LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 6/12/09

7 posts: (1) Afghan War: Commando Chaser--Us v. Them; (2) Feith on Obama in Cairo--Wobble Watch; (3) Global Growth Doldrums--"It's the Earth Stupid!; (4) Sotomayor & Obama: Racial Politics Poison--The Home Front; (5) Europe Gets Its Presidential Wish--Wobble Watch; (6) Krauthammer Wins Breindel Award & Salutes Fox--The Home Front; (7) Letterman's Palin Porn--MSM Murders.

N.B., The Fenton Report weblog posted my article, "Government Motors: Death of the Private Corporation", yesterday.  Give the new blog a good look.

LFTC - Afghan War: Commando Chaser

A New York Times front-pager reports that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, true to his own special ops pedigree, is assembling a "dream team" of special ops types to go after Taliban and drug lords.  The NYT reports that the new Afghan commander has been given "extraordinary leeway" in his search.  Here is a WSJ interview with the Generall in which he explains his strategy.

LFTC - Feith on Obama in Cairo

Senior Bush 43 defense official Douglas Feith analyzes last week's Obama in Cairo epic, and finds that our Chief Executive uses "must" as a substitute for "how"; well worth a read for a case study in slapdash policy thinking by our novice Chief Executive.

LFTC - Global Growth Doldrums

In a column about America's budget mess and the resulting crowding out of private sector activity George Will drops an astonishing data-point: Global electricity use will fall, on a YoY (year over year) basis for the first time since...1945.  Yes, you are right: that means since the end of the Second World War.

Meanwhile, one top financial blogger notes that total US debt has risen slightly since last fall, due to massive public borrowing that offsets a modest drop in private borrowing.  David Brooks sees a "Great Unwinding" in the worldwide wave of deleveraaging.  Notable among the metrics in his column is that in 2007 our federal deficit had shrunk to 1.2 percent of GDP (about $165B); it is now estimated that FY09 will be more than 10 times that--13 percent of GDP (close to $2TR).  We were growing out of the first number; we cannot grow out of the second.  Brooks sees lots of good in Team Obama's ideas; on that, he should guess again.

One example of an awful idea: have the new "Compensation Czar" issue not only pay rules for executives at companies that take taxpayer bailout money, but also issue "guidelines" for compensation at all private companies.  As a WSJ editorial notes, this is shades of...Richard Nixon's infamous, disastrous wage-price controls.

LFTC - Sotomayor & Obama: Racial Politics Poison

Shelby Steele warns that President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Associate Justice imperils his post-racial Presidency:

But of course "post-racialism" is not a real idea. It is an impression, a chimera that grows out of a very specific racial manipulation that I have called "bargaining." Here the minority makes a bargain with white society: I will not "guilt" you with America's centuries of racism if you will not hold my minority status against me. Whites love this bargain because it allows them to feel above America's racist past and, therefore, immune to charges of racism. By embracing the bargainer they embrace the impression of a world beyond racial division, a world in which whites are innocent and minorities carry no anger. This is the impression that animates bargainers like Mr. Obama or Oprah Winfrey with an irresistible charisma. Even if post-racialism is an obvious illusion -- a bargainer's trick as it were -- whites are flattered by believing in it.

But the Sotomayor nomination shows that Mr. Obama has no idea what a post-racial society would look like. In selling himself as a candidate to the American public he is a gifted bargainer beautifully turned out in post-racial impressionism. But in the real world of Supreme Court nominations, where there is a chance to actually bring some of that idealism down to earth, he chooses a hardened, divisive and race-focused veteran of the culture wars he claims to transcend.

I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. The latter form of politics is grounded in being what I call a challenger -- i.e., someone who presumes that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities. Whites quietly seethe at challengers like Jesse Jackson who use the moral authority of their race's historic grievance to muscle for preferential treatment. Mr. Obama has been loved precisely because he was an anti-Jackson, a bargainer who grants them innocence before asking for their support. So when Mr. Obama plays identity politics -- as in the Sotomayor nomination -- he starts to look too much like the challenger. Still, if he doesn't allow identity to trump merit so that he can elevate people like Judge Sotomayor, he angers the minorities who so lavishly supported him. So far he is more the captive of America's ongoing racial neurosis than the man who might liberate us from it.

Sonia is not the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (actually, Wrong), to be sure.  But neither is she a spiritual descendant of liberal civil rights giants like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.  Thus Steele concludes:

With the Sotomayor nomination, Mr. Obama has made the same mistake his wife made in her "This is the first time I am proud of my country" remark: bad faith toward an America that has shown him only good faith.

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy says that Obama is "the first Muslim President" in the same sense that Bill Clinton was famously called by writer Toni Morrison "America's first black President": not skin color, but empathy by the bucket.  This may well be true, but if so, Obama will pay an even steeper price than otherwise, if Islamist terror strikes within our borders, or even if major policy reversals come due to Obama's placating Arabs.

LFTC - Europe Gets Its Presidential Wish

Ralph Peters says that Europeans got the President they wanted, but that 'Bam is the most anti-European President since James Monroe.  It seems our on-and-off friends across The Pond forgot the ancient Chinese admonition to beware what one wishes for, lest one get it.  As one of those who felt that Bush 43 & Cheney were absurdly demonized by our Euro-pals--ditto when Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office--I derive considerable schadenfreude (that wonderful German word meaning "malicious glee" but expressing the idea far more poetically) from this turn of events.

LFTC - Krauthammer Wins Eric Breindel Award & Salutes Fox

In accepting the 11th annual Eric Brenidel Award named after the great journalist who died tragically at age 42, Charles Krauthammer paid fulsome tribute to Fox News (7:46), as to how the Rupert Murdoch creation broke the monopoly of network news.  Those of us over the age of 40 well remember how 90 percent of American viewers got their nightly news diet from the Big Three networks.  When Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War in 1968, it marked the beginning of the end; when "The Most Trusted Man in America" decided, in 1970, that the Big Story was cutting the defense budget, and in 1972 that the Big Story was the growing Watergate scandal, these news stories gathered vital momentum.

Along with Rush Limbaugh's "Dittoheads" who transformed talk radio in a vibrant outside the Beltway medium, Rupert Murdoch's creation transformed TV coverage.  Krauthammer is a worthy recipient of the award, but his voice, as CK fully recognizes and so stated, would be a far smaller one in reach (though no less eloquent) but for Fox.  Which is why the "Hush Rush" law Congressional Democratic leaders want is so dangerous.  Stay tuned--and informed.

