which is one of the savviest bureaucracies in Washington experts in co-opting, seducing or subverting political appointees who try to pursue policies it disagrees with. And I think in this Administration, it has had considerable success. I use the example of North Korea, and what’s happened to our policy there. What has happened since I wrote the book is an even more graphic example of the bureaucracy in effect turning the President’s policy in effect in a 180 degree U-turn.

NEWSMAX: Do you think the North Korean have agreed to talk and to shut down the reactor because they have sold off the critical elements?

BOLTON: I think they are doing the same thing they did under the [1994] Agreed Framework. I think they have been planning to cheat on their declaration and their program and hope they get away with it, which they will if we don’t have an adequate verification program.

And I think this facility [in Syria] that the Israelis bombed on September 6 is an indication of yet another alternative, which is either to clone the Yongbyon reactor or outsource some of the nuclear weapons program. How better to hide your North Korean program than to build it in Syria where nobody is looking!

Just this morning there was a story that it may be harder to shut done Yongbyon than people thought. Now this will extend into the next year, which I think is part of North Korea’s pattern of slow-rolling the program. But which also shows something which I and others have been saying for some time, which is that Yongbyon is at or beyond its useful life. Part of the reason they have difficulties extracting the fuel rods that are in there now is that the whole facility is in terrible repair, which means they agreeing to freeze it or even to dismantle it is not such a big concession from the North Koreans. They may already have been able to extract as much plutonium as they were going to be able to. Shutting down a broken facility is hardly a sign of good faith.

NEWSMAX: There is a lot of dispute about North Korea’s uranium program. You write in your book that the North Koreans talked to our delegation in 2002 about the uranium enrichment program. Do you think that is what they transferred to Syria?

BOLTON: It’s hard to say what they’ve transferred. There was no sign of radiation escaping after the Israeli attack [on Syria], which seems to indicate that they proceeded before there was any actual enriched uranium or even unenriched uranium there. Otherwise you would see likely release of radiation.

In my book, I go through this business of what Jim Kelly confronted the North Koreans with in 2002, and what the North Koreans said in response. There was no ambiguity in 2002 about the intelligence. In fact, what happened was that in the early summer 2002, for a change, all of the intelligence community agreed that North Korea had embarked on procurement for a uranium enrichment program. That was what was significant. That after years of disagreement within the intelligence community, they had reached consensus. And there was no dispute at that time. Nor is there really dispute about the North Korean reaction to Kelly’s trip, that they admitted they had a uranium enrichment program. It’s not just my book. Read Jack Prichard’s book, published by Brookings. He says there was no ambiguity, and he was there!

I think this is significant, because people are now trying to rewrite history, to help excuse why the North Koreans are not dissembling when they say they have no enrichment program. They are trying to lay the groundwork that there never was a program, so when the North Koreans say they don’t have one it’s not another example of dissembling.

NEWSMAX: Would their uranium enrichment program have come from Pakistan, or would they have had access earlier to the technology?

BOLTON: My guess is in part they had some technology from AQ Khan. But I think it was more of them acting as a general contractor building their own program, using AQ Khan for pieces of it, as opposed to Libya, who said to AQ Khan, you are the general contractor, you create the program for us.

NEWSMAX: It really astounds me the lack of information on the Iranian nuclear program, and the unwillingness of the Intelligence community to talk to Iranians, even to Iranian exiles.

BOLTON: Since World War II, the Intelligence community has disliked exiles and dissidents, claiming they are unreliable because they have a political agenda. This is just self-blindness.

Not only has our human intelligence capability declined dramatically over the last several decades, there doesn’t seem to be much inclination to want to build it back up.

Look at Joe Wilson: the best our intelligence community can do is send a former ambassador to Niger to have tea with officials that say, ‘ so, what’s up on the uranium front?’ That’s our intelligence community? Forget everything else about Valerie Plame. That whole story is unbelievable!

Got Hope?

If not,  click to hear the John Bolton interview on Israel National News with Tovah Singer.

Singer: "But it certainly got you in an enormous amount of trouble, for you've always been outspoken, and you're not hostile to the Jewish State, and you believe in the war on terrorism - basically, you drive the left crazy!  Why do you do it?"

Bolton: "I like to think that Sen. Joe Biden actually tipped his hand a little back in 2001 when he opposed my confirmation for my first job in this administration as Undersecretary for Arms Control; he said that his trouble with me was that over the years I have been 'too competent.' They were worried that I might actually change things."

