LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

LFTC - Index 10/30/09

5 posts: (1) IRAN: "Yes, We'll Have Nuclear Knights!"--Us v. Them; (2) Afghanistan Pakistan Bananistan--Wobble Watch; (3) "Gitmo North" Coming to Your 'Hood?--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (4) Health Care: Fakery, Fair Play & Number Games--The Home Front; (5) Mexicanization of US Law Enforcement?--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

LFTC - IRAN: "Yes, We'll Have Nuclear Knights!"

Iran's Wednesday response to Western negotiators in Vienna is not public yet, but the New York Times reports Iran has rejected the deal to ship out 3/4 of its declared uranium stockpile to be further enriched in Russia.  Here is the best part of the NYT piece:

In fact, the Iranians found something to like in the Vienna deal. It essentially acknowledged their right to use low-enriched uranium that Iran produced in violation of three Security Council agreements. The Obama administration and its allies were willing to create that precedent because the material would be returned to Iran in the form of fuel rods, usable in a civilian nuclear plant but very difficult to convert to weapons use.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks seemed to extend Iran’s two-track public position on the nuclear dispute, offering a degree of compliance while also insisting that there were limits to its readiness for cooperation.

“As long as this government is in power, it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “Fortunately, the conditions for international nuclear cooperation have been met. We are currently moving in the right direction and we have no fear of legal cooperation, under which all of Iran’s national rights will be preserved, and we will continue our work.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad also suggested that Iran expected Western countries to honor payments for nuclear assistance it made before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran paid more than $1 billion to help build a French reactor in return for access to that reactor’s fuel. After the revolution, France reneged on the contract.

“We have nuclear contracts,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “It has been 30 years, we have paid for them. Such agreements must be fulfilled.”

Iran has re-affirmed--for the trillionth time this decade--its determination not to give up any part of its nuclear program.  Robert Kagan doubts President Obama can beat Iran at poker (or Moscow)--this applies equally, by inference, to chess.

Bottom Line.  Persians play chess, and knights can jump over pieces and fork king & queen, even checkmate a cornered king.  The West had better stop playing checkers.

LFTC - Afghanistan Pakistan Bananistan

Terrorist attacks and Taliban repositioning, using smarter, more sophisticated tactics, have figured prominently in the campaigns by Islamists to disrupt the November 7 Afghan election and to destabilize the Pakistani government, which is mounting a serious sustained offensive in South Waziristan against Taliban strongholds.

Afghanistan.  The Afghan election authorities have rejected a UN proposal for the November 7 election re-run.  Strategic analyst Andrew C. Bacevich calls for setting strategy first, before committing more troops in Afghanistan.  Historian Walter Russell Mead argues that dealing with bad guys--including drug lords--may be necessary to prevail in Afghanistan.  Washington Post pundit David Ignatius reports on his latest visit there and says we must try to make the McChrystal strategy work.

Pakistan.  SecState Hillary Clinton expressed disbelief speaking to Pakistani audiences, concerning lack of cooperation in a war effort that is is, she said, Pakistan's parallel interest (with the US) to win.  The Washington Post reports:

"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in Lahore.

"Maybe they are not 'get-at-able'. I don't know," she said.

Clinton's pointed remark was the first public gripe on a trip aimed at turning around a U.S.-Pakistan relationship under serious strain, but bound in the struggle against religious extremism.

"I am more than willing to hear every complaint about the United States," Clinton said, ""but this is a two way street.

"If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together" then "there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment."

Bottom Line.  It remains in America's strategic interest to prevent Islamist triumph in both countries.  But at times, one is tempted to throw up one's hands, and fall back on the password used by the the robbers in "The Hot Rock" (a 1972 Robert Redford - George Segal caper flick): "Afghanistan Bananistan."  We are trying to create stable and less corrupt governance in a singularly unpromising area.  But for now try we must.

LFTC - "Gitmo North" Coming to Your 'Hood?

Legal Ace Andy McCarthy explains how if Guantanamo detainees are shipped into the US, "lawfare"-oriented judges will surely release some into our communities.  Ex-special forces officer Gordon Cucullu explains why sending Gitmo detainees north will create a security nightmare for the local citizenry.  And as Gitmo prepares to move north, the New York Times reports that civil libertarians are drawing a bead on FBI counter-intelligence activities.