Krauthammer continued his brilliant commentary with a new evisceration of the moral equivalence in Obama's Cairo speech:

Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding.

After giving several examples--such as 44 equating discrimination against women in America with stoning them in Iran, hurling acid in their faces in Afghanistan, etc.--CK concludes:

For all of his philosophy, the philosopher-king protests too much. Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He's showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.

Distorting history is not truth-telling but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

LFTC - Letterman's Palin Porn

Check out this story & associated video clip (1:42) of Letterman jokes aimed at Sarah Palin and her daughters.  Then try to imagine any comedian making such jokes about the Obama family.

LFTC - Index 6/11/09

4 posts: (1) Miranda Marries Terror; Paulau Hosts Terrorists--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (2) Peace & Palestinians--Wobble Watch; (3) Europe Under Mother Russia's Energy Thumb--Wobble Watch; (4) Navy Blue Angels: Pilot's View--The Home Front.

LFTC - Miranda Marries Terror; Palau Hosts Terrorists

This report is disturbing, to say the least.  It seems that Team Obama has decided to give terror detainees the...MIRANDA warnings.  "You have the right to remain silent...."  May as well discard the Army Field Manual, as even those questions can now be refused, upon a detainee's affirmation of the right of terrorists seeking to mass-murder Americans to remain silent.

A WSJ editorial notes that our longtime ally, Palau, the Pacific Island nation, is getting rich to take 17 Uighur detainees off Gitmo custody.  With 20,000 people and a GDP of $164M, Palau is getting paid $200M--$11.7M per detainee.  The WSJ wryly notes that at $10,000 per resident, we would have to have paid France $61.5B.  China, with 1.4B people?  You do the math....

LFTC - Peace & Palestinians

Mortimer Zuckerman, one of the best writers on Israeli - Palestinian matters, rebuts the absurdities President Obama's Cairo address foisted off once again on the world, above all as to the Israeli settlements being at least as great an obstacle to peace as Palestinian terror:

If the conventional "two state" formula is a problem masquerading as a solution, what of the settlements pretty much everyone condemns? This is a bogus issue, just another way of needling Israel and helping the Palestinians duck responsibility. Look at pre-1967, before there was a single settlement. The Arabs rejected every plan to divide the land into adjacent states, one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. The Arab response was the three No's. No peace with Israel; no negotiations with Israel; no recognition of Israel.

What was the situation before 1967, before there was a single settlement, or before 1948? Was it peace? No, it was friction, terrorism, and bloodshed. Remember: The Palestinian Liberation Organization was established in 1964, before 1967, before there was a single settlement, and when the Arabs controlled the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But what was the PLO seeking to liberate in 1964? It was to remove pre-1967 Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

The rhetoric about settlements, echoed in the president's speech, is different from the reality. The reality is that this "problem" goes away when the borders of the two states are established. All the settlements on the wrong side of the line will then be dismantled, just as they were when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. To make modest levels of natural growth in these communities to deal with the 9,600 babies that were born last year is not the proper area of focus.

The background of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship is important here because it sets the parameters for mutual confidence. In the year 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon; this was followed by Hezbollah attacks from the land it abandoned. Also that year, the Camp David offer of a Palestinian state by Ehud Barak to Arafat was followed by the launching of a terror war by the PLO—Intifada II—that killed over 1,000 Israelis. In 2002 and 2003, the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled settlements there. This was followed by the launching of a rocket war which Israel finally had to answer. In 2008, Olmert's even more generous peace proposals to Abbas were dismissed without a real engagement in a dialogue. None of these actions produced even minor moves toward peace but instead led to greater hostility and Islamic radicalism.

Zuckerman points to one promising initiative, supported by the Netanyahu administration:

Israel supports an alternative based on the achievement of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. They have succeeded at effective institution building in Jenin, Bethlehem, and Hebron, turning them into the most peaceful areas in the West Bank with a minimal Israeli presence. They accomplished it by training local police who now function effectively as police forces rather than armed militias; by supplying local authorities with funding, advice, and training; and by building a commercial middle class who want to keep the region peaceful. These bottom-up nuts-and-bolts projects are the building blocks necessary for effective Palestinian nation-building. It will take more time and patience, but it is the only approach that has worked.

Fatah is deeply divided between veterans and the young guard and on key issues such as the immediate establishment of the Palestinian state. But others, including leading businessmen, argue that first there should be a long period of Blair-Dayton institution-building to ensure that the state is not established on a foundation of corruption. In this way, instead of a cycle of violence, everybody would enjoy a cycle of hope.

Here is a May 7, 2009 presentation by General Dayton, describing his peace operation.  It prints at about 15 pages (they are not numbered, so I am guessing) and is astonishing.  I had thought ex-PM Tony Blair wasting his time, gallivanting around in the fashion of special Team Obama envoy George Mitchell.  It seems as if I was wrong--Blair - Dayton sounds like just what the Mideast peace doctor ordered.

Bottom Line.  Overwhelming public focus has been placed upon a high-profile top-down all-at-once solution.  Such requires a Palestinian Sadat.  None are evident.  The alternative is  a low-profile bottom-up solution.  Blair - Dayton is precisely that.  The less attention it gets, the better the chance to create facts on the ground that can eventually create conditions conducive to a final settlement.  Peace will be achieved, if at all, not in pompous diplomatic opera bouffe like Annapolis 2007, but day by day, person by person house by house, street by street.  If B-D succeeds, chalk up another win for Bush 43.

LFTC - Europe Under Mother Russia's Energy Thumb

This BBC report details how European countries alarmed by last year's (and earlier) energy cut-offs of natural gas by Russia seek alternative supplies, and thus now face escalating blackmail from Mother Russia, to the effect that supply cut-offs could be instituted again.

LFTC - Navy Blue Angels: Pilot's View

This Blue Angels formation flying video (9:55) shows a cockpit's view during 10 minutes of flying an F/A-18 Hornet in tight formation.  Sit back & enjoy a riveting view.

LFTC - Index 6/10/09

5 posts: (1) Supremes Diss Chrysler Bondholders, Constitution Too--The Home Front; (2) Geithner, China & "De-Globalization"--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) Saving Jobs or Saving Obamanomics--The Home Front; (4) Gordon Brown on the Brink: Can Labor Lower Sink? Will EU Sink Too?--Wobble Watch; (5) Lebanon: Final Tally--Wobble Watch.

