Who said this in a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting while questioning John Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence?

I was just wondering, does the military have a plan to, if necessary, to go into Syria to go to the source of any weapons coming from Syria? That are going to Sunni insurgents? That are killing our troops? … I think we ought to take action on all fronts including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, obviously Iran is the focus – but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.

What member of the committee asked if the military had a plan for dealing with Syria and Iran?

Are you sitting down? No really, are you?

The answer is:

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Newsflash: Iran defies UN.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) – Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday in a finding that clears the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran.

“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.

In other news, the sun rose today, and the ocean is still full of water.

Are you comfortable with the idea of Iran with a nuclear bomb? Hope you’re getting really comfy. All the stern UN resolutions and severely worded reports have done precisely nothing.

Iran will be able to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb and there is little that can be done to prevent it, an internal European Union document has concluded.

In an admission of the international community’s failure to hold back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the document – compiled by the staff of Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief – says the atomic programme has been delayed only by technical limitations rather than diplomatic pressure. “Attempts to engage the Iranian administration in a negotiating process have not so far succeeded,” it states.

Imagine that; trying to negotiate with radicals has failed. Who would’ve thought? The result has been that indeed Iran is going to have nuclear materials.

The downbeat conclusions of the “reflection paper” – seen by the Financial Times – are certain to be seized on by advocates of military action, who fear that Iran will be able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb over the next two to three years. Tehran insists its purposes are purely peaceful.

“At some stage we must expect that Iran will acquire the capacity to enrich uranium on the scale required for a weapons programme,” says the paper, dated February 7 and circulated to the EU’s 27 national governments ahead of a foreign ministers meeting yesterday.

“In practice…the Iranians have pursued their programme at their own pace, the limiting factor being technical difficulties rather than resolutions by the UN or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The problems with Iran will not be resolved through economic sanctions alone.”

If those sanctions had been in place earlier and would’ve been stronger, then maybe–maybe–they would have had more effect. But everyone’s afraid of making the mullahs mad at us. “If we push too hard, it may increase tensions and drive them away from us.” Well guess what; they’re going their own way anyway, and all the UN resolutions you can muster won’t change that.

Not to mention that it’s hard to imagine sanctions working when our “allies” like France and Russia were enriching Saddam during the Oil-for-Food program. With friends like these….

The admission is a blow to hopes that a deal with Iran can be reached and comes at a sensitive time, when tensions between the US and Tehran are rising. Its implication that sanctions will prove ineffective will also be unwelcome to EU diplomats. Only yesterday the bloc agreed on how to apply United Nations sanctions on Tehran, overcoming a dispute between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar.

So the diplomatic elite will dither and produce more reports and redundant findings that confirm, once again, that you can’t negotiate in good faith with radicals. In the meantime, some say that the military option should be completely off the table, which I’m sure Tehran is very comforted to hear.

What the solution is at this point, I have no idea. I do know, however, that the world, in recent decades, has looked down at the US for its solutions but always lays the world’s problems at the feet of the US and scolds us for not doing more long after the world has failed to really do anything. What has Europe really done about the Iran problem? What has the UN done about the North Korean problem? Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. When will the world wake up to the fact that negotiating with dictators and radicals is an insane proposition, for everyone?

Technorati Tags: Iran, nuclear bomb, United Nations, North Korea

The QandO blog has a post commenting on this Fox poll (PDF file). The results of one particular question are troubling.

Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush
announced last week to succeed?

16-17 Jan 07
------------------Yes-No-(Don't know)
Average-----------63%-22--15
Democrats---------51%-34--15
Republicans-------79%-11--10
Independents------63%-19--17

This is shocking. On average, 1 in 5 Americans want the troop surge to fail. I can understand disagreements on policies and methods, but hoping for failure is simply beyond the pale.

One wonders where the 1 in 3 Democrats are coming from who hope for failure. Is Bush-hatred become so all-consuming for them that they’re hoping our troops can’t get the job done and the the Iraqis are unable to work up a stable democracy and the insurgency manages to destabilize the region? That’s what a failure to curtail the current problems would mean. This is tantamount to wishing harm on their own soldiers (but please don’t question their patriotism).

Technorati Tags: Fox News, polls, troop surge, Democrats

Hugo Chavez, with the backing of his guys in the Venezuelan Congress, continues to consolidate his power.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was sworn in on Wednesday for a new six-year term that he vowed to use to press a radical socialist revolution including nationalizations that have roiled financial markets.

Emboldened by his landslide re-election win, the typically combative anti-U.S. leader has gone on the attack, deciding to strip a private opposition TV channel of its license and take over some major companies owned by foreign investors.