Bottom Line.  The bad guys come here, so we stand down.  Is there something wrong with this picture?

LFTC - Health Care: Fakery, Fair Play & Number Games

The House bill, being put online--all 1,990 pages of it--will not, Speaker Nancy tells us, "add a dime to the deficit."  Indeed, it will, our Lady Legislator says, reduce the deficit.  Sure, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will convert to Judaism today and begin observing strict Shabbat at sunset Tehran time.  As for keeping the bill under 2,000 pages, a monumental feat the nation's foresters, forests and overworked inkjet & laser printers will appreciate....

Pundit Robert Samuelson calls ObamaCare's "public option" fakery.  He notes that Medicare's alleged efficiency advantage--3 cents versus 13 cents on the dollar--over private insurance ignores cost-shifting & accounting legerdemain:

As for administrative expenses, any advantage for the public plan is exaggerated, say critics. Part of the gap between private insurers and Medicare is statistical illusion: Because Medicare recipients have higher average health expenses ($10,003 in 2007) than the under-65 population ($3,946), its administrative costs are a smaller share of total spending. The public plan, with younger members, wouldn't enjoy this advantage.

Likewise, Medicare has low marketing costs because it's a monopoly. But a non-monopoly public plan would have to sell itself and would incur higher marketing costs. Private insurers' profits (included in administrative costs) also explain some of Medicare's cost advantage. But profits represent only 3 percent of the insurance industry's revenue. Moreover, accounting comparisons are misleading when they don't include the cost of Medicare's government-supplied investment capital. A public plan would also need investment capital. And suppose the public plan suffers losses. Congress would assuredly bail it out.

RS adds that such fakery is stifling the real debate: government versus market as supplier of health care.  American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks sees ObamaCare attacking three core American values:

Regardless of how President Barack Obama's health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year.

According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the cost of health care for their families will "get worse" under the proposed reforms rose to 49% from 42% in just the past month. The percentage saying it would "get better" stayed at 22%.

Many are searching for explanations. One popular notion is that demagogues in the media are stirring up falsehoods against what they say is a long-overdue solution to the country's health-care crisis.

Americans deserve more credit. They haven't been brainwashed, and they aren't upset merely over the budget-busting details. Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America's free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.

Read in full his op-ed.

Wall Street Journal pundit Kim Strassel sees the public option as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's recipe for diverting attention from the real bad stuff in the health care legislation, that just might pass:

Better yet, by turning the public option into the big, bad bogeyman, he makes it more likely he'll snag those swing-state votes in the end. Nebraska's Mr. Nelson, Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, Indiana's Evan Bayh—they can all claim victory for stripping the bill of a national insurance plan, then feel comfortable voting for all the tax hikes and Medicare cuts that remain.

Speaking of tax hikes, premium jumps and Medicare cuts, notice how nobody is today talking about them? Mr. Reid surely has. The public option might be controversial in D.C., but the majority leader knows most of the country doesn't understand it, or assumes it doesn't apply to them. Most Americans already have health care that they like, and polls show their real fear is that this experiment will leave them paying more for less. This, not the public option, is ObamaCare's exposed jugular.

The insurers get this, which is why (as they now try to bottle the genie they helped loose) they are issuing reports on how "reform" will double or triple premium prices. It is why America's Health Insurance Plans, the lobby group, has run ads in swing states warning about huge cuts to Medicare Advantage. Some of the grass roots get it, too, which is why Americans for Tax Reform is now live on TV in Nebraska noting Sen. Nelson has signed its taxpayer pledge and that he'd violate it by voting for the bill's nearly $500 billion in tax increases.

If Mr. Reid had pulled the plug on the public option, these highly unpopular policy issues would be front and center. As it is, the public-option sideshow is sucking up all the air, and will continue to. It even overshadowed liberal divisions, such as union pushback on Cadillac-plans taxes. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Reid likes it that way.

Bottom Line.  Beware of entrance into ObamaCare....

LFTC - Mexicanization of US Law Enforcement?