LFTC - Supremes Diss Chrysler Bondholders, Constitution Too

In a two-page denial of review, the Supremos tossed Chrysler creditors onto history's ash-heap.  The Court asserted that the creditors had not shown a likelihood of prevailing upon the merits, and thus could not get their day in Supreme Court.  This is judicial boilerplate that ignores the prospect that the issues raised by Indiana pension fund bondholders--Constitutional questions of taking property without just compensation and impairing obligation of contracts--somehow did not merit a hearing because the petitioners were unlikely to prevail.

Thus the Court tossed aside creditors who bargained that while economic risk could deprive them of promised full recovery, no political intrusion would so deny them. Our Supremos cannot have been unaware of the transparent political favoritism that put first the government and then the UAW in front of less favored creditors.  Ditto the massive politicization of GM's corporate activities.

This is the same Court that last summer invented a right of habeas corpus for alien terrorists held on foreign soil (the Court's pretending otherwise was risible), a right not extended ever before even to lawful combatants in prior conflicts.  Activist intervention to confer rights upon terrorists is fair game for this Court, but not activist intervention to prevent the government from shoving aside property rights in favor of political pals.

The Court whose majority was repelled by harsh treatment of terror detainees--Heaven forbid they should suffer even momentary discomfort, in pursuit of information that might save thousands of innocent lives--could not muster outrage at the government shoving aside politically weak senior creditors in favor of politically connected junior creditors.  (I witnessed the oral argument in the Gitmo habeas corpus case; the raw anger of several Justices against the government was evident--and thus the result heralded.)

Bottom Line.  Both Court decisions very likely will have fateful, immense consequences.  In neither case are they likely to prove felicitous.

LFTC - Geithner, China & "De-Globalization"

International finance maven David Smick sees "de-globalization" behind Team Obama's agenda, and notes that China's & America's economies remain inextricably linked nonetheless.  Deglobalization means a gradual recalibration of the global economy to reduce inter-dependence, but need not degenerate into protectionism.  One consequence of inflationary fears worldwide is the sudden spike in oil prices, which have roughly doubled from recent lows.  This will act as a large tax hike on Americans, slowing economic growth.  Without a price floor, the spike will not stimulate non-oil energy investment.  Economist Arthur Laffer sees inflation and soaring interest rates as virtually inevitable, given the Fed's massive expansion of the monetary base, and huge Treasury fiscal financing needs.  Laffer's article merits a very careful read.  Also worth reading is this Fortune article on the immense debt burden we face.

LFTC - Saving Jobs or Saving Obamanomics?

Ex-Bush 43 speechwriter William McGurn details how Team Obama fudges job creation numbers.  It is simple: Create a fictive category called "jobs saved" by estimating with convenient macroeconomic numbers what no one can prove or disprove: how many jobs were saved--otherwise would have been lost--but for the geniuses behind Obamanomics.

LFTC - Gordon Brown on the Brink, Can Labor Lower Sink? Will EU Sink Too?

Ex-Thatcher aide John O'Sullivan details how ghastly the situation in Britain is for PM Gordon Brown and the Labor Party he has dragged to its worst political position since the First World War.  Brown's reputation has cratered for two reasons: (a) the financial collapse has shredded his aura of competent economic management that was his chief asset entitling him to succeed Tony Blair; (b) serial, sleazy scandals.  O'Sullivan writes that Brown has taken on a "Nixonian Iago" persona.  Stay tuned to see if he hangs in until next year--when, on all the odds, his Labor Party will be hung by voters at the polls.

Author Anne Applebaum looks at why Europe's EU parliamentary elections swung to the right.  She concludes that European voters rejected left parties that "spend like drunken sailors."  A WSJ article adds detail on how fringe parties entering the EU Paliament bring populism to the fore; parties on the right cvapitalized on perceptions of voters that leftist governments appeased militant Muslim groups.  Columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sees Europe coming apart at the seams as depression deepens.

LFTC - Lebanon: FInal Tally

A WSJ editorial gives the final number for moderate parties: 71 seats in the Parliament, one more than in 2005; also, new moderate coalitions were formed and succeeded at the ballot box. 

Thomas Friedman observed the elections inside Lebanon.  His solid assessment & eyewitness account are well worth reading in full.  In essence, the pro-democracy forces braved Hezbollah's menace and triumphed, cowing Hezbollah's normally fiery leader, Hassan Nasrallah.  Friedman credits President Bush for hard power--forcing the Syrians out in 2005--and President Obama for soft power--saying encouraging things; but 95 percent of the credit he rightly gives the courageous Lebanese who voted for peace & self-governance.  Hard power made possible the Cedar Revolution, without which soft power would have been futile.  Here is one heartwarming tale:

I watched the voting at a school in the mountain village of Brummana. People came by car, by wheelchair, by foot — young, old and sick. One very elderly lady walked in hooked up to a small oxygen tank. The tube was in her nose helping her to breathe. A young man was carrying the silver oxygen canister on one side of her and a young woman was holding her steady on the other side. But, by God, she was going to vote.

“People never turned out like this before,” Sebouh Akharjelian, 29, a businessman in the voting line said to me. “The stakes are very high. It is either surrender to Ahmadinejad or be in the pro-Western camp.”

I had feared that the Cedar Revolution had been strangled in its crib by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.  I am delighted to see that the Cedar Revolution is not dead yet.

Friedman also notes that Iran's June 12 elections will be, in stark contrast, phony, with only pre-approved, mullah-sanctioned candidates eligible.  Con Coughlin's WSJ op-ed details Iran's "Potemkin election" lineup.

lFTC - Index 6/9/09

6 posts: (1) Barack & Michelle: Celestial Governance--MSM Murders; (2) Chrysler, Treasury & Alexander Hamilton--The Home Front; (3) Kissinger on North Korea--Us v. Them; (4) Belated Truth: Palin Cleared--The Home Front; (5) Solar Power: An Inconvenient Truth--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (6) Al Gore's All Too Convenient Truth--The Home Front.

LFTC - Barack & Michelle: Celestial Governance

NRO satirist Rob Long hilariously profiles the Obamas with a mock Newsweek interview of them in Heaven.  It illustrates the depths to which mainstream media often sink in lionizing the First Couple and hanging on their every word.  But not always, as this NBC Today Show video clip (4:10) makes fun of 44's over-reliance on the TelePrompTer.  Enjoy a few laughs in an unfunny time.

