This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Carter: Those guys who tried to blow me up – take them off of the terrorist list.

    In Gaza, Jimmy Carter was doing what he does best the other day – hugging blood-soaked terrorists. According to Fox News, he plans on talking to the president about removing them from the terrorist list;

    Former President Jimmy Carter will urge the Obama administration to remove Hamas from the terrorist list, FOX News has learned.

    Carter, a chief defender of the U.S.-designated terror group, said Tuesday he will meet with officials in the Obama administration in two days to discuss his latest trip to the Middle East.

    Carter said he feels personally responsible that American weapons were used to fight in Gaza Strip last year, when Israeli Defense Forces entered the strip to stop the launch of rockets from there into Israel.

    Why does he feel personally responsible? Was he the one shooting rockets into israel? But the best part of Carter telling the president that Hamas shouldn’t be designated as terrorists? They tried to blow his stupid ass up as he left Gaza;

    According to two eyewitnesses, including a 15-year-old boy, the bombs were intended to hit Carter’s vehicle as he exited Gaza. There is some suspicion that Hamas extremists linked to Al Qaeda may be behind the attempt.

    The boy told FOX News he saw three Palestinian men planting bombs, four of which were later found near a mound less than a mile from the Israel-Gaza border.

    Now, I don’t think anyone deserves to die in a terrorist attack – but you have to admit that the irony of that event would not be lost on the rest of the world. Jimmy Carter was the last president to walk the one-mile stretch from the Capitol to the White House on his Inauguration Day. By the time he left office, the world was such a dangerous place, Ronald Reagan had to ride most of the distance in an armored limousine.

    The Russians seem upset that the palestinians didn’t succeed;
    russian-carter-news
    AFP reports that Carter’s inability to assign blame to victims showed through;

    “My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people,” Carter said as he toured the impoverished territory.

    “Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,” he said.

    It must be a wonderful feeling to judge entire peoples based on their current condition while ignoring what got them to that point. I think it’s called naivete.

    UPDATED: Ace of Spades says that it was Israel that actually provided the intelligence which saved Carter from winning the Nobel Pieces Prize.

  • Recount in Iran?

    After seven Iranians were killed yesterday in Tehran by the militia, the Guardian Council has decided there will be a partial recount of votes in Iran. Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for a new election as well as asking his supporters to stay out of the streets today to prevent more casualties. (Washington Post)

    So far, the council has said it would recount only those votes where the opposition has evidence suggesting a problem may have occurred.

    According to Fox News this morning, Ahmadinejad’s supporters have taken to the streets – I wonder how many of them will be killed by militia forces.

    President Obama votes not present;

    Obama said reports of violence that followed Iranian elections trouble him and all Americans. He said peaceful dissent should never be subject to violence that followed weekend elections that gave Ahmadinejad a second term.

    “It would be wrong for me to be silent on what we’ve seen on the television the last few days,” Obama told reporters at the White House.

    Obama said he had no way of knowing the results were valid — he said the United States had no election monitors in the country — but it was important that the voters’ choices be respected.

    Mike’s America compares a Bush speech at Flopping Aces.

    Senator John McCain was a bit tougher on both Iran and Obama (for a change); (AP link)

    McCain… said the president “should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed, sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.”

    Meanwhile, BDS continues to wrack the poor readers of the Washington Post;
    granny-wapo

    Yeah, granny02, if the Republicans are so good at stealing elections, what happened in the last one? What? Did we just forget how to do it?

    Associated Press is also reporting that the foreign media is restricted and being forced from the country;

    Authorities restricted journalists, including Iranians working for foreign media from reporting on the streets, and said they could only work from their offices, conducting telephone interviews and monitoring official sources such as state television.

    The rules prevent media outlets, including The Associated Press, from sending independent photos or video of street protests or rallies.

    Also Tuesday, foreign reporters in Iran to cover last week’s elections began leaving the country. Iranian officials said they will not extend their visas.

    So, with the rest of the world unable to summon the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Iranian regime, it appears those seven died in vain yesterday.

  • USS John McCain at Sasebo

    mccain
    The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, USS John S. McCain has arrived at Sasebo for repairs after a Chinese sub collided with the ship’s towed-array sonar last Thursday according to Stars and Stripes.