Manhattan Institute scholar Judith Miller writes of the "Mexicanization" of US law enforcement: drug lords are sending corruption north from Mexico, which increasingly resembles a narco-state.  An excellent article well worth a read.  George Will surveys US and global drug war efforts and offers this downer:

In 1998, the United Nations, with its penchant for empty grandstanding, committed its members to "eliminating or significantly reducing" opium, cocaine and marijuana production by 2008, en route to a "drug-free world." Nowadays the United Nations is pleased that the drug trade has "stabilized."

The Economist magazine says this means that more than 200 million people -- almost 5 percent of the world's adult population -- take illegal drugs, the same proportion as a decade ago. The annual U.S. bill for attempting to diminish the supply of drugs is $40 billion. Of the 1.5 million Americans arrested each year on drug offenses, half a million are incarcerated. "[T]ougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars," the Economist said in March.

"There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer." Do cultural differences explain this? Evidently not: "Even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates."

Bottom Line.  Drugs are primarily a demand-side problem, for which there are no known effective remedies today.  Supply-side efforts cannot carry the day.  Bad news all around, save for drug kingpins & narco-states.

LFTC - Index 10/29/09

4 posts: (1) Flying on the Deck: A Pilot's-Eye View--Us v. Them; (2) Micro Air Vehicles: Urban War Future--Us v. Them; (3) A Soldier Speaks--The Home Front; (4) A Hero Passes On--The Home Front.

LFTC - Flying on the Deck: A Pilot's-Eye View

Take a short high subsonic cruise (3:28) with one of our hotshot pilots, flying his jet close to the deck.  Enjoy.

LFTC - Micro Air Vehicles: Urban War Future

Check out this General Dynamics Micro Air Vehicle concept video (4:26).  Once developed & put into production, MAVs figure to be major factors in future battlefield operations in urban environments.

LFTC - A Soldier Speaks

Ralph Peters interviews an American hero, Command Sgt. Maj. Philip F. Johndrow, US Army, who completed 42 months of distinguished service in Iraq.  LFTC thanks an American hero for his service.

LFTC - A Hero Passes On

Read Ben Stein's wonderful tribute to Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient Tom Norris.  All hail to a life nobly lived.

LFTC - Index 10/28/09

4 posts: (1) Will Blue-State Voters "TABOR" State Spending Sprees?--The Home Front; (2) Obama's War on Fox News--MSM Murders; (3) Taking Everyone for a Balloon Ride--Class & Crass; (4) Trucks: GPS Versus Bridges--Telecom: Terabits & Terribles.

LFTC - Will Blue-State Voters "TABOR" Gov't Spending Sprees?

Wall Street Journal pundit John Fund informs us that Maine & Washington State voters heavily favor initiatives placing limits of state spending.  Despite ferocious opposition from the usual gaggle of unions, spendthrift pols, etc., voters in these two liberal states may impose TABOR--Taxpayer Bill Of Rights--upon state governance, to rein in runaway tax & spend governance.  Fund notes (correctly) that much of this reflects loss of trust in politicians in both parties, due to serial massive failures of governance.

Evidence of how lacking trust in governance is nationwide comes from a Gallup poll taken 8/31-9/2/09.  Asked how much of every government dollar is wasted at each level of government, the mean (average) response (sample: adults 18 & over) was 50 cents for the feds, 42 cents for state and 37 cents for local government.  Digging down into the data, an identical 42 percent of adults residing in states with Democratic governors and those living under GOP executives.

LFTC - Obama's War on Fox News

This Fox News recent video clip (3:05--the real stuff starts at 1:46) recounts the confrontation between ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper & White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.  Tapper pressed hard on asking since when any White House could claim the right to define who is a a bona fide news organization and who is not.  Gibbs referred to the Glenn Beck & Sean Hannity programs as evidence, but Tapper would have none of it, noting thousands of people work for Fox News.  Fox News 6 o'clock anchor Bret Baier notes that CNBC lefty opinion-meisters are welcome at the White House.  (As for Beck & Hannity, both openly state that their shows are opinion, and not news shows.)  Moderate Democrats in Congress oppose the White House's campaign too, calling it overkill.