LFTC - Chrysler, Treasury and Alexander Hamilton

Praise to Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for doing the right thing, by delaying Fiat's consummation of its merger with Chrysler until the entire Court can consider whether to hear the appeal of several Indiana state pension funds that their Constitutional rights were impaired by the UAW-Obama deal.  (Chrysler's attorneys also argued that using TARP funds to finance the deal violated the act of Congress creating TARP, which was intended to fund distressed financial institutions only.)  Had Justice Ginsburg denied Indiana's appeal (from a federal appellate panel's ruling last Friday, summarily affirming a federal bankruptcy judge's approval of the deal), the other eight Justices would not have had a chance to decide whether to hear the case.

GOP Congressman Darrell Issa (CA) writes on how the desire of Alexander Hamilton, first Treasury Secretary, to promote honest, open government has been thwarted by Team Obama's Treasury.  Both this and the prior administration in its closing months have violated this injunction offered by Hamilton: "No government has a right to do merely what it pleases.”

Robert Samuelson wonders if deflation, inflation or both is in our future.  Hudson scholar Irwin Stelzer thinks the Fed & China will ultimately restrain Obamanomics:

Treasury IOUs are flooding the market to finance deficits that by White House estimates will take the national debt from 40% of GDP to 70% (the Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at 80%) by 2011, the highest level since the second world war. Throw in the printing of money to support the Fed’s efforts to prop up credit markets and investors have good reason to fear inflation and a decline in the value of the dollars with which the government will repay their loans. So they are driving up long-term interest rates. And dumping dollars.

If those trends continue, the green shoots will wither as higher rates abort the housing recovery, and make it more expensive for businesses to make job-creating investments. Bernanke told Congress that “we, as a nation, [must] begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance . . . [that] will require a willingness to make difficult choices”. This can only be interpreted as a warning to the administration that if it doesn’t get the deficit under control, the Fed will start contracting the money supply and allow interest rates to rise. Just how the president and Congress can be persuaded to make those “difficult choices” remains unclear.

Perhaps that friendly persuasion will come from the folks who, like the Fed, pose a threat to the Obama agenda: the Chinese who are sitting on about $1.4 trillion of America’s IOUs. On last week’s trip to China, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, was greeted with derisive laughter when he assured students at Peking University that “Chinese assets are very safe”. Their elders were more polite. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Construction Bank, helpfully noted that the dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency “in the short term” because the American “economy is No 1 in terms of competitiveness, in terms of innovation”. Longer-term prospects are being made clear by Chinese officials who are warning that unless America puts its fiscal house in order they will seek to reduce the role of the dollar in world trade and will not buy IOUs at anything like current interest rates.

All this means that Obama’s White House team will have to make the “difficult choices” Bernanke is calling for, and the Chinese are demanding, if it is to avoid a recovery-dampening rise in interest rates. Stimulus spending is one thing, justifiable to fight the recession. Running a deficit of 13% of GDP to fund the Democratic wish list of new entitlements and the reconstruction of the energy and healthcare sectors is red ink of a deeper hue.

Bottom Line.  Government actions impairing protection of private property cannot but, in the long run, undermine the workings of America's economy.  The Supremes either hear the Chrysler appeal and overturn its terms, or the Constitutional protections against seizing property without just compensation and impairing the obligations of contracts are tossed on history's ash-heap.

LFTC - CIA in Court: Yes, We Want to Keep a Secret!

The Washington Post reports that the CIA has hold a federal judge who ordered release of 65 videotapes that doing so would reveal sources & methods and inflict immense national security harm.  An affidavit filed by DCI Leon Panetta states:

Panetta argued that none of the 65 CIA documents immediately at issue, which the ACLU has sought for several years in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, should be released. He asked U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to draw a legal distinction between the administration's release in April of Justice Department memos authorizing the harsh interrogations and the CIA's desire to keep classified its own documents detailing the specific handling of detainees at its secret facilities overseas.

He said that while the Justice Department memos discussed harsh interrogation "in the abstract," the CIA information was "of a qualitatively different nature" because it described the interrogation techniques "as applied in actual operations."

The "disclosure of explicit details of specific interrogations" would provide al-Qaeda "with propaganda it could use to recruit and raise funds," Panetta said, describing the information at issue as "ready-made ammunition." He also submitted a classified statement to the court that he said explains why detainees could use the contents to evade questions in the future, even though Obama has promised that the United States will not use the harsh interrogation techniques again.

The judge, to date, has consistently sided with the ACLU plaintiffs.

LFTC - Kissinger on North Korea

Henry Kissinger argued in an op-ed yesterday that accepting North Korean acquisition of a full nuclear capability (delivery as well as possession, of nukes) would undermine negotiations with Iran.  HK's closing paragraphs call for a concerted action among the major world powers:

De facto acquiescence in a North Korean nuclear program would require a reconsideration of U.S. strategic planning. More emphasis would need to be given to missile defense. It would be essential to redesign the American deterrent strategy in a world of multiple nuclear powers -- a challenge unprecedented in our experience. The enhanced role of non-state actors with respect to terrorism would have to be addressed. The concepts of deterrence against state actors are familiar, though not in a world of multiple nuclear powers. They have little or no relevance to non-state actors operating by stealth.

The ultimate issue is not regional but concerns the prospects for world order, especially for a Pacific political structure along the lines put forward by the thoughtful Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd. There could scarcely be an issue more suited to cooperation among the Great Powers than nonproliferation, especially with regard to North Korea, a regime that is run by fanatics; located on the borders of China, Russia and South Korea; and within missile range of Japan. Still, the major countries have been unable to galvanize themselves into action.

In this multipolar world, many issues such as nuclear proliferation, energy and climate change require a concert approach. The major powers of the 21st century have proved to be heterogeneous and without much experience as part of a concert of powers. Connecting their purposes, however, needs to be their ultimate task if the world is to avoid the catastrophe of unchecked proliferation.

HK surely knows that this appears unlikely at the moment.  A rookie, little-tested American President with star power and brain power but sketchy historical background and shaky instincts on how to deal with rogue and revolutionary adversaries, caught in the midst of a global financial economic crisis that will linger for years, is hardly likely to muster the necessary will to fully, forcefully confront the North's nuclear quest.

LFTC : Belated Truth: Palin Cleared

The Washington Times reports something I missed last week: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was cleared last week of ethics charges pending since 2008.  Nonetheless the accusations had their intended effect: casting a shadow over her during the fall campaign.

