I think it’s almost time…

I think it’s almost time…
©2010 David Talbot


June 1967, from www.sixdaywar.co.uk: “In 1967 Israel did not wake up one morning and decide to go to war - she woke up one morning and found she had to defend herself.” After the war ended, Jordan relinquished control of Jerusalem and, as they departed the West Bank, desecrated all Jewish and Christian, cemeteries, holy places, and many structures.

Baghdad, Iraq, March 2003. The United States and 4 allies invade Iraq to topple Sadam Hussein’s regime and eliminate weapons of mass destruction and their capability to make them. Iraq fires missiles into Tel Aviv, and the United States tells Israel not to retaliate.

Gaza Strip, September 12, 2005, from the Associated Press: (AP) “Flames shot skyward from four abandoned synagogues in the Gaza Strip on Monday, as thousands of celebrating Palestinians thronged through former Jewish settlements and headed straight for the only buildings left standing.”

Following the IDF withdrawal from Gaza on 9/12/05, a steady stream of rocket and mortar fire rains down on Israeli towns until last year when Israel finally had enough, and they went in to try and eliminate the threat.

January 11, 2010, an earthquake levels most of Haiti’s capitol city, killing and wounding many thousands of innocent civilians. And, one week later, looting and riots are escalating. One of the first assistance units on the scene? The Israeli Defense Forces, who establish a fully staffed field hospital and begins treating patients. The EU, Palestinians, and their allies condemn Israel for the effort saying the dirty little secret is Israels ignorance of the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. From HAARETZ, January 18, 2010, “…the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza.”

I think it’s almost time for Israel to state, in no uncertain terms: No on the division of Jerusalem.

I think it’s almost time for Israel to accept the fact that the Obama administration doesn’t have any interest in Israel, only in getting Israel to make yet another concession that will ultimately raise up and bite them.

I think it’s past time for the United States to realize that promises from the PA and/or Hamas are stalling tactics with the ultimate goal of wiping Israel off the map.

I think it’s past time for the world to admit that North Korea and Iran will have the bomb and that China and Russia are facilitators.

And, I think it’s time that Israel should say, ENOUGH…..

Anyway, that’s my opinion.

Shalom

David Talbot

More Thoughts on the Middle East

More Thoughts on the Middle East
©2009 David Talbot

There is an old expression, “No good deed goes unpunished!” I can’t remember the last time I heard it, but I thought about it this week as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Israeli PM Netanyahu’s concession on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Her praise was not for what it lacked (a complete freeze) but for the easing of the Israeli position. In other words, it was a start.

Of course, any praise of Israel, no matter how feint, is cause for an immediate knee jerk reaction by the Arab world. The outcry was so great that Secretary Clinton had to “explain” her comments at her next stop in Morocco.

Unfortunately, any progress in the Arab world by President Obama’s apology tour and pronunciation that America is not a Christian nation has been squandered. The current perception in the Arab world, as seen on all the news channels last week, is that the USA has done a flip and is now back to it’s unilateral support of Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has signaled that he is not going to run for office because of the impasse in peace negotiations. Peace negotiations for the Palestinian leadership means: either the Israeli’s give in to all it’s demands, or we won’t come to the table.

The situation for the United states in the Middle East is not unique. We do not have a clearly formulated policy, that reflects our position on the goal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In fact, we do not have a clearly formulated policy on North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, or any other situation on earth. This lack of a cohesive foreign policy emboldens our enemies and confuses our friends.

We jump on Israel for defending themselves. Yet, we have not figured out how to deal with the unstable governments in Pyongyang and Tehran who are not only actively building nuclear armament facilities, but are also the main suppliers of terrorists around the world. Just this week Israel intercepted an Iranian vessel carrying tons of munitions to those “peaceful” Hezbollah terrorists.

If the Obama administration in Washington does not get it’s foreign policy act together, and soon, the next 3 years will be very dangerous for us, at home and abroad. At some point, the powder keg will be ignited by our only ally in the Middle East, Israel, for it’s own survival. Even Israel has come to understand: with friends like us, who needs enemies?

Anyway, that’s my opinion.

Next Week: Why do Jewish Holidays fall on different days every year?

Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler Wednesday, 19 September 2007

One of India's top ranking generals assigned to liaise with the Iranian military recently returned to New Delhi from several days in Tehran- in a state of complete Amazement."