Not Quite an "Intelligence" Report
When Singer said he wanted to bring up the recent American intelligence report that downplayed the Iranian nuclear capabilities and brought great joy to Iran and to the left, Bolton said, "I don't think we should call it an intelligence report, but rather a document of the Executive Branch.  It was a highly-politicized document, written by some who are not even intelligence community professionals, but rather from the State Department... In theory, they all work for the President, but they don't like his policies and they think that he's too belligerent towards Iran - though my own personal view is that the President was not tough enough  - and this paper was intended to undercut the Bush position.  This report has put Bush's policy on the bottom of the ocean."

"Let me just take one specific example to show how distorted it was," Bolton said. "The headlines all over the world after the report were that Iran has no nuclear weapons program - but in fact the document refers only to a halt on weaponization - putting a nuclear device on top of a ballistic missile, which is just a sliver of the all-out nuclear program.  It's an important piece, yes, but it's just a small part.  Since 2003 Iran has made steady progress towards all the technology it needs for a nuclear weapon, and it can turn its program back on - if it was ever turned off - in a snap.  This report will be very harmful to the cause of stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."

Bolton went on to say that the job of the intelligence community is merely to "provide the facts, and what we do not need from the intelligence people is their view on how to put those facts into a political policy; for that, we have government leadership.  Unfortunately, this report shows that the intelligence community has gone way beyond its legitimate boundaries."

A great American hero. Listen to it all. Highlights here.

Parting words ........"Remember who your friends are......"

After the interview Tovah Singer said he knows the Jewish faith does not encourage the conversion to Judaism (we are not supposed to) - but he wants to convene  a whole  bunch of Rabbis together and "we need to put him [Bolton] in the water!" That was the money quote.

But it did make me cry.

BOLTON: "Bush Foreign Policy in Freefall" -- "Rein in Rice"

Wow.

Bolton: Bush must 'rein in' Rice YNET

Former American ambassador to UN slams president's foreign policy, says Bush 'doesn't supervise Secretary of State Rice enough'

US President George W. Bush's foreign policy is in free fall and puts the nation's security at risk, former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told a German magazine on Sunday.

Bolton , who was a leading hawk in the US administration and favored a tough stance against Iran, North Korea and Iraq, told the Der Spiegel weekly that Bush needed to rein in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"His foreign policy is in free fall. The president is acting against his own judgment and instincts (and is) under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice," he was quoted as telling the magazine.

True that.

Bolton said Rice's was the dominant voice on foreign policy and that she was a channel for the views of liberal career bureaucrats in the foreign ministry.

"(Bush) does not supervise her enough. That is a mistake," he was quoted as saying, adding that a moderate foreign policy was a threat to US security.

"North Korea will, for example, now keep its nuclear weapons. And the Iranians have got a signal from our own intelligence services that they can do whatever they want.

R-E-A-D   I-T   A-L-L.

NIE: TREASON AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS

This is a coup against America's duly elected government,  an attempted overthrow of the will of the American people. This is shocking. The danger here is incalculable. The system is not merely broken, it is traitorous. Americans do not yet fully understand the enormity of this act of sedition.

Ed Lasky has explosive revelations in today's American Thinker (and of course John Bolton is, yet again, the hero in all this). UNfreakinbelievable.

Van Vann Diepen, NIE Author, and his Treachery at State

During the Q and A he discusses Van Vann Diepen-one of the three authors of the National Intelligence Estimate. The story concerns John Bolton's efforts to derail North Korea and Iran's nuclear weapons programs. Bolton, who later became the US Ambassador to the United Nations, at the time conceived and headed the Proliferation Security Initiative. This effort to control WMD was very successful. Among its accomplishments were the interdiction of shipments of  illicit weapons, the disclosure of the Libyan nuclear weapons program, and the unraveling of the A.Q. Khan nuclear weapons bazaar.

Even some of Bolton's critics of his performance at the United Nations give him credit for this important program. However, one of his key underlings-in an act of insubordination-systematically tried to derail Bolton's plan to disable Iran and North Korea's ability to develop WMD. That underling? Van Viepen.  From the Frontpage Q and A:

Here was an open call to insubordination, and, I might add, it was not an isolated incident. We have heard recently from John Bolton confirmation of another story I tell in the book about Vann Van Diepen, one of the authors of the recent Iran NIE. Van Diepen systematically refused to carry out direct orders from Bolton to enforce non-proliferation sanctions against Iran and North Korea , because he disagreed with the policy.