LFTC - Solar Power: An Inconvenient Truth

This solar power op-ed reveals an inconvenient truth about solar energy, one common to alternative energy ideas and projects: there are collateral consequences that are simply awful--in some case environmental, in others economic, in some cases both.  Solar power in America's western & southwestern deserts requires water consumption on a massive scale, unless existing water users are forced to use less:

Most people think of solar power as the flat panels on a neighbor's roof that are used to heat water. This photovoltaic system directly converts the sun's waves into electricity. But so far, it's not commercially feasible. The power is costly and there's no juice at night, but utilities want cheap power 24/7. On the plus side, photovoltaic solar uses almost no water.

In contrast, most large solar power projects use a system called concentrating solar power, or CSP, that heats a fluid that boils water to turn a turbine. CSP, just like any thermal power plant, produces waste heat as a byproduct. In most cases, cooling towers release the heat to the atmosphere through evaporation, a process that uses gobs of water. In fact, CSP uses four times as much water as a natural gas plant and twice as much as a coal or nuclear plant.

Air-cooling is hugely inefficient in the desert.  So the way water-towers cool solar plants is to persuade existing users to use less.  This is highly unlikely to happen.  So what will Uncle do next?  What it is doing to banks and auto company investors: force them to change their ways.  Greens are all for this kind of use of governmental power.

LFTC - Al Gore's All Too Convenient Truth

Al Gore testified to a House committee in April that every penny he has made since leaving office went to non-profits.  Yet, according to Fox News, Al's assets have soared from $2M to $100M since then.  Call it "An All Too Convenient Truth."

The following essay is republished with permission by the consulting firm, Stratfor.  If Friedman, a shrewd analyst, is right, Team Obama is ready to put wrecking the Netanyahu government ahead of any other Mideast priority, because of his abiding faith in his ability to oversee a final settlement of the Palestinians problems.  It brings to mind Henry Kissinger's witticism during the Carter years that if it is dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, it can be fatal to be our friend.  Read Friedman's disturbing essay.

West Bank Settlements and the Future of U.S. - Israeli Relations

June 8, 2009

by George Friedman

Amid the rhetoric of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech June 4 in Cairo, there was one substantial indication of change, not in the U.S. relationship to the Islamic world but in the U.S. relationship to Israel. This shift actually emerged prior to the speech, and the speech merely touched on it. But it is not a minor change and it must not be underestimated. It has every opportunity of growing into a major breach between Israel and the United States.

The immediate issue concerns Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The United States has long expressed opposition to increasing settlements but has not moved much beyond rhetoric. Certainly the continued expansion and development of new settlements on the West Bank did not cause prior administrations to shift their policies toward Israel. And while the Israelis have occasionally modified their policies, they have continued to build settlements. The basic understanding between the two sides has been that the United States would oppose settlements formally but that this would not evolve into a fundamental disagreement.

The United States has clearly decided to change the game. Obama has said that, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to stop building new settlements, but not to halt what he called the “natural growth” of existing settlements.

Obama has positioned the settlement issue in such a way that it would be difficult for him to back down. He has repeated it several times, including in his speech to the Islamic world. It is an issue on which he is simply following the formal positions of prior administrations. It is an issue on which prior Israeli governments made commitments. What Obama has done is restated formal U.S. policy, on which there are prior Israeli agreements, and demanded Israeli compliance. Given his initiative in the Islamic world, Obama, having elevated the issue to this level, is going to have problems backing off.

Obama is also aware that Netanyahu is not in a political position to comply with the demand, even if he were inclined to. Netanyahu is leading a patchwork coalition in which support from the right is critical. For the Israeli right, settling in what it calls Samaria and Judea is a fundamental principle on which it cannot bend. Unlike Ariel Sharon, a man of the right who was politically powerful, Netanyahu is a man of the right who is politically weak. Netanyahu gave all he could give on this issue when he said there would be no new settlements created. Netanyahu doesn’t have the political ability to give Obama what he is demanding. Netanyahu is locked into place, unless he wants to try to restructure his Cabinet or persuade people like Avigdor Lieberman, his right-wing foreign minister, to change their fundamental view of the world.

Therefore, Obama has decided to create a crisis with Israel. He has chosen a subject on which Republican and Democratic administrations have had the same formal position. He has also picked a subject that does not affect Israeli national security in any immediate sense (he has not made demands for changes of policy toward Gaza, for example). Obama struck at an issue where he had precedent on his side, and where Israel’s immediate safety is not at stake. He also picked an issue on which he would have substantial support in the United States, and he has done this to have a symbolic showdown with Israel. The more Netanyahu resists, the more Obama gets what he wants.

Obama’s read of the Arab-Israeli situation is that it is not insoluble. He believes in the two-state solution, for better or worse. In order to institute the two-state solution, Obama must establish the principle that the West Bank is Palestinian territory by right and not Israeli territory on which the Israelis might make concessions. The settlements issue is fundamental to establishing this principle. Israel has previously agreed both to the two-state solution and to not expanding settlements. If Obama can force Netanyahu to concede on the settlements issue, then he will break the back of the Israeli right and open the door to a rightist-negotiated settlement of the two-state solution.

In the course of all of this, Obama is opening doors in the Islamic world a little wider by demonstrating that the United States is prepared to force Israel to make concessions. By subtext, he wants to drive home the idea that Israel does not control U.S. policy but that, in fact, Israel and the United States are two separate countries with different and sometimes conflicting views. Obama wouldn’t mind an open battle on the settlements one bit.

For Netanyahu, this is the worst terrain on which to fight. If he could have gotten Obama to attack by demanding that Israel not respond to missiles launched from Gaza or Lebanon, Netanyahu would have had the upper hand in the United States. Israel has support in the United States and in Congress, and any action that would appear to leave Israel’s security at risk would trigger an instant strengthening of that support.

But there is not much support in the United States for settlements on the West Bank. This is not a subject around which Israel’s supporters are going to rally very intensely, in large part because there is substantial support for a two-state solution and very little understanding or sympathy for the historic claim of Jews to Judea and Samaria. Obama has picked a topic on which he has political room for maneuver and on which Netanyahu is politically locked in.

Given that, the question is where Obama is going with this. From Obama’s point of view, he wins no matter what Netanyahu decides to do. If Netanyahu gives in, then he has established the principle that the United States can demand concessions from a Likud-controlled government in Israel and get them. There will be more demands. If Netanyahu doesn’t give in, Obama can create a split with Israel over the one issue he can get public support for in the United States (a halt to settlement expansion in the West Bank), and use that split as a lever with Islamic states.