Charles Krauthammer (who appears frequently on the weekday 6 PM Fox news program), writes that the White House has gone too far in attacking Fox.  CK writes:

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

CK then links the controversy to the idea expressed by "Father of the Constitution" (and of the Bill of Rights) James Madison, who wrote in Federalist 10 that a multiplicity of factions would leaven governance and obviate the temptation towards tyranny, with everyone given a seat at the table, so to speak.  Wesley Pruden sees Third World governance in Team Obama's war against critics.

Mark Steyn sees Team Obama tougher on Fox than on our enemies--think Tsar Vlad the Bad, Mullah Ahmadinejad the Real Bad:

At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he'd been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don't know why he'd be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the "community organized" precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao's China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite "political philosopher".

So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from "The Untouchables" – "the Chicago way," don't bring a knife to a gunfight – and, given the pay czar's instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it's easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the community organizer.

The trouble is it isn't tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real "Untouchables" here? In Moscow, it's Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) they're still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it's Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use "soft power" and "smart diplomacy" to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama's soft power is so soft it doesn't even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders' very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama's "smart diplomacy" is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?

Bottom Line.  Presidents who assail media critics more often than not diminish themselves and their governance.  This goes double when the critics are presenting facts.  Fabulists can be ignored.  But it is a measure of telling and accurate criticism that Presidents open fire.  With two wars underway, a nuclearizing Iran, a renegade North Korea & Venezuela, trillions in deficits as far as the eye can see, and economy whose recovery is far from certain, one would think that President 44 has far weightier fare on his plate.

LFTC - Taking Everyone for a Balloon Ride

Dan Henninger sees in the recent "Balloon Boy" saga the blurring of lines between fact and fiction, with resulting growing skepticism--and cynicism--among the viewing public.  Such, he writes, makes it far harder for politicians to sell grandiose plans.  So does digital artifice, which the public now knows blurs the line between real images and computer-created images.  Stay tuned, and skeptical.

LFTC - Trucks: GPS Versus Bridges

New York State Governor David Patterson has a headache hard to imagine: Truckers using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation are crashing into bridges.  The reason: They use GPS to find routes that save time, but are not truck-safe--at times, even when carrying hazardous materials.  In the past 15 years, New York State has seen an astounding 1,4000 bridge accidents due to trucks (to be fair, GPS is of more recent vintage, so many, perhaps most, of the crashes were pre-GPS).  This is 93 bridge hits annually, nearly two per week.

A GPS fix would be to program, state by state (it happens elsewhere, too), restrictions into route options, so that truckers cannot find the routes.  This might help, but experienced drivers would still find the routes.  Criminal prosecution of anyone caught knowingly transporting hazardous materials along prohibited routes might help more.

LFTC - Index 10/27/09

4 posts: (1) A "Living Wage" in 2009--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (2) Cheney, Iraq & TV Takedown--The Home Front; (3) Jihad's 27th Year--Us v. Them; (4) GOP's Michelle--The Home Front.

LFTC - A "Living Wage" in 2009

Wall Street bankers aren't the only folks in NYC raking it in.  Bloomberg News reports that the chief stagehand at Carnegie Hall makes a nice sum indeed: $530,044.  Yep, more than half a million bucks a year.  Still want to be a doctor?  On ABC News "This Week" Sunday, George Will suggested that $127,604 annually should be the pay ceiling for executives at taxpayer-supported firms; that number is the salary for a GS-15 bureaucrat, who also works on the taxpayer's dime.  I agree.

LFTC - Cheney, Iraq & a TV Takedown

This Oct. 22 MSNBC "Morning Joe" video clip (8:58) has co-host Joe Scarborough, an ex-GOP Congressman from Florida, dismantling liberal hardliner Lawrence O'Donnell, on the latter's historical revisionism on the intelligence on Iraq and alleged politicization of the product.  Compare that with this fine NRO blog comment by policy maven Peter Wehner.  Wehner adds stuff not in the exchange on "Morning Joe."  Most important is that every Member of Congress had access--by law--to the National Intelligence Estimate--most chose not to read it, because "everybody knew" that Saddam had WMD.

