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

Category: Terror War

  • Responsibility for Iran

    Finally, President Obama, after a week of trying to remain neutral in the conflict in Iran, summoned some testicular fortitude and stood up for freedom yesterday. The Washington Post called it a “cautious response”;

    [T]he president called on the Iranian government “to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”

    U.S. officials say Obama is intent on calibrating his comments to the mood of the hour. They say he is seeking to avoid having the demonstrators accused of being American stooges and is trying to preserve the possibility of negotiating directly with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, links to terrorism, Afghanistan and other issues.

    I’d agree, if Obama made that statement after the first death in Tehran, but amid unsubstantiated reports of hundreds of casualties, the wording sounds weak. From the Washington Times;

    An Iranian who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ali, told The Washington Times that he saw security forces near Azadi (Freedom) Square dropping tear-gas canisters into buildings sheltering demonstrators, driving motorcycles into crowds of people and firing tear gas into demonstrators’ eyes. As he spoke, continuous shooting could be heard in the background, along with cries and shouts.

    A graphic video posted on Facebook by Goli Fassihian, a spokeswoman for the National Iranian American Council, showed the body of a young woman whose face was covered in blood. Another video showed a young man with blood on his chest lying on the street, with gunshots ringing out around him.

    Here’s some video from yesterday. Sporadic gunfire breaks out at about 3:00 into the video;

    And another;

    Actually, if Obama’s intent is to avoid being blamed for the riots, that ship has sailed. Last week, the mullahs had already blamed the US, the UK and the west in general for the protests. This morning, the Malaysian Insider published Ahmadinejad’s warning to the west;

    Iranian authorities today blamed “terrorists” for clashes in which at least 10 people were killed and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United States and Britain to stay out of unrest sparked by his disputed re-election.

    Iran state television said 10 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in protests held in Tehran yesterday in defiance of a stern warning by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A separate report put the number of deaths at 13.

    State television said the violence included the torching of a mosque, which it blamed on “rioters”.

    “In the unrest leading to clashes 10 people were killed and more than 100 wounded,” it said. “The presence of terrorists … in yesterday’s event in Enghelab and Azadi avenues was tangible.”

    The harshness of the language suggested the authorities could be preparing for a crackdown to end more than a week of protests.

    Obama’s reliance on words to resolve the problem is fairly naive (Fox News link);

    And Obama cited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

    “I believe that,” Obama said. “The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

    In other words, if we just wait long enough, everything will shake out in the end. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King was talking about rational governments and rational societies. A rational government in Iran wouldn’t have let the current conditions there get this far. The mullahs would have suggested a power-sharing agreement with the opposition by now, if they were indeed committed to peace in the streets instead of the line about an 11 million-vote gap in the elections.

    The Iranian government knows, after years of dealing with the pussy-footing West over their nuclear ambitions, their is little chance of a Gordon Brown/Barrack Obama insurgency into Iran. The mullahs can get away with anything, so the Iranian people are pretty much on their. Bullets against voices.

    The blame for that can rest on the forlorn wailing of the anti-war crowd who have been protesting direct action against Iran for at least three years that I know of. As recently as this Spring, Code Pink has been praising the Ahmadinejad government and advocating for further suppression of women and minorities in Iran.

    The American Left consistently comes down on the wrong side of history. Proof? How about the Code Pink press release from Friday;

    CODEPINK calls on the Obama Administration to fulfill its commitment to pursue diplomacy with Iran through face-to-face talks without preconditions; as Obama promised during his campaign, “We should not just talk to our friends, we should be willing to engage our enemies as well. That is what diplomacy is all about.” CODEPINK also affirms the Obama administration’s decision to withhold comment on the Iranian election and its government’s decisions around conducting a recount or reelection.
    Furthermore, CODEPINK calls on the United States to cease threats of new economic sanctions, remove existing sanctions, and end threats of war.

    These affirmations will lend much needed credibility and legitimacy to Obama’s commitment to improve relations with Iran and the Arab-Muslim world, and uphold his campaign promise to meet with Iranian officials without preconditions.

    Emphasis is mine. In other words, Code Pink supports the mullahs on their continued murder of gays and stoning of women as well as the current atrocities on the streets of Iranian cities. Peace at any cost.