Everyone in the government and military can only talk of one thing," he reports. "No matter who I talked to, all they could do was ask me, over and over again, ˜Do you think the Americans will attack us?' ˜When will the Americans attack us?' ˜Will the Americans attack us in a joint operation with the Israelis? How massive will the attack be? on and on, endlessly. The Iranians are in a state of total panic."

And that was before September 6. Since then, it's panic-squared in Tehran. The mullahs are freaking out in fear. Why? Because of the silence in Syria.

On September 6, Israeli Air Force F-15 and F-16s conducted a devastating attack on targets deep inside Syrianear the city of Dayraz-Zawr. Israel's military censors have muzzled the Israeli media, enforcing an extraordinary silence about the identity of the targets. Massive speculation in the world press has followed, such as Brett Stephens' Osirak II? in yesterday's (9/18) Wall St. Journal.

Stephens and most everyone else have missed the real story. It is not Israel's silence that "speaks volumes" as he claims, but Syria's. Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil?

The first half of the answer lies in this story that appeared in the Israeli media last month (8/13): Syria's Antiaircraft System Most Advanced In World. Syria has gone on a profligate buying spree, spending vast sums on Russian systems, "considered the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology.

"Syria now "possesses the most crowded antiaircraft system in the world," with more than 200 antiaircraft batteries of different types," some of which are so new that they have been installed in Syria before being introduced into Russian operation service."

While you're digesting that, take a look at the map of Syria:

(No Map).

Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when that penetration took place on September 6th.

Nothing. El blanko. Silence. The systems didn't even light up, gave no indication whatever of any detection of enemy aircraft invading Syrian airspace, zip, zero, nada. The Israelis (with a little techie assistance from us) blinded the Russkie antiaircraft systems so completely the Syrians didn't even know they were blinded.

Now you see why the Syrians have been scared speechless. They thought they were protected - at enormous expense - only to discover they are defenseless. As in naked.

Thus the Great Iranian Freak-Out for this means Iranis just as nakedly defenseless as Syria. I can tell you that there are a lot of folks in the Kirya (IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv) and the Pentagon right now who are really enjoying the mullahs' predicament. Let's face it: scaring the terror masters in Tehran out of their wits is fun.

It's so much fun, in fact, that an attack destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and the Revolutionary Guard command/control centers has been delayed, so that France (under new management) can get in on the fun too.

On Sunday (9/16), Sarkozy's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner announced that France should prepare for the possibility of war over Iran's nuclear program.

All of this has caused Tehran to respond with maniacal threats. On Monday (9/17), a government website proclaimed that 600 Shihab-3 missiles will be fired at targets in Israel in response to an attack upon Iran by the US/Israel. This was followed by Iranian deputy air force chief Gen. Mohammad Alavi announcing today (9/19) that "we will attack their (Israeli) territory with our fighter bombers as a response to any attack."

A sure sign of panic is to make a threat that everyone knows is a bluff. So our and Tel Aviv's response to Iranian bluster is a thank-you-for-sharing yawn and a laugh. Few things rattle the mullahs' cages more than a yawn and a laugh.

Yet no matter how much fun this sport with the mullahs is, it is also deadly serious. The pressure build-up on Iran is getting enormous. Something is going to blow and soon. The hope is that the blow-up will be internal, that the regime will implode from within.

But make no mistake: an all-out full regime take-out air assault upon Iran is coming if that hope doesn't materialize within the next 60 to 90 days. The Sept. 6 attack on Syria was the shot across Iran's bow.

So - what was attacked near Dayr az-Zawr? It's possible it was North Korean "nuclear material" recently shipped to Syria, i.e., stuff to make radioactively "dirty" warheads, but nothing to make a real nuke with as the Norks don't have real nukes (see Why North Korea's Nuke Test Is Such Good News, October 2006).

Another possibility is it was to take out a stockpile of long-range Zilzal surface-to-surface missiles recently shipped from Iran for an attack on Israel.

A third is it was a hit on the stockpile of Saddam's chemical/bio weapons snuck out of Iraq and into Syria for safekeeping before the US invasion of April 2003.

But the identity of the target is not the story - for the primary point of the attack was not to destroy that target. It was to shut down Syria's Russian air defense system during the attack. Doing so made the attack an incredible success.

Syria is shamed and silent. Iran is freaking out in panic. Defenseless enemies are fun.