Thus, the question is what Netanyahu is going to do. His best move is to say that this is just a disagreement between friends and assume that the rest of the U.S.-Israeli relationship is intact, from aid to technology transfer to intelligence sharing. That’s where Obama is going to have to make his decision. He has elevated the issue to the forefront of U.S.-Israeli relations. The Israelis have refused to comply. If Obama proceeds with the relationship as if nothing has happened, then he is back where he began.

Obama did not start this confrontation to wind up there. He calculated carefully when he raised this issue and knew perfectly well that Netanyahu couldn’t make concessions on it, so he had to have known that he was going to come to this point. Obviously, he could have made this confrontation as a part of his initiative to the Islamic world. But it is unlikely that he saw that initiative as ending with the speech, and he understands that, for the Islamic world, his relation to Israel is important. Even Islamic countries not warmly inclined toward Palestinians, like Jordan or Egypt, don’t want the United States to back off on this issue.

Netanyahu has argued in the past that Israel’s relationship to the United States was not as important to Israel as it once was. U.S. aid as a percentage of Israel’s gross domestic product has plunged. Israel is not facing powerful states, and it is not facing a situation like 1973, when Israeli survival depended on aid being rushed in from the United States. The technology transfer now runs both ways, and the United States relies on Israeli intelligence quite a bit. In other words, over the past generation, Israel has moved from a dependent relationship with the United States to one of mutual dependence.

This is very much Netanyahu’s point of view, and from this point of view follows the idea that he might simply say no to the United States on the settlements issue and live easily with the consequences. The weakness in this argument is that, while Israel does not now face strategic issues it can’t handle, it could in the future. Indeed, while Netanyahu is urging action on Iran, he knows that action is impossible without U.S. involvement.

This leads to a political problem. As much as the right would like to blow off the United States, the center and the left would be appalled. For Israel, the United States has been the centerpiece of the national psyche since 1967. A breach with the United States would create a massive crisis on the left and could well bring the government down if Ehud Barak and his Labor Party, for example, bolted from the ruling coalition. Netanyahu’s problem is the problem Israel has continually had. It is a politically fragmented country, and there is never an Israeli government that does not consist of fragments. A government that contains Lieberman and Barak is not one likely to be able to make bold moves.

It is therefore difficult to see how Netanyahu can both deal with Obama and hold his government together. It is even harder to see how Obama can reduce the pressure. Indeed, we would expect to see him increase the pressure by suspending minor exchanges and programs. Obama is playing to the Israeli center and left, who would oppose any breach with the United States.

Obama has the strong hand and the options. Netanyahu has the weak hand and fewer options. It is hard to see how he will solve the problem. And that’s what Obama wants. He wants Netanyahu struggling with the problem. In the end, he wants Netanyahu to fold on the settlements issue and keep on folding until he presides over a political settlement with the Palestinians. Obama wants Netanyahu and the right to be responsible for the agreement, as Menachem Begin was responsible for the treaty with Egypt and withdrawal from the Sinai.

We find it difficult to imagine how a two-state solution would work, but that concept is at the heart of U.S. policy and Obama wants the victory. He has put into motion processes to create that solution, first of all, by backing Netanyahu into a corner. Left out of Obama’s equation is the Palestinian interest, willingness and ability to reach a treaty with Israel, but from Obama’s point of view, if the Palestinians reject or undermine an agreement, he will still have leverage in the Islamic world. Right now, given Iraq and Afghanistan, that is where he wants leverage, and backing Netanyahu into a corner is more important than where it all leads in the end.

LFTC - Index 6/8/09

5 posts: (1) Remembering the Men of Normandy--The Home Front; (2) Our First Couple Does France--Wobble Watch; (3) Mideast After Cairo--Wobble Watch; (4) Czar of Counting & Counting Czars--The Home Front; (5) 535 Czars to Come?--The Home Front.

LFTC - Remembering the Men of Normandy

Saturday, June 6 marked the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the greatest seaborne invasion in history, that began the epic liberation of a continent from the sadistic Nazi tyranny, one created by the demon whom British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill called in the first volume of his World War II memoir "...a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast--Corporal Hitler."  Here are the remarks of General Dwight D. Eisenhower given to his troops upon the commencement of Operation Overlord (1:43).  Here is President Franklin D. Roosevelt's June 6, 1944 radio broadcast (6:29) informing the American public.  In a turn of phrase unlikely to issue from modern, secular humanist leaders, FDR ended with: Thy will be done, Almighty God.  Amen."

Two armies comprising 135,000 men--American, British and Canadian soldiers--landed at Utah, Gold, Omaha, Juno and Sword Beaches, to be greeted by 50,000 German troops armed with machine guns and artillery, mostly intact despite bombardment by 5,000 bombers and 1,200 warships.  In all, over 9,000 Allied soldiers of what Tom Brokaw famously called "the Greatest Generation" gave their lives that June 6--what Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg called "the last full measure of devotion"--a phrase quoted by President Obama in his speech.  A total of 2M allied troops had landed by the end of the Normandy battle, on August 29, 1944.  Of that great host, 38,500 were killed and 118,000 wounded, while the Germans took 60,000 killed and 140,000 wounded.  That campaign began a drive that brought Allied soldiers to Berlin on April 29, 1945 (where they met the barbarian soldiers of the equally vile Soviet tyranny, that of the genocidal Marshal Joseph Stalin, who once cynically observed that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic).

Represented at the ceremony by their heads of state were the four countries whose soldiers fought for liberty that day: United States, Great Britain, Canada and, ashore, those of Free France.  Notably, bilingual Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper delivered part of his speech in French and part in English.  Here is the President Obama 65th Anniversary of D-Day speech text.

Here is an interview with a paratrooper, Guy Whidden II, who landed that fateful day.  A second interview, with soldier Arthur Seltzer, was one I watched live.  It was especially moving to hear how out of 36 soldiers on the Higgins Boat (landing craft), all of whom signed a single dollar bill held by the commander, only 2--yes, TWO--Seltzer and his commander, were alive at the end of "the Longest Day."  Seltzer has kept the dollar bill.

President Reagan gave two speeches 25 years ago, on the 40th anniversary commemoration.  His "Pointe du Hoc " speech (video 5:54; speech text) celebrated the astounding achievements of Army Rangers in scaling steep cliffs to take out huge gun emplacements, while British troops surged off Sword Beach to relieve a beleaguered garrison, its leader walking in front and playing bagpipes.  RR punctuated his speech with lines that resonate today--a rebuke to those (like our current President, at times) who raise the surrender flag of moral equivalence--explaining what motivated those heroes to pt aside the instinct for self-preservation: "It was the deep knowledge and pray that we have not lost it, that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest."