    In truth, it’s a repeat of the 1979 revolution – Jimmy Carter supported the Shah’s government and we became The Great Satan for three decades. Obama is tacitly supporting the Mullahs, so we’ll get another few decades of being The Great Satan to the rest of Iran.

    For more information:

    More and better coverage of the riots at Gateway Pundit. At Ms. Malkin’s place “They killed Neda but not her voice.” At Pajamas Media, Michael Ledeen’s A Letter From Mousavi’s Office. More video at Reihl World View. Paul Craig Roberts at Infowars finds a way to blame Bush and thinks his CIA holdovers are behind the popular uprising.

  • USS McCain moves to interdict Nork ship

    USS McCain

    I wrote earlier in the week about the USS John S. McCain being involved in a collision with a Chinese sub last week. Yesterday I wrote that the US Navy was preparing for operations against suspect North Korean shipping. Last night Reuters reported that the US Navy is shadowing a suspect ship (Reuters link);

    The U.S. Navy is monitoring a vessel called Kang Nam at sea under new U.N. sanctions that bar North Korea from exporting weapons, including missile parts and nuclear materials, they said.

    The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ship based in North Korea became “a subject of interest” after leaving a North Korean port on Wednesday.

    They declined to say what the ship, now in international waters, might be carrying.

    Today these stories intersect with a report from Fox News Jennifer Griffin that the McCain is maneuvering to interdict that North Korean ship suspected of carrying embargoed cargo. No links yets – just picked it up on the tube.

  • Khamenei certifies election

    In a surprising announcement today, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared there was a “definitive victory” for Ahmadinejad in the iranian election last weekend. Well maybe it wasn’t surprising – maybe it’s what we expected him to say. What’s surprising is that he was able to count so many votes so quickly all by himself to arrive at that conclusion. From the Wall Street Journal;

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare speech at Friday prayers at Tehran University, said protests should cease and the opposition must pursue its complaints within the confines of the cleric-led ruling system.

    He said protesters would be “held responsible for chaos if they didn’t end” days of massive demonstrations, and that official results showing a landslide for hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were beyond question. “There is 11 million votes difference,” Mr. Khamenei said. “How one can rig 11 million votes?”

    Mr. Khamenei blamed the U.K. and Iran’s enemies for the unrest, vigorously defending the ruling system….

    Apparently, Khamenei didn’t catch the latest from Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post;

    [P]eople aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

    This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime

    I’m pretty sure the reformists aren’t going to accept a decision from the “Supreme Leader”. Especially since there are stories like these that the Wall Street Journal has assembled from inside Iran;

    They beat students more when they saw posters of Mousavi in their rooms. And they carried big knives and guns.

    They also attacked the women’s dormitory next door. The Supreme Leader calls us rioters, but I want to ask him: How can sleeping women in their beds be rioters? Is this the Islamic justice he believes in?

    President Obama’s speech was good; he says that he will support us. He also said that nations must decide the fate of their countries by themselves. I agree with him, but now we don’t have any power to change the situation, so we need help and attention.

    My hand was hanging out of the taxi window with a little green ribbon — the color of the reformists — tied around my finger. One of the militiamen told me to “throw that ribbon away!” When I refused, 15 people attacked me inside the car. They beat me with their batons and tried to pull me out.

    My wife and my daughter who were sitting in the back seat cried and held me tight. I also held myself tight to the chair.

    It’s not about an election now – it’s about a bunch of people who are tired of being oppressed. I keep hearing from the Democrats that Americans voted for domestic change in 2008. I read in the comments sections of the Washington Post questions like “why should we care” about Iran? Is that the kind of nation we’ve become in the last few months? From a “shining city on the hill” to a short-sighted, selfish walled in city that can’t see beyond it’s own self-serving, petty wants?

    And, oh, since the current regime in Iran happens to be supporting our enemies in the war against terror, the fall of that regime would go a long way towards ending that war. Not to mention ending support to Hezbollah and Hamas in Syria and Gaza.

  • Navy preparing for ops against Nork shipping

    You’ve probably all read by now that the Pentagon on Tuesday warned that North Korea is about three years out of having missiles that can strike the mainland US;

    North Korea’s missiles could hit the United States in as few as three years if the reclusive rogue nation continues to ramp up its weapons system, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

    At a Tuesday morning Senate hearing on missile defense, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn pointed to Pyongyang’s recent steps to accelerate its long-range weapons program and agreed with Sen. John McCain, a Republican that the U.S. should be prepared for a “worst-case scenario” with North Korea.

