Axis of Evil

Over fifteen years ago President Bush designated Iran and North Korea as members of the "Axis of Evil." They still are and even more sinister. North Korea has atomic weapons and Iran has sophisticated ICBMs and they both hate the United States with an unnatural passion. Why wouldn't they get together like peanut butter and chocolate to carry out their dangerous designs? Only Afghanistan and China stand between them on a land route ... so they could  secretly swap their terror technologies.Well, unfortunately they seem to be doing just that ... see: Breitbart Article.

This collusion complicates our national security issue tremendously. I would like to believe that there is a solution to these "existential" threats other than turning these countries into charcoal briquettes  (a John Bolton phrase) ... because much of the rest of the world will likely conflagrate along with them. Will sanity prevail once they are both locked and loaded? It did during the Cold War and I would like to believe that it will again. But there are no guarantees.

Will we have suicide countries like we have had suicide bombers? Only Allah and the "little fat kid" can tell ...

Afterward: Wouldn't it be nice if Ayatollah Khemenei's prostate cancer and Kim Jong Un's obesity  took care of these problems for us?

Double Standard

It is not yet clear what exactly was discussed with the Russians in the intercepted conversation(s) of General Flynn (and possibly others) before Trump's inauguration. But we do know what Barack Obama communicated to the Iranian mullahs before he was installed as president in 2009. And it clearly was subverting President Bush's nuclear negotiations with this country ... see: Powerline Blog. Ever-alert John Hinderaker has dig into his archives and found this parallel ... which, of course, was scrupulously ignored by the media back then ... except, in a random act of journalism,  by the New York Times. I doubt if it will repeat this mistake today.

Here are the most damning passages in Hinderaker's reverie:

... let’s not forget an infinitely bigger scandal: in 2008, while he was running for the presidency, Barack Obama deliberately undermined American foreign policy by secretly encouraging Iran’s mullahs to hold out until he became president, because he would be easier to deal with than President George Bush.

And:

The Iranians held firm to their position, perhaps because they knew that help was on the way, in the form of a new president. Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. At some point either before or after that date, but prior to the election, he secretly let the Iranians know that he would be much easier to bargain with than President Bush. 

And:

So Obama secretly told the mullahs not to make a deal until he assumed the presidency, when they would be able to make a better agreement. Which is exactly what happened: Obama abandoned the requirement that Iran stop enriching uranium, so that Iran’s nuclear program has sped ahead over the months and years that negotiations have dragged on. When an interim agreement in the form of a “Joint Plan of Action” was announced in late 2013, Iran’s leaders exulted in the fact that the West had acknowledged its right to continue its uranium enrichment program ...

 And it is now speculated by some in the media that General Flynn was submarined by Obama holdovers, ironically, because of his hard line against Obama's resulting Iranian nuclear deal ... and he might have been trying to get the Russians to back away from its support of this travesty. Of course we won't really know the true nature of his intercepted conversation(s) unless they are released in unredacted form ... which is quite unlikely.

Rules of Engagement

President Obama once played the me-too game in Afghanistan. After he took office, he said that Afghanistan was the "good war." Then after months and months of feckless indecision, our fearful leader sent a "surge" of troops there but effectively disarmed them with very constrictive rules of engagement. As a consequence, these additional 30,000 troops ... see: New York Times Story ... became targets of Islamic (read Taliban) green-on-blue assassins who killed hundreds of unsuspecting American and allied troops  ... including one general. All in all, during this puny presidential pugilistic posing, the United States lost over 1,100 troops with another 15,000 or so wounded ... see: Antiwar Blog ... many more than under President Bush's war there  ... with essentially no progress to show for all this sacrifice..

And of course we all remember when Obama drew a red line with Syria over its use of chemical weapons ... which he promptly forgot when challenged. Now, President Obama is again flexing his military flab ... sending an aircraft carrier and flotilla of naval ships to intercept the Iranian navy  escorting a suspected shipment of arms to the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen ... see: Fox News Story. But wait! Now it seems that our fearful leader has once again got cold feet and is now saying that this show of American naval power is there just to insure "freedom of navigation." Am I to suppose that his new constrictive rules of engagement for the U.S. Navy there might be to help the Iranians offload their weapons cargoes.

What's the term Rush Limbaugh often uses? Our fearful leader seems to have a "linguine spine?"

Barf!

Fair-Weather Friends

President Bush and King Abdullah 

Saudi Arabians are not really our friends ... at least not on a consistent basis. Years ago I thought that they were, but, after the Kobar Towers truck bombing in 1996 (in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) where 19 U.S. airmen were killed and hundreds wounded, I began to have my doubts ... particularly after the Saudi government there would not allow any on-the-ground investigation by our intelligence agencies (see: Espionage Information). Then, I began to suspect that the Saudi government was at least tangentially complicit. And this was just one of a pattern of such incidents there... see: Wikipedia Listing.

And also don't forget that Saudi Arabia has always been the alpha dog in the OPEC cartel.

Next, couple this with the fact that 15 of the 19 World Trade Towers terrorists were from Saudi Arabia (see: 9/11 Hijackers) and that Osama bin Laden himself was a Saudi ... and one begins to see a compelling pattern of duplicity on the part of our Sunni Muslim  "amigos." Saudi Arabia has also been a consistent funder of the madrasa schools throughout the Muslim world which have indoctrinated their students with a severe form of sharia law. (Our president himself may have attended a madrasa school when he was a child in Indonesia ... see: Huffington Post Story.) And there are many rumors that the Saudis, after the Shi'ite Iranians, are also heavy funders of radical Muslim activities ... see: Times of Israel Story.

Yes, occasionally, the Saudis have thrown the U.S. a bone as our fair-weather friends (e.g., giving the Clinton Foundation boatloads of money?) ... but, to me, this is just consistent with a Mideastern pattern of playing both sides of the street.  Now the Saudis' are warning of imminent attacks inside the U.S. from ISIS militants (whom Saudi Arabia may also be secretly funding) ... see: Yahoo News Story.

Is this just a ruse to get the United States to embroil ourselves once again in this Mideast morass ... so that things remain unbalanced and that these mega-plutocrats can hold onto their fine lifestyles? Might Saudi Arabia itself take the lead in defeating these extremists? That would be a first ...

Have a Heart

Former Vice President, Dick Chaney, at 71, got a heart transplant over the weekend  (see: LA Times Story) ... to the consternation of many with Chaney Derangement Syndrome (CDS).  The Internet is full of  snipes deriding Chaney's medical good fortune with churlish comments which don't need any further airing.  I have been listening to talk radio this morning to many accusing Chaney's of line busting (and not).  Bottom line, it appears that, today, people of wealth and notoriety can only earn an advantage in the organ transplant lottery by paying to be listed on multiple transplant lists.

Many knowledgeable callers have said that each of these lists now have strict guidelines to keep movers and shakers from moving to the head of the line unfairly ... and after all Chaney has waited twenty months (with a mechanical heart-pump) for an organ transplant ... unlike Mickey Mantle and John Phillips who, years ago, did appear to have gotten favorable treatment (given the apparent expedited speed of their organ transplant operations.)

But no matter on what side of the CDS spectrum one resides, to me, it is a blessing that Dick Chaney should be with us for some more years.  He is a national resource in that he has been at the center of much of the history-making events over almost forty years and many of his (and President G.W. Bush's) policies are still in effect to push back against international terrorism.  So much of what he knows still is to be captured and writ large in determining how this country continues to navigate our way through the minefields that still await us.