The evidence continues to mount that this NIE was a work of fiction. Critics from across the political spectrum have voiced skepticism about its conclusions and its methodology; European allies doubt its accuracy, the International Atomic Energy Agency (which normally "sides" with Iran) has raised serious objections. The only parties that seem to trumpet the NIE report are Iran, Russia, and China-our foes.

Seems like the NIE authors seem eye to eye with them and are doing their handiwork for them

TREASON. More proof  (in addition to the 2.5 years this blog has been chronicling Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons;

Group Says Iran Resumed Weapon Program - Marc Champion and Jay Solomon
The National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran's nuclear-fuel program, said a U.S. intelligence analysis is correct that Tehran shut down its weaponization program in 2003, but claims that the program was relocated and restarted in 2004. According to the NCRI, Iran's Supreme National Security Council decided to shut down its most important center for nuclear-weapons research in eastern Tehran, called Lavisan-Shian, in August 2003. Lavisan was broken into 11 fields of research, including development of a nuclear trigger and of the technology to shape weapons-grade uranium into a warhead.
    At the same meeting, the council decided to disperse pieces of the research to a number of locations around Iran. By the time international nuclear inspectors were allowed access to Lavisan, the buildings had been torn down and the ground bulldozed. "They scattered the weaponization program to other locations and restarted in 2004," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, NCRI foreign affairs chief. (Wall Street Journal)
    See also Iran's Top Commanders Are Nuclear Weapons Scientists; Iran Nuclear Weapons Program Dispersed, Not Halted - Sharon Kehnemui Liss
Twenty-one commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are the top scientists running Iran's secret nuclear weapons program, says the man who exposed Iran's nuclear weapons program in 2002. On top of that, the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published last week saying Tehran shut down its weaponization program in 2003 failed to mention that the program restarted in mid-2004, said Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian dissident and president of Strategic Policy Consulting. Jafarzadeh told FOX News: "They have a number of sites controlled by the IRGC that hav e been off-limits to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors, including a military university known as Imam Hossein University....They have perhaps the most advanced nuclear research and development center in that university." (FOX News)

KEN TIMMERMAN'S BOOK: SHADOW WARRIORS IS A MUST READ.

Bolton on Fatally Flawed Iran Report

" Part of the President's problem in Washington is fighting against  permanent bureaucracies that have a very different point of view from his. And I think that's a real problem for the American people." John Bolton March 22, 2007 The Jon Stewart Show

When John Bolton was Ambassador to the UN, American loyalists knew there was no greater American to represent us. Men of reason drew succor knowing we had absolute representation of US interests on the world stage. Many of us grieved when John Bolton resigned his post as US Ambassador to the UN.  In hindsight, it was a blessing. It was, in fact, a very good thing for us that Mr. Bolton left the Bush administration. If not for him, who could the American people turn  to in these dark days to to tell us the truth ?  One British newspaper recently referred to Bolton's "vulcan thinking" and I thought, yes, that's it, isn't it?

Who better to assess the latest NIE propaganda ploy than Bolton? Bolton called it. Bolton warned us. Bolton said in so many words that this would happen. His book Surrender is not Option is a stunning indictment of the permanent bureaucracy that undermines the policies of those elected by the people, for the people.

Here is his unerring analysis and observation in today's Washington Post;

The Flaws In the Iran Report John R. Bolton

Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the "intelligence community" on issues such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.

All this shows that we not only have a problem interpreting what the mullahs in Tehran are up to, but also a more fundamental problem: Too much of the intelligence community is engaging in policy formulation rather than "intelligence" analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it. President Bush may not be able to repair his Iran policy (which was not rigorous enough to begin with) in his last year, but he would leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.

Consider these flaws in the NIE's "key judgments," which were made public even though approximately 140 pages of analysis, and reams of underlying intelligence, remain classified.

First, the headline finding -- that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread. In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE. Moreover, the distinction between "military" and "civilian" programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical to civilian and military uses. Indeed, it has always been Iran's "civilian" program that posed the main risk of a nuclear "breakout."

The real differences between the NIEs are not in the hard data but in the psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives. The current NIE freely admits to having only moderate confidence that the suspension continues and says that there are significant gaps in our intelligence and that our analysts dissent from their initial judgment on suspension. This alone should give us considerable pause.

Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."

Third, the risks of disinformation by Iran are real. We have lost many fruitful sources inside Iraq in recent years because of increased security and intelligence tradecraft by Iran. The sudden appearance of new sources should be taken with more than a little skepticism. In a background briefing, intelligence officials said they had concluded it was "possible" but not "likely" that the new information they were relying on was deception. These are hardly hard scientific conclusions. One contrary opinion came from -- of all places -- an unnamed International Atomic Energy Agency official, quoted in the New York Times, saying that "we are more skeptical. We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." When the IAEA is tougher than our analysts, you can bet the farm that someone is pursuing a policy agenda.