Bill Clinton's New Glow Jobby

By Ann Coulter

With the Democrats' full-throated moralizing of late, I'm almost tempted to vote for them -- although perhaps "full-throated" is the wrong phrase to use with regard to Democrats and sex scandals. The sudden emergence of the Swift Butt Veterans for Truth demonstrates that the Democrats would prefer to talk about anything other than national security.

Unfortunately for them, the psychotic Kim Jong Il seems to be setting off nukes, raising the embarrassing issue of the Clinton administration's 1994 "peace" deal with North Korea.

At least with former Rep. Mark Foley, you could say the Democrats' hypocritical grandstanding was just politics. But in the case of North Korea, Democrats are resorting to bald-faced lies.

Current New Mexico governor and former Clinton administration official Bill Richardson has been on tour, bragging about the groundbreaking Clinton administration negotiations with North Korea -- keeping his fingers crossed that no one has access to news from 1994.

In 1994, the Clinton administration got a call from Jimmy Carter -- probably collect -- who was with the then-leader of North Korea, saying: "Hey, Kim Il Sung is a total stud, and I've worked out a terrific deal. I'll give you the details later."

Clinton promptly signed the deal, so he could forget about North Korea and get back to cheating on Hillary. Mission accomplished.

Under the terms of the "agreed framework," we gave North Korea all sorts of bribes -- more than $5 billion worth of oil, two nuclear reactors and lots of high technology. In return, they took the bribes and kept building nukes. This wasn't difficult, inasmuch as the 1994 deal permitted the North Koreans to evade weapons inspectors for the next five years.

Yes, you read that right: North Korea promised not to develop nukes, and we showed how much we trusted them by agreeing to no weapons inspections for five years.

The famed "allies," whom liberals claim they are so interested in pleasing, went ballistic at this cave-in to North Korea. Japan and South Korea -- actual allies, unlike France and Germany -- were furious. Even Hans Blix thought we were being patsies.

If you need any more evidence that it was a rotten deal, The New York Times hailed it as "a resounding triumph."

At the time, people like William Safire were screaming from the rooftops that allowing North Korea to escape weapons inspections for five years would "preclude a pre-emptive strike by us if North Korea, in the next U.S. president's administration, breaks its agreement to freeze additional bomb-making."

And then on Oct. 17, 2002 -- under a new administration, you'll note -- The New York Times reported on the front page, so you couldn't have missed it: "Confronted by new American intelligence, North Korea has admitted that it has been conducting a major clandestine nuclear weapons development program for the past several years."

So when it comes to North Korea, I believe the Democrats might want to maintain a discreet silence, lest anyone ask, "Hey, did you guys do anything with North Korea?"

But by Richardson's lights, the only reason Kim Jong Il is testing nukes is because Bush called him evil. He said, "When you call him axis of evil or a tyrant, you know, he just goes crazy." This is the sort of idiocy you expect to hear from an illiterate like Keith Olbermann, not someone who might know people who read newspapers.

Richardson also blames the war in Iraq, bleating that the poor North Koreans feel "that there's too much attention on the Middle East, on Iraq. So it's a cry for attention." If Kim just wanted our attention, he could have started dating Lindsay Lohan. But Richardson says Kim "psychologically feels he's been dissed, that he's not treated with respect."

Damn that Bush! If only he had ignored the crazy Muslims and dedicated himself into sending flowers (and more nuclear reactors!) to North Korea, we could be actively helping Kim develop his nukes like the Clinton administration did.

As Richardson said, Kim "wants us to negotiate with him directly, as we did in the Clinton administration."

To go on TV and propose negotiating with North Korea like Clinton did without ever mentioning that North Korea cheated on that agreement before the ink was dry would be like denouncing American aggression against Japan in 1942 and neglecting to mention Pearl Harbor. Anyone who is either that stupid or that disingenuous should not be allowed on TV.

When pressed by CNN's Anderson Cooper about the failed deal, Richardson lied, claiming the 1994 deal prevented the North Koreans from building nukes "for eight years" -- i.e., right up until the day The New York Times reported the North Koreans had been developing nukes "for the past several years."

Kim is crazier than any leader even South America has been able to produce. In fact, he's so crazy, we might be able to get the Democrats to take action. Someone tell Nancy Pelosi that the "Dear Leader" is an actual pederast. Then we'll at least be able to read his instant messages.