    “We do not discuss detailed operational capabilities or locations of our ships,” 7th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Jeff Davis said.

    He did say the McCain was operating in international waters and conducting routine operations. The McCain’s home port is Yokosuka Naval Base, about 750 miles by land from Sasebo.

    The Associated Press reported that a senior researcher with the People’s Liberation Army’s Navy Equipment Research Center, Yin Zhuo, said the collision was likely an accident. He said the American destroyer appeared to have failed to detect the submarine, while the Chinese vessel set its distance from the McCain assuming it was not carrying sonar arrays, according to the state-run China Daily.

    Ya know, I remember a similar incident about eight years ago in which a Chinese jet collided with an American plane. Now granted, that incident involved a crash landing and hostages, much more dramatic, but it seems like it was declared a “test” of the new American President. Funny how it’s always a Chinese craft colliding with a US craft, isn’t it?

  • Obama and Iran

    Last week I wrote a bit about Iran being caught (by Afghan border guards) smuggling heavy weapons and explosives into Afghanistan – a story that cropped up in the European media and has yet to be given any attention by the American press.

    That fact alone should wake up the current administration to the need to intervene on some level in the future leadership of the Islamic Republic. But what is their reaction to the questionable results of this weekend’s election? The Washington Post quotes Joe Biden;

    “There’s an awful lot of question about how this election was run,” Biden said, noting that the high voter turnout in Iran’s urban areas would argue against such a wide margin of victory for Ahmadinejad, whose conservative populism holds more appeal in rural areas. “I mean we’re just waiting to see.”

    The cautious response illustrates the balance that the Obama administration is seeking between condemning what increasingly appears to be a fraudulent election and the likelihood that it will be dealing with Ahmadinejad after the dust settles.

    Certainly, the Obama Administration saw these results coming, so why wasn’t there an appropriate response prepared to make them look less stupid? But, see, that’s why Ahmadinejad thinks he can get away with vote fraud – he’s pretty sure no one will stop him. The same reason that North Korea continues launching rockets and conducting nuclear tests. There’s a reason that George Bush put those countries on his “Axis of Evil” list.

    Despite the announcement today that the Guardian Council of Iran has ordered an investigation into fraud charges, does anyone really thing Ahmadinejad will be replaced by the Council under any circumstances?

    During the Bush Administration, we saw our allies moving closer to our our side of the political spectrum as Bush policies proved effective and made us safer. Now, under Obama we see our enemies moving further away from us – a sure sign that the governments that should fear and respect us see the Obama Administration as weak and ineffective. Even the Israelis fear for their safety with the Obama Adminstration and elected a tougher government to protect themselves.

  • Worst case of projection ever

    I came across a link at Don Surber‘s place this morning to a HuffPo piece by Rachel Weiner (I don’t know if it’s pronounced “weener” or “whiner” but either would be appropriate, i suppose) entitled Right-Wing neocons Rooting for Ahmadinejad Win. It’s a pretty sad display of projection. here’s the screen capture;
    huffpo-vs-neocons
    Don did an excellent job of knocking Weiner down a few pegs. But I’d like to add that the American Left has been rooting for Ahmadinejad for six years. they’ve been rooting for Ahmadinejad’s new buddy Hugo Chavez for ten years.

    Remember when Ahmadinejad spoke to the National Press Club for lunch? And how the Left apologized to Ahmadinejad for the crude neocons treatment of him? I remember The Nation’s piece charging the exact same neocons that Weiner says root for Ahmadinejad of provoking him. In fact, I remember Code Pink defending Ahmadinejad last year.

    But we had a different president then so everything is different now, huh?

  • “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.”

    Cigar Mike at Babalu Blog writes, “What a dick” about the Obama administration warning to Israel’s Netanyahu government quoted from Israel’s Channel One TV By CBS News;

    Netanyahu was told Tuesday by an “American official” in Jerusalem that, “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.” The report said Netanyahu’s aides interpreted this as a “threat.”

    The photo that accompanies the story shows Obama talking to Netanyahu with his feet on his desk. CBS posits;

    Israeli TV newscasters Tuesday night interpreted a photo taken Monday in the Oval Office of President Obama talking on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “insult” to Israel.