LFTC - Jihad's 27th Year

Journalist & Manhattan Institute scholar Judy Miller assesses Islamist terror 26 years after the Oct. 24, 1983 barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 Marines.  She sees three lessons: (1) Sunni & Shia terrorists do cooperate; (2) terrorism works: (3) the war continues.

LFTC - GOP's Michelle

George Will offers a crisp portrait of Minnesota GOP Representative Michelle Bachman, who is driving Democrats batty.  Enjoy the column & learn about an American original.

LFTC - Index 10/26/09

4 posts: (1) IRAN: Defunding Regime Change--Wobble Watch; (2) IRAN: Nuclear & Military Option Update--Us v. Them; (3) Joe Biden Plays Eastern Europe--Wobble Watch; (4) Did You Celebrate UN Day?--Turtle Bay Tortoise.

LFTC - IRAN: Defunding Regime Change

Two foreign policy mavens, David Feith & Bari Weiss, detail in a Wall Street Journal op-ed how the State Department is cutting off funds for Iran's democratic opposition.  The money paragraphs:

Some—including Mr. Obama—claim that the U.S. would taint and implicate Iranian democrats by supporting them openly. To this argument, says Iranian democracy activist Roya Boroumand, "Ask yourself why Iranians who protest in the street write things in English. They're not just practicing language skills."

Ignoring activists who exemplify American ideals raises moral questions about U.S. foreign policy, but there is also a key practical question: Will the Obama administration likely succeed in ending Iran's nuclear-weapons program? What, after all, could Iran's mullahs get at the negotiating table that they would value more than the regional power and religious affirmation represented by a revolutionary Islamic nuclear weapon?

Mr. Obama's approach also reduces the chances that, if Iran does get a nuclear weapon, the internal opposition will be healthy enough to check the regime, challenge its adventurism, and champion a better future for the Iranian people.

The Obama team has long called itself pragmatic, open to altering its policies as realities shift. But its approach to Iran has remained unchanged since Mr. Obama was a presidential candidate, despite the Green Revolution.

"Before June's election," says former student leader Akbar Atri, who fled Iran in 2005, "the Obama administration was determined to negotiate about the nuclear issue because it assumed there was no strong democratic opposition inside the country. That was a wrong assumption. The election showed the Iranians want a different approach. They want to live in peace and freedom."

Read the rest of the op-ed for full detail.

Bottom Line.  Foggy Bottom at its worst is selling out human rights for the illusory notion than a tyrannical regime, on the cusp of nuclear club membership and the vast increase in power it will thus gain, will somehow bargain away such benefit.  Fat chance.

LFTC - IRAN: Nuclear & Military Option Update

Nuclear Update.  A Wall Street Journal editorial casts a gimlet eye at the Vienna negotiations between Western powers & Iran:

One sign that an adversary isn't serious about negotiating is when it rejects even your concessions. That seemed to be the case yesterday when Iran gave signs it may turn down an offer from Russia, Europe and the U.S. to let Tehran enrich its uranium under foreign supervision outside the country. The mullahs so far won't take yes for an answer.

Tehran had previously looked set to accept the deal, which is hardly an obstacle to its nuclear program. A Democratic foreign policy shop called the National Security Network heralded the expected pact in a blast email this week as "Engagement Paying Dividends on Iran." But now Tehran may be holding out for even more concessions, as Iranian news reports suggest Iran wants to be able to buy more enriched uranium from a third country to use in a research reactor for medical use—as opposed to shipping its uranium to Russia for a roundtrip.

Nor, the WSJ editors state, should the deal under consideration be viewed as a bargain:

Claims by Western officials that Iran can't convert the uranium enriched abroad for military use are less than reassuring. Though encased in a fuel rod in France, the more highly-enriched uranium returned to Iran would be simple to extract, using something as basic as a tin snipper to force open the fuel cladding, and enrich further.

"With 19.75 enriched feed"—as opposed to the 3.5% that Iran now manages—"the level of effort or time Iran would need to make weapons grade uranium would drop very significantly," from roughly five months today "down to something slightly less than four weeks," says Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

Iran may also welcome the Russian-enriched uranium because its own technology is less advanced. The October 8 edition of the trade journal Nucleonics Week reports that Iran's low-enriched uranium appears to have "impurities" that "could cause centrifuges to fail" if Iran itself tried to enrich uranium to weapons-grade—which would mean above 20% and ideally up to 90%. In this scenario, the West would be decontaminating the uranium for Iran. Along the way, Iranian scientists may also pick up clues on how to do better themselves.