“Fatherland, socialism or death — I take the oath,” Chavez said.

The man who calls Cuban President Fidel Castro his mentor changed tradition by draping the presidential sash from his left shoulder instead of his right in what he says is a symbol of his socialist credentials.

Legislators at the ceremony in Congress chanted “Long live socialism.”

Investors took fright this week at the leftist drive that further consolidates power in the hands of a former coup leader who already controls Congress, the courts and says he has total support in the army and the giant state oil company.

As the United States criticized Chavez’s moves against private property, the stock market lost almost a fifth of its value on Tuesday, debt prices tumbled to a six-week low and the currency changed hands at nearly twice the official rate

But he’s not worried.

Still, buoyed by strong oil revenues and high popularity, Chavez is expected to ride out any economic and political storm.

Something tells me that there’s a high correlation between “strong oil revenues” and “high popularity”. If he’s buying the latter with the former, like he’s doing in Harlem, it’s no wonder he keeps getting re-elected.

In the meantime, he’s planning on holding on to this power for as long as he can make it last, never mind term limits.

A leading anti-U.S. voice in the world and in the vanguard of a shift to the left in Latin America, Chavez now wants to scrap presidential term limits and lead the OPEC nation for decades.

Chavez, who rode to Congress for the swearing-in ceremony in an open-top car waving at crowds of supporters, has said his new term’s plans include stripping the central bank of its autonomy and taking on special legislative powers.

…

Chavez’s nationalization plans remain hazy and the utilities and foreign investors want to know whether he plans to take a 51-percent governing stake or seize all of their enterprises.

Chavez has already confiscated large cattle ranches. But his decision to nationalize the country’s biggest telecommunications company CANTV and power firms represents a bold new policy.

Calling him a dictator may not be technically correct, but in word and deed he is most certainly consolidating his hold over the country and ensuring it continues, stealing entire business sectors if need be.

Next time you see a Sheehan or a Belafonte plant a big wet one on him, just remember who supports him and who his useful idiots are.

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Democrats, Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Carter

And so it begins.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 – Democratic leaders in the Senate vowed on Sunday to use their new Congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war.

The Democrats – the incoming majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada; the incoming Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan; and the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware – said a phased redeployment of troops would be their top priority when the new Congress convenes in January, even before an investigation of the conduct of the war.

“We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,” Mr. Levin said in an appearance on the ABC News program “This Week.” In a telephone interview later, Mr. Levin added, “The point of this is to signal to the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that they are going to have to solve their own problems.”

This is a clear violation of truth in labelling. Remember, one year ago, the Democrats voted overwhelmingly against this very maneuver. Their main voice in this, John Murtha, called for it and wrote his own resolution on the matter. The Republicans didn’t bring Murtha’s up for a vote, but did bring up a virtually identical one that the Dems were completely against. See here for a comparison. They wouldn’t put their votes where their mouths were, and apparently didn’t want to be considered the Cut and Run Party. But now that they have control of the legislature, and think they have a mandate for their position, they’re going full steam ahead.

This is most likely a huge misreading of the recent election results. The NY Times wrote an article on one of their polls, which, unsurprisingly, tilts left (e.g. they ask which party is more likely to bring the troops home, but doesn’t ask which party is more likely to achieve victory). What isn’t covered but requires you to click on a sidebar link is one of the questions about strategy. Only 27% want to remove all troops from Iraq. Those who want to continue the current strategy (8%) plus those who want a change in strategy (61%) compromise a vast majority (69%) that want, not this retreat the Democrats will propose, but a course that will lead to something that the poll respondents consider victory.

Yes, everyone’s got their own idea of what this should be (mine is an Iraqi democracy that can defend itself, thought you really can’t call the removal of Hussein’s regime and the killing and capturing of many top al Qaeda honchos a complete “defeat”). But the point is that the Democrats are looking at a general dissatisfaction with the prosecution of the war and mistaking it for dissatisfaction with simply being in the war.

This is the Vietnam blunder; bailing out of an unpopular war before the job’s done, and allowing the region to descend into chaos for a generation. Until Iraq is ready to stand on its own, someone else will have to hold them up. Either it’ll be us, or it’ll be one of the many other factions eager to toast the fledgling democracy. The Democrats are either refusing to remember history, or are playing politics with the lives of the Iraqis, whom they claim concern over when they hear civilian casualty figures. And yet they wish to set us on a course that will condemn far more to death in a struggle for power and, based on the winner, that struggle’s aftermath.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Democrats, troop reductions, Harry Reid, Carl Levin, Joe Biden, election, Vietnam

Orson Scott Card, Mormon and well-known science fiction writer and (former) Democrat voter, has a (rather lengthy) column as to why he’ll be voting Republican tomorrow. He calls it “The Only Issue This Election Day”.