Fourth, the NIE suffers from a common problem in government: the overvaluation of the most recent piece of data. In the bureaucracy, where access to information is a source of rank and prestige, ramming home policy changes with the latest hot tidbit is commonplace, and very deleterious. It is a rare piece of intelligence that is so important it can conclusively or even significantly alter the body of already known information. Yet the bias toward the new appears to have exerted a disproportionate effect on intelligence analysis.

Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

It's a freakin nightmare.

UPDATE: Ed Lasky writes, "as opposed to State Department bureacrats, this op-ed is written by a man who has devoted his life to specifically controlling nuclear arms and a woman who has focused her life in Iran and the threats it poses." In Iran We Trust? 

UPDATE: Yidwithlid:  They based the Iran nuke findings on NOTES written by Iranian soldiers (according to the NY Times of all places)

Details in Military Notes Led to Shift on Iran, U.S. Says

UPDATE: It is curious to me that Bolton expresses deep admiration for James Baker (his role model, no less) and it is Baker that is behind much of the foreign policy that Bolton rails against.

Bolton Burns

"I think there are better people to quote than John Bolton." Paraphrasing Nick (heart)Burns

Really? Who? Other than G-d or perhaps channeling the dead I can't think of anyone.

That's the spineless, dickless, wonder Nick Burns over at State. This is why you have to worry and why we are are in a free fall.This guy is directing Condarasha;

The BBC reporter said to Nicholas Burns (Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs) that John Bolton is pessimistic about the Annapolis conference. Burns' response was quick, dismissive, and comprehensively so: John Bolton is not someone who has been involved in peace in the Middle East, nor is he an expert in the area, nor does he know anything about the problems, so he doesn't think Bolton is someone we should listen to. More here - at this libtard blog

I can't think of anyone more eminently qualified to speak to foreign policy that our Mr. Bolton. I mean, really.

Bolton on Burns via Hugh Hewitt:

HH: What is he doing in the number two position at the Department of State?

JB: Well, I tell the story in the book that it may be apocryphal, but I’ve heard it a lot of times, that before the 2004 election, Richard Holbrook, one of my predecessors at the U.N., introduced Nick Burns as the person who would be his undersecretary of state if Kerry won, and if Holbrook became secretary of state. And of course, Kerry didn’t win and Holbrook didn’t become secretary of state. But Nick is still the undersecretary for political affairs. And I think it’s a reflection of the astuteness of the building and the culture of the foreign service that even in a Republican administration, this is able to happen.

HH: Does Nicholas Burns understand the Iranian threat, John Bolton?

JB: I don’t think he does. I don’t think Nick really appreciates what proliferation is all about. He’s a perfectly pleasant individual. I had, I think, pleasant dealings with him, and I don’t want to turn this into a personality issue, because I think he is simply what the culture at State throws up. This is the consequence of decades of the problems that I identify and discuss in the book.

Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, Bolton visits the office of the Telegraph  (he looks better here, doncha  think? :)

Lunch with John Bolton, the straight-talking former American ambassador to the United Nations, is normally an uplifting affair. There's nothing he enjoys more than taking pot-shots at the liberal intelligentsia's sacred cows, whether it's the effectiveness of the U.N. in tackling international security issues of Hillary Clinton's credentials to be a future president of the United States.

My meeting with John Bolton was not as upbeat as expected:

But I found him strangely subdued when he visited the offices of the Daily Telegraph today to discuss his new book, "Surrender Is Not An Option." While he was intrigued to inspect our world famous multi-media news hub in action, he was more down beat when we sat down to discuss the pressing issues of the day, such as the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Annapolis and the mounting crisis over Iran's uranium enrichment programme.

Having stated publicly that he did not think the United States should have hosted the conference in the first place, it was hardly surprising that he did not think much would come of the rival delegations' promise to reach a settlement by the end of 2008. "They'll come up with a piece of paper, no doubt, but it will be worthless," he remarked.

Apparently Annapo-loser had the same disquieting effective on JB that it did on the rest of civilized men. Disastrous.

But his main concern was what he perceived as the mounting reluctance in Washington in pursuing the military option against Iran's uranium enrichment programme. According to Bolton, the president is surrounded by people - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, to name but two - who want to avoid a military confrontation at all costs. And what's even more alarming, Bolton says, is that the president is listening to them! At this rate the mullahs will have their cherished atom bomb and will be able to dominate the Gulf region at will - a truly terrifying thought.

hat tip Mara

Gulp.