Less than 2.5M (15 percent) of the 16M WW II veterans who served survive today, and 328,000 passed away last year.  Symbolic of the attitude among the men of "Bloody Omaha" was the leadership of Colonel George Taylor, of the First Division (Big Red One), 16th Regiment, which landed first day, first hour, and was pinned down on the beach.  After a few hours under withering fire Taylor told his group, "There are only two kinds of people on this beach: the dead and those about to die.  So let's get the Hell out of here!"  One of those who did so was Captain William Friedman, 27 years old, who lived to age 85, attended the 40th and 50th D-Day celebrations, and took me through the the National World War II Museum in New Orleans in 2001; much-decorated, my first cousin, once-removed Bill is buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

RR said of the men of Pointe du Hoc, quoting British poet Stephen Spender, that they were those whose "lives fought for life and...left the vivid air signed with their honor."  Fittingly, on June 3, 2009 a statute of Ronald Wilson Reagan was unveiled at a heartwarming ceremony in Washington DC, becoming one of two representing the state of California in the Rotunda Gallery on Capitol Hill.  Peggy Noonan, who drafted RR's Pointe du Hoc speech, wrote movingly last Friday of the statue's unveiling.

It sobers the mind to realize that detonation of even a single small nuclear device in an Allied city today would kill more than the total killed and wounded on both sides during the entire Battle for Normandy.

LFTC - Our First Couple Does France

Adding to his growing tally of diplomatic faux pas--most notably, perhaps, stiffing British PM Gordon Brown a few months ago (denying him a joint press conference at the White House and giving chintzy gifts while the Obamas received thoughtful, lovely gifts from PM & Mrs. Brown--the Obamas stiffed the Sarkozys last Friday evening, declining a dinner invitation to the Elysee Palace despite residing across the street.  This came after Sarkozy gave Candidate Obama a royal welcome and joint press appearance last July.  OK, while Sarkozy kissed Michelle on the cheek two months ago during the EU Meeting, Carla Bruni Sarkozy pulled away from an attempted Presidential cheek peck.  Sarko had to stand on tippy-toes to reach Michelle, who is 5-1/2 inches taller.

Sarko has hardly been adroit.  These paragraphs tell the convoluted scorecard:

The White House's coolness has added to embarrassment at the Elysée Palace over the way they have bungled what Sarkozy wanted to be a supreme Franco-American moment in Paris and especially Normandy. The final straw for Paris was the White House's undiplomatic public reproach this week to Sarkozy for failing to invite the British Queen to the 6th of June ceremony.

Obama is turning up in Paris on Friday evening, but spending the evening privately with Michelle and his entourage. He is not due to see Sarkozy and Carla Bruni at the Elysée. Their only tête-à-tête will be in the Normandy town of Caen on Saturday. The Americans have refused a French request for the two men to hold a joint press conference. The D-Day ceremony at the US cemetery at Colleville, by Omaha beach, has now been widened to include Britain's Gordon Brown and Prince Charles and Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister. Then Michelle Obama is staying on in Paris on a private visit for several days.

The Elysée is exasperated with the Americans, Europe 1 radio reported this morning. "Barack Obama has truly done nothing to give value to his relations with Nicolas Sarkozy," said their breakfast news.

The trouble began, not because Sarkozy did not invite the Queen, but because of the off-hand way that his team reacted when a couple of British newspapers kicked up the "royal snub" fuss last week. This D-Day was a Franco-American celebration, the government's spokesman said. The Queen could come another year.

That the heroes of Pointe du Hoc took British landing craft to the beach on D-Day, and that a young Elizabeth Windsor, 18 in 1944, drove a medical truck in England during the war, apparently did not impress Sarko.  Or perhaps he did not bother to do the research to learn this stuff.  Which is worse I leave to LFTC readers..

LFTC - Mideast After Cairo

Begin with surprising good news: The Jeruslaem Post reports that Hezbollah lost ground in Sunday's Lebanon parliamentary elections, though gridlock will continue.  Pro-Western forces won 68 of 128 seats; Hezbollah's coalition won 57, with 11 for Hezbollah candidates; unaffiliated parties won 3 seats.  2009's 52.3 percent turnout topped 2005's 45.2 percent.  Key results came in Christian districts where pro-Hezbollah Christian leader Michael Aoun's candidates lost ground; the Maronite Catholic Church warned that Iranian influence would increase if Hezbollah won.  Sunni districts feared that Hezbollah's push for power would increase Shia influence in Lebanon; Hezbollah's May 7, 2008 military takeover of Beirut backfired as well.  The US made clear it would reconsider its aid package for Lebanon, $1B last year, if Hezbollah gained influence.  (Speculation that Obama's Cairo message might have helped is plausible as to his overall outreach message, but absurd as to his press for a Palestinian peace, in that the Palestinians are despised by most Lebanese--as they are in Arab countries generally.)  Here is a JPost Q&A on the Lebanese election lineups.)

A JPost analysis of the issues spotlights Hezbollah, noting the recent discovery of subversive Hezbollah actions in Egypt (backing the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood) and in Gaza (on behalf of Hamas):

....The attacks by Hassan Nasrallah against Egypt, including a call to the Egyptian army to overthrow the Mubarak regime during Israel's Gaza operation, would not have been made had Nasrallah not understood that in this fashion he was serving the wishes of his masters in Teheran.

Ever since the disclosures of the activity in Egypt, the media in the Arab world and in the West has been preoccupied with the dispute that has erupted between Hizbullah and Cairo, and have almost totally ignored the struggle that Hizbullah has initiated to change the face of the Lebanese regime.

While Britain took the questionable decision to open a dialogue with the "political wing" of Hizbullah, and in practice recognized Hizbullah as a legitimate movement, it would appear that the artificial distinction drawn by the UK between the political and the military wings of Hizbullah has totally collapsed with the discovery of Hizbullah's subversive activities in Egypt, which merely compounds what was previously discovered in Morocco. In that Sunni Arab kingdom, King Muhammad VI severed ties with Iran in March 2009, accusing it of supporting Shi'ite missionary activity.

The unequivocal call to abolish sectarian politics and the enactment of a new election law were placed at the very top of Hizbullah's 2009 election platform in order to emphasize the group's priorities. In its electoral platform of 2000, Hizbullah had called for establishing a national body for the abolishment of political sectarianism, but only in the fourth section of the document.