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case — if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way — I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — the party I joined back in the 1970s — is dead. Of suicide.

Personally, I have a number of other issues that I agree with the Republicans on, and hence my predilections to vote for them anyway. But this is worth noting, coming from someone of the religious Left (and while I and others may have some doctrinal and theological differences, we’re not going to debate the LDS religion in the comment thread; violations will be cheerfully deleted).

Card hits many topics–nation building, the hope of democracy, the Sunni/Shi’ite dynamic, historical blunders that Democrats are willing to repeat, the anti-American media, the questions of Iran and North Korea, Bush’s conduct of the War on Terror–to make the point that Bush is indeed playing his cards quite right in the Middle East and the world, and that, in spite of obvious problems in the short term, the long term strategy should continue, and America shouldn’t bail out on people whom we’ve helped liberate until they are ready to pick up the mantle themselves.

Card knows who he’s going to vote for, and he makes quite the case for his decision. This is one article really worth reading before you step into the voting booth.

Technorati Tags: Orson Scott Card, election, terrorism, War on Terror, Democrat, Mormon

There’s certainly no ambiguity as to who these guys wants to win.

Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday’s midterm congressional election in the U.S. – including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party’s position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are “tired.”

They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.

They said a withdrawal would also embolden their own terror groups to enhance “resistance” against Israel.

“Of course Americans should vote Democrat,” Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, told WND.

And there’s more.

Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats’ talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel “proud.”

“As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk,” he told WND. “Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal.”

Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas’ military wing in the Gaza Strip, said the policy of withdrawal “proves the strategy of the resistance is the right strategy against the occupation.”

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James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” today has an e-mail from a soldier in Iraq. With his experience with what’s going on with the Army, the culture and the changing circumstances, his suggestion is that the correct policy needs to be something between “stay the course” and “cut and run”. It seems to me to be a very insightful look at reality there. Some of his suggestions are, I’ll admit, tough to swallow if indeed they’d be necessary. Definitely worth the read (and as always, getting the daily e-mail of this column is recommended). He concludes:

James, there’s a lot more to this than I’ve written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with “stay the course” and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don’t see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.

At the same time, failure in Iraq would be worse than a dozen Somalias, and would render us as impotent and emasculated as we were in the days after Vietnam. There is a global cultural-ideological struggle being waged, and abdication from Iraq is tantamount to concession.

Later, Taranto quotes Nancy Pelosi, who’d most likely be Speaker of the House after a majority Democrat win.

“But you don’t think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?” Stahl continues.

“They have,” Pelosi agrees. “The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean we stay there. They’ll stay there as long as we’re there.”

She seems to think (or is trying to sell us on the idea) that the moment we leave, all will be well with the world and the jihadists will become model citizens or at least stop attacking American interests. As the sergeant tells us (gotta read the whole thing), there’s more going on than just terrorism, and it’s not easily dealt with, and especially not dealt with by running away.

Technorati Tags: James Taranto, Iraq, Middle East, war, terrorism, Nancy Pelosi, stay the course, cut and run

The Iraqi government sounds to me like it would like you to vote Republican, please.

Iraq’s deputy prime minister today urged the international community not to “cut and run” from his country.

Barham Salih called for realism but not defeatism

Barham Salih was speaking after talks with Tony Blair amid growing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic for an “exit strategy” for the withdrawal of American and British troops from Iraq.

Mr Salih said in Downing Street that the future of Iraq was vital to the future of the Middle East and world order.

“This is a society that was traumatised by 35 years of tyranny and trying to build a functioning democracy in the heart of the Islamic Middle East.”

The elected government of Iraq needed to make tough choices, but for some time it would be reliant on the support of the international community, he said.

As I’ve noted before, even the United States didn’t have a constitutional government spring forth immediately following the Revolutionary War. It took years for us to agree on a Constitution, and even that took more than one attempt. (The first attempt gave too little power to the national government.) Further, we were not nearly as oppressed by the government we threw off as the Iraqis have been. A lot of long-buried tensions have come to the surface, as well as the influence of terrorists and nearby rogue states that don’t want to see democracy work in the region. Leaving before Iraq is ready will simply fulfill the politically-motivated prophesies that the Left has been pronouncing since the war started.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Barham Salih, cut and run, Middle East