Bolton and Sharansky

Jerry Gordon wrote me,

Having just listened  to an interview with Amb. John Bolton and Natan Sharasky on Lori Lowenthal Marcu and Steve Feldman on the ZoA Middle East News Hour on  WNWR.com, Listen here at WWW.ZOAPHILLY.ORG .  I would say that Dr. Rice follows what Bolton called "the General Colin Powell school" of listening to the Arabists at State and the Islamist propagandists here in America and advocating on their collective behalves before the President and the NSC staffs. But then, the President and Dr. Rice are leading this country astray and  into a cataclysmic abyss based on denial and delusion akin to what British PM Chamberlain did in September, 1938. Israel, according to Amb. Bolton has weak leadership and the Palestinians are even weaker ones. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates member oif the Arab League anti-Israell boycott have trillions of petro dollars. They could part with 1/10th of one-quarter of one percent to assist their Mulsim brothers in the PA West Bank and Gaza, but won't. Blame it on the Jews and the West and let us pay for the huge open running sewer in Gaza and delivery of armored cars to the PLO-Fatah along with 1,000 weapons.

And let us not forget the 'good faith release'  of another Palestinian terrorist prisoners.  The sands in the nuclear hour glass as commented on by Amb. Bolton held by Iran have about been drained, what follows will be the dawn of an artificial sun on the Persian new Year in 2008 that coluld obliterate Israel and sections of the Arab Middle East. As I pointed out during a call to Lori and Steve, Amb. Boilton had been an early and vigorous advocate warning in the highest councils of government about the menace of not only Syria's nuclear threat, but, as I also pointed out Syria's massive bio-warfare thrteat to Israel and US. A threat  jointly developed with Iran, North Korea, Russia, with 'gifts' of pathoigens and dispersal technologies from Saddam Hussein and even purchase of technology from Germany and the US.
We are in denial about that threat to Israel and us. As Steve Feldman pointed out israel has a gas mask shortage-all at a time when this palpable threat could be unleashed at a momet's notice producing mass casualties.

Here's the direct link: http://www.zoaphilly.org/zoaradio/MER082907.mp3

 

Bolton's not the only one

Not the we ever doubted him, but it is quite the confirmation to get this from a signator of the previous nuke NORK deal that failed abysmally. Interesting the the lamestream media has covered this, obviously their BDS (Bush derangement syndrome) is so pathological, they will abandon their "kumbaya" bullshit just because Bush is now pursuing a "let's all kiss and pretend" appeasement policy.

US DIPLOMAT WARNS OF PITFALLS IN NORTH KOREA Yahoo

SEOUL, South Korea - The U.S. diplomat who signed an earlier deal halting North Korea's nuclear weapons development warned Monday that pitfalls remain in the latest accord with Pyongyang despite recent hopeful signs.

Details of how to implement recent agreements from international arms talks have not been clearly laid out — leaving potential room for North Korea to find loopholes that could leave it still holding material to make nuclear bombs, Robert Gallucci said.

[...]

"The contribution of the summit to peace and prosperity on the peninsula will still be limited by the pace and progress of efforts to implement" agreements from the arms talks, Gallucci, dean of the school of foreign service at Georgetown University in Washington, told an international conference on the summit.

As an American diplomat, Gallucci signed a 1994 deal with North Korea that collapsed in late 2002 amid allegations Pyongyang was secretly developing a secret uranium enrichment program, in addition to its known plutonium program. Either material can be used to make bombs.

"While standing in the urinal"

Uh ......I'm jealous :)     But seriously folks, a Brit libtard reviews Bolton's book. Wanna know how the leftards anti-think? Read it ........ or not (preferably.)

The last time I met John Bolton was in a urinal at the US State Department. I was Britain’s ambassador to America, the America’s ambassador to the United Nations. A brief and surly response to my chirpy greeting emerged through the overhanging shagginess of his trademark moustache.

Read the rest here. Bottom line, cowards and appeasers like this thumbsucker ain't never gonna win this war, or any war. Bad dah bing.

 

10 Questions for John Bolton

Time magazine asked J to the B 10 questions - queries from all over the world. It's a quick, healthy snack. Go here and nibble.

Who are your diplomatic role models and why?

[Secretary of State] James Baker, who I served under in the first Bush Administration. He knew how politics operated both domestically and internationally.

Ouch.