Military Option Update.  David Kay, chief weapons inspector inside Iraq for much of the 1990s, assesses striking Iran as an option.  Kay sets the stage:

Iran has achieved the effective status of a nuclear-weapons capable state. No matter what American policy makers want to believe, Iran has built a uranium-enrichment establishment, procured a workable design for a weapon, carried out work to enhance and validate that design, and developed longer-range missile-delivery systems. The revelation of the clandestine Qum enrichment plant strikingly demonstrated that there is more to the Iranian nuclear program than what we knew and what inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been able to discover during the past four years.

American policy sounds like a broken record, repeating over and over and over again that more and stricter sanctions will reverse these facts on the ground and Iran will be forced to give up its nuclear ambitions. The fact is, Iran’s nuclear program has progressed considerably beyond where it was when President Bush first uttered what would become a useless policy prescription, and is now at a point where only a severely intrusive on-the-ground inspection regime—at least as tough as the one we carried out from 1991–95 in Iraq—could have any hope of verifying that Iran’s nuclear program has stopped. Do American policy makers not recognize that Iran has cheated for more than twenty years on its nonproliferation promises and continued to refuse full and meaningful cooperation with international inspectors? No one should believe that the Islamic Republic would accept the type of inspections that would be required to provide confidence that it had walked away and surrendered its nuclear ambitions.

Kay then explains that sanctions with real bite are a mirage, and that the only way to possibly halt Iran's program is to make clear that pursuing nukes will place the regime's survival at stake:

This is an outcome that threatens neither the United States or Israel, but puts in question the very survival of more than the Islamic Republic of Iran but the survival of the nation of Iran itself. No one should doubt that the most dangerous situation a state can face is to deploy a small, and untested, nuclear force, against a state that has a much larger and more capable, nuclear force and views its survival to be at stake. Iran is embarking on a course where any crisis, destabilizing action or even heated Iranian political rhetoric would place Israel and the United States under considerable pressure to take preemptive military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability and its political leadership. Given the potential consequence of failure of such a military action, prudence would demand that the force used be overwhelming and broadly destructive.

Bottom Line.  The Mideast nuclear atomic clock ticks, faster and faster....

LFTC - Joe Biden Plays Eastern Europe

Here are Vice-President Joe Biden's October 22 Warsaw remarks and his October 23 Bucharest remarks.  Both were issued in conjunction with Joint Statements with each of the country leaders.  Here is his October 23 address at Central University Library, Bucharest, to students.

After presenting the administration's position as to why the new missile defense proposal is better than the one Team Obama scrapped, Biden spoke bluntly about accusations that America appeased the Russians:

Some -- maybe even understandably -- jump to the conclusion that this new missile defense approach was meant to appease Russia at the expense of Central Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth. That is absolutely wrong. Missile defense is not about Russia. Our approach is driven by security requirements of the United States and our NATO allies, period. Period.

What is true is that we are working to strengthen our relationship with Russia. We believe that a more constructive relationship with Russia will benefit all. But we’re not naïve. The truth is we share some common interests: cutting the arsenals of nuclear weapons; securing vulnerable nuclear materials; stabilizing Afghanistan; preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

And we also continue to have disagreements with Russia on matters of basic principle. In February, in Munich, Germany, in the very first major foreign policy speech of our administration, I enunciated our administration’s outline for foreign policy, and I made clear our core principles. The United States stands against the 19th century notion of “spheres of influence.” We will not tolerate it, nor will we be co-opted by it.

We stand for the right of sovereign democracies to make their own decisions, to choose their own alliances, without the right of any country to veto those decisions. We will never make a deal about anything with anyone above your heads or behind your backs. The maxim we live by is clear: nothing about you without you, nothing about you without you. And I would argue, look at our track record, look at our track record.