It is assumed that in this manner Hizbullah seeks to advance its aspiration to destroy the foundations of the sectarian regime in Lebanon agreed upon in 1943 that has been preserved ever since, despite repeated crises. The abolition of the existing political system will advance Hizbullah toward its fundamental goal: the establishment of an Islamic state that provides political expression to the Shi'ite majority and a complete Iranian takeover.

The UN did not help.  Its fold on the investigation of the Syrian-backed February 14, 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, then Lebanon's leading anti-Syrian voice, which sparked the March 2005 Cedar Revolution, hurt Hezbollah.  Also, the fact that Hezbollah has rearmed under the unwatchful eye of UN "peacekeepers" could not have comforted anti-Hezbollah voters; the UNFIL force serves mainly, in reality, as a one-way buffer against Israeli military action.  (Should Hezbollah resume military operation, UNFIL would step aside, as UN forces have consistently done since 1948 in the Mideast, when Arab armies move.  Note also this JP account of the disappearance of Lebanon's once-vibrant Jewish community.)

Thomas Friedman sees "Clinton Time" in the Mideast after Cairo, but not re the Palestinians.  Rather, he sees Clinton's top Mideast priority as helping resolve lingering frictions within Iraq, before America exits at end-2011:

I have never bought the argument that Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan the good war and Pakistan the necessary war. Folks, they’re all one war with different fronts. It’s a war within the Arab-Muslim world between progressive and anti-modernist forces over how this faith community is going to adapt to modernity — modern education, consensual politics, the balance between religion and state and the rights of women. Any decent outcome in Iraq would bolster all the progressive forces by creating an example of something that does not exist in the Middle East today — an independent, democratizing Arab-Muslim state....

This is important. Afghanistan is secondary. Baghdad is a great Arab and Muslim capital. Iraq has something no other Arab country has in abundance: water, oil and an educated population. It already has sprouted scores of newspapers and TV stations that operate freely. “Afghanistan will never have any impact outside of Afghanistan. Iraq can change minds,” said Mamoun Fandy, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

You demonstrate that Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can write their own social contract, and you will tell the whole Arab world that there is a model other than top-down monologues from iron-fisted dictators. You will expose the phony democracy in Iran, and you will leave a legacy for America that will help counter Abu Ghraib and torture.

Re North Korea, the Washington Post reports that President Obama plans a harder, but non-military line in the wake of the North's serial outrageous provocations.  Adding to the list is today's news reporting that Pyongyang sentenced two US journalists to 12 years in prison (guaranteed: worse--much worse--than Gitmo--so where is the great outcry from the human rights groups?); the charges--trumped up, naturally--were that they had been spying.  Because the North has been caught proliferating in the Mideast--helping Syria build a nuclear plant that Israel destroyed Sept. 6, 2007--anything 'Bam does with the North pertains as well to Mideast WMD matters.

North Korea also has been working closely with Iran, whose missiles are knock-offs of North Korean missile designs, and whose technicians have visited Iran, as Iranian's technicians have visited the North to witness launches.  On Sunday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told ABC News that a nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the United States, and would be followed by retaliation:

"I think it is US policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations. They may not be formal as it is with NATO, but, I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation."

Hillary declined to rule out a possible pre-emptive strike by the US against Iran's nuclear facilities.  As to the Palestinians, she said on ABC:

"We were very close in 2000. And it's heartbreaking to see where we are today. And we can't just stand by and expect time to work its magic […] We see historical, demographic, political, technological trends that are very troubling as to Israel's future. At the same time, there is a legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people that needs to be addressed."

This illusion lies at the heart of her's, Foggy Bottom's and President Obama's confusion about the Palestinians.  The only thing Israel was close to in 2000 was the latest round of Israel trading tangible territory irrevocably for intangible Palestinian promises easily revoked, as PLO leader Yasir Arafat surely would have done after pocketing Israel's concessions.

Bottom Line.  Team Obama's obsession with the plight of the Palestinians--and its unwillingness to blame the Arabs for a problem that manifestly they created and have perpetuated (details too lengthy for this particular post; LFTC has posted on this, also discussed in the author's book--see link right side above), cloud its strategic view of the Mideast.  Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and above all, Iran are vastly ore important that movement on the Palestinian issue--which in the event, is not plausibly in the cards.

LFTC - Czar of Counting & Counting Czars

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday on the impending appointment of a Pay Czar by Team Obama, officially titled a "Special Master for Compensation." by whomever picks titles for this kind of stuff.  The new Czar will oversee financial industry compensation, starting with bailout recipients, and then perhaps to non-recipient financial firms as well.

Fox News Bret Baier Special Report reported Friday that with appointment of a Pay Czar the Obama administration has now appointed 15 czars (they scrolled by too quickly for me to copy and put in LFTC).  Czar is the Anglicized spelling for what Russians call a Tsar; Tsar, in turn, derives from Tze-sar, which comes from the Roman Caesar (as does the German title Kaiser).  This Timeline for the Romanov Tsars (ruled 1613 - 1917), Imperial Russia's last royal ruling line, shows most of those who ruled , just click inside the chart on specific years.  Count 'em, and you get  13 of the 15; I had to go to an appendix chronology in Richard Pipes' classic Russia Under the Old Regime to find two others not listed online.  To be fair, these ruled a total of 8 out of the 284 years of Romanov rule: Fedor III (1676-1682) and Catherine I (1725-1727).

Oh, remember what happened to Nicholas II (ruled 1894 - 1917), the last Romanov?  He was not, as legend oft puts it, overthrown by the Bolsheviks.  Nicholas stepped down in favor of one Price Lvov, some 8 months before Lvov's successor, social democrat Alexandr Kerensky, was tossed out by Lenin's Bolsheviks.

Do not hold your breath waiting for the Obama Czars to abdicate; they will have to be tossed out by Obama, The One.  As for Russia, in 2000 Mother Russia went back to the Tsar system, with the accession of Vlad the Bad.  How long the Putinovs last, who knows?

LFTC - 535 Czars to Come?

A WSJ editorial notes how Barney Frank (D-MA), who chairs the House Committee on Financial Services, intervened to force GM to keep a distributor in Norton, MA;  Frank called GM's new CEO, Fritz Henderson.  Does this action violate Team Obama's pledge to only deal with fundamental decisions of GM?  Nope, because Barney basks in the limelight of a separate branch of government.  George Will's latest GM column further attests to pervasive government involvement.  Government Motors, indeed.