    They saw the incident as somewhat akin to an incident last year, when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush in Baghdad

    Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss writes;

    We’ve been following on the site how Israel seems to be in a state of panic and that Israeli anxiety over the US/Israeli relationship seems to be hitting a boiling point. When Obama finally does go to visit Israel, he might want to watch out for some flying shoes.

    Indeed.

    Imagine if President Bush had told any other country that same thing – how often did we hear “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” or complaints about the “axis of evil” or “bring it on” and other examples of the Bush arrogance? How is this any less arrogant? And worse, it’s with an actual unfaltering ally against terror.

    I dare him to use that kind of language in dealing with North Korea, Syria or Iran. I wonder if Bill Clinton is still ready to lay in a ditch and fight along side the Israelis, because this kind of talk is going to inspire another Arab invasion of Israel.

  • Chavez weekend antics

    Apparently, Hugo Chavez backed away from a weekend debate with Peruvian Vargas Llosa and broke his promise of a four-day-log marathon installment of “Alo, Presidente”, according to AFP/Breitbart;

    For Saturday, a debate had been scheduled between Chavez and conservative Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, a novelist who ran for president in 1990.

    But by late Friday Chavez was backtracking.

    “I can help by moderating, but the debate is between intellectuals and I am simply a president, a soldier,” he said. The dialogue should be with “revolutionary and socialist” thinkers, he said.

    Vargas Llosa and other Latin American intellectuals in Caracas for a separate event on democracy said they were not interested in debating other thinkers.

    Our buddy Kate sends this cartoon which might explain why the debate was cancelled – Chavez was ill-equipped for intellectual give-and-take apparently;

    caricatura_grande1

    (In the cartoon, Llosa is saying “I said debate, imbecile” – “debate” and “bat” sound similar in Spanish)

    Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Chavez is rounding up dissident military officers – among them, his old friend Raul Baduel;

    They say prison life can be lonely, but not for Raúl Isaías Baduel, Venezuela’s former army chief and once one of President Hugo Chávez’s confidants, who was detained last month.

    Mr. Baduel is held with other former officers in Los Teques.

    Among his cellmates in the Ramo Verde military prison here are a former admiral, Carlos Millán, and Wilfredo Barroso, a onetime general arrested along with Mr. Millán on charges of conspiring to oust Mr. Chávez.

    Since February, Mr. Chávez has moved against a wide range of domestic critics, and his efforts in recent weeks to strengthen his grip on the armed forces have led to high-profile arrests and a wave of reassignments.

    So who is surprised that Chavez promised yet another thing he couldn’t deliver – a simple four day broadcast cut short. Criticism against Chavez increases as the oil prices fall. The only thing Chavez intends to deliver to Venezuelans is “Chavismo”.

    Oh and the word is that Chavez wants to give Obama another book – this time by Lenin. He can save his money, I’m sure Obama already has a dog-eared copy in his library.

  • Obama’s North Korea/Iran test

    This morning, North Korea decided that, since the world hasn’t made an active response to their missile launches and nuclear tests, they’d abrogate the 1953 armistice that ended the hot war on the intra-Korean frontier (CNN link).

    “Our revolutionary armed forces … will regard” South Korea’s participation “in the [the 6-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative] as a declaration of war …” the North’s official news agency said.

    Pyongyang also announced it was no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

    “The Korean Peninsula is bound to immediately return to a state of war from a legal point of view, and so our revolutionary armed forces will go over to corresponding military actions,” North Korea said through its news agency.

    Sweet. It’s the 1950s all over again. But that’s not the extent of the dangers we now face because the Obama Administration wouldn’t take the lead in shutting down North Korea’s nuclear program. Israel has discovered that Bolivia and Venezuela are supplying Iran with uranium (CBS News link);

    “There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program,” the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, “Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran.”

    The report concludes that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to undermine the United States by supporting Iran.

    So hugging Hugo Chavez did Obama a lot of good, didn’t it? Of course, if you read this blog in December 2007, you’d have got a whiff of the uranium connections, when a suitcase full of cash was discovered on an airstrip in Bolivia’s uranium-mining region.

    Since there was supposedly collusion between the North Koreans and Syrians on Syria’s own nuclear program, we can probably assume that the North Koreans lent aid to the Iranians – so it’s come full circle.