Biden then offered warm tribute to Eastern Europe's achievements since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989:

There’s an old Romanian proverb: “The cheapest article is advice. The most valuable is a good example.” You are the “good example.” Twenty years ago, the people of Central Europe took the world history that they inherited, and willed it in a new direction toward greater freedom, justice, and fairness. The odds were stacked against you. We know from history that destroying old oppressive regimes is a great deal easier than building new flourishing democracies. But you’ve delivered on the promise of your revolution. You are now in the position to help others do the same.

Speaking to our Congress 20 winters ago, Vaclav Havel pointed to a special sense of empathy and imagination the people of Central Europe share. Years of subjugation, he said, “have given us, however unintentionally, something positive: a special capacity to look somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience.” He went on to say: “A person who cannot move and live a normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about hopes than someone who is not trapped in this way.” He was right.

Now you have the freedom to act on those hopes, and you are. And I believe together we can turn that hope that we shared into a history we can be proud of. This is the moment. You students, if we are smart, brave, and lucky will be able to tell your grandchildren you were present at the creation of a new Europe, a new security, a new era of peace, because you were bold enough to seize that moment. Be like those in ‘89. Be bold. Exercise your leadership. You have a history, and you have a tradition. You can make a gigantic difference. And we’ll stand with you.

Because Biden is playing a "Cheney-lite" role in the administration, his trip deserved more attention than it got.  Prior to Biden's visit, Vaclav Havel gave an interview to Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty (3:04), in which he defended the missile defense move as normal for a new administration, and said he expected Biden to reassure Europe as to America's commitment.

Havel, perhaps for reasons of tact, simply ignored the promise--recently broken--that President Obama made in his April 5 Prague address not go to over the head of the Czechs and determine their destiny without their having a seat at the table:

To provide for our common security, we must strengthen our alliance. NATO was founded 60 years ago, after Communism took over Czechoslovakia. That was when the free world learned too late that it could not afford division. So we came together to forge the strongest alliance that the world has ever known. And we should -- stood shoulder to shoulder -- year after year, decade after decade –- until an Iron Curtain was lifted, and freedom spread like flowing water.

This marks the 10th year of NATO membership for the Czech Republic. And I know that many times in the 20th century, decisions were made without you at the table. Great powers let you down, or determined your destiny without your voice being heard. I am here to say that the United States will never turn its back on the people of this nation. (Applause.) We are bound by shared values, shared history -- (applause.) We are bound by shared values and shared history and the enduring promise of our alliance. NATO's Article V states it clearly: An attack on one is an attack on all. That is a promise for our time, and for all time.

Bottom Line.  Biden's Bucharest speech was wonderful.  And Havel stressed the longer relationship. While it is a plus that Biden reaffirmed America's commitment and intent to keep Moscow at bay, the precipitous recent decision by Team Obama to negotiate with Moscow on the original missile defense system--decided over the heads of the Poles & Czechs, notwithstanding President Obama's April 5 promise--may make Biden's proclamation a hard sell.

LFTC - Did You Celebrate UN Day?

Claudia Rosett assays the UN diplomatic & financial balance sheet and finds little to have celebrated on Saturday, Oct. 24, declared UN Day.  CR sees Brownian motion at the UN.  Such motion is seemingly random, but with an underlying complex set of motion mechanics.  My vote is for the UN representing an alternate quantum universe.  Only then can the diplomatic surrealism there be adequately described.

Try this latest UN news item, courtesy of the Washington Times--per humorist Dave Barry, I am NOT making this up.  A new UN report identifies as a terrorist threat----discrimination against...transexuals.  Consider these paragraphs from the WT editorial:

The 23-page document is the ultimate politically correct guide to combating terrorism. It is based on the work of U.N. special rapporteur Martin Scheinin, who notes that "immigration controls that focus attention on male bombers who may be dressing as females to avoid scrutiny make transgender persons susceptible to increased harassment and suspicion." The impact on transvestites (cross-dressers) and "intersex" individuals (those in the midst of a sex change) is even more dramatic....

The U.N. report explicitly argues for a return to the previous failed framework, recommending that states "abandon the use of a "war paradigm" when countering terrorism because of the "adverse impacts" it has on "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals."

Bottom Line.  The Turtle Bay Fun House continues to reach for new frontiers of fecklessness.