    And that a Japanese newspaper is warning that North Korea will try to fire a missile towards Hawaii in the next few weeks;

    North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

    The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers), would be launched from North Korea’s Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, said the Yomiuri daily, Japan’s top-selling newspaper. It cited an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.

    The missile launch could come between July 4 and 8, the paper said.

    The Star and Stripes is reporting that US Navy elements are preparing to conduct operations against North Korean shipping;

    The U.S. Navy, acting on authority granted by the United Nations, is prepared to intercept North Korean ships and request permission to search them for arms or nuclear technology, a Pentagon official said Tuesday.

    Sailors cannot board a ship by force, but if an inspection is refused, the Navy can follow it to the next port and again press for an inspection. The approach is authorized by a U.N. Security Council resolution approved Friday.

    President Barack Obama and visiting South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said at the White House on Tuesday that the resolution must be fully enforced, but noted that it did not authorize military force. Lee said he and Obama agreed that “under no circumstance are we going to allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons.”

    “Under no circumstances”…well, unless the North Koreans insist on possessing nuclear weapons, of course. And lets tell them all in advance that we can’t use force. That won’t cost any unnecessary casualties, will it? What’s the point?

    Obama missed his opportunity to get tough with the North Koreans when he didn’t shoot down that first missile a few weeks back. Tough talk won’t stop Il, just like it hasn’t stopped anyone else. Maybe if the Navy parked off the North Korean shores (outside the 12 mile limit, of course) and shook their fists in unison – that might stop them.

  • Rip VanBaradei wakes from 20-year sleep

    Stunning, stunning news from the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday;

    Iran wants the ability to build nuclear weapons to gain the reputation of a major power in the Middle East, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.

    I’m shocked, aren’t you? This is the first I’d heard of this. But, ElBaradei may have made this announcement without examining all of the facts;

    Tehran denied the assertion.

    Oh, well, I feel better. Go back to sleep ElBaradei.

  • On that war funding bill vote

    One of our commenters, Another Disgrunted IVAW “member” wrote last night;

    Looks like 170 Republicans voted against the troops today. Why do they hate us? They send us to war and don’t want us to have the necessary equipment to win the wars.

    He/She is talking about this vote yesterday on the war funding bill;

    The 226-202 roll call Tuesday by which the House approved a $106 billion bill to ensure financing for war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the coming months.

    A “yes” vote is a vote to pass the bill.

    Voting yes were 221 Democrats and 5 Republicans.

    Voting no were 32 Democrats and 170 Republicans.

    A quick look through the news turned up the reason why so many Republicans voted against the bill like this one from Reuters;

    The House of Representatives on Tuesday narrowly backed a $106 billion bill to pay for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and extend billions in new credit to the International Monetary Fund.

    The legislation also includes extras like vouchers to spur U.S. car sales, and comes after a series of political battles that exposed the sharp fissures between President Barack Obama’s Democrats and the Republican minority.

    In fact, Republicans mostly opposed the $108 billion for the IMF (doesn’t the Left hate the IMF?) which they called an international bailout. Oh, yeah, and the spending bill included lots of little extras that had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq

    The legislation also ballooned after Obama sought billions of dollars to combat the H1N1 flu virus which has now become a pandemic. Lawmakers nearly doubled his request of $4 billion to $7.7 billion, though $5.8 billion is contingent on needs.

    From the Dayton Daily News;

    “What does a $108 billion global bailout have to do with protecting our troops and giving them the tools they need for victory?” asked House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio.

    I find it a little disingenuous of Democrats, and commenters, who didn’t complain about Democrats trying to pull funding out from the troops for the last two years and now suddenly want to denigrate Republicans for opposing Democrat spending sprees with legitimate concerns.

    TSO ADDED: I hope Jonn will forgive me for weighing in on his post, but the majority of Congressmen of both parties voting against this that I talked to also cited the conference taking out the Senate language blocking release of the photos.   This coupled with the non-military, non-emergency stuff in the supplemental (which is off budget) is what sealed the deal on the no votes.  It should be noted that there was still another month before these funds were needed.  The promise of Obama to block the release doesn’t ring true with a lot of folks.

  • 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.