TOBY PETZOLD

One thing I’m not worrying about is whether McCain’s people will hit back hard at Obama’s lies. Check out this dismantling of the Anointed One’s flip-floppery on designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The vote went 76-22 in favor of so designating, but Obama was typically on the wrong side of the question (emphases mine):

In October 2007, Obama Described Kyl-Lieberman As A Justification For Attacking Iran. OBAMA: “[The] Bush administration could use the language in Lieberman-Kyl to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.” (Sen. Barack Obama, “Five Years After Iraq War Vote, We’re Still Foolishly Rattling Our Sabers,” Manchester Union-Leader, 10/11/07)

Yet Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) Said The Kyl-Lieberman Amendment Provided No Justification For Attacking Iran. SEN. DURBIN: “If I thought there was any way [Kyl-Lieberman] could be used as a pretense to launch an invasion of Iran, I would have voted no.” (Julianna Goldman, “Durbin Says Obama Will Win Iowa Caucus; Disagrees On Iran,” Bloomberg, 10/12/07; S.3017, CQ Vote #349: Agreed To, 76-22: R 47-2; D 29-20, 9/26/07, Durbin Voted Yea.)

So why is Obama lying about the rationale for his vote? I don’t know. But he likes to hide behind the claim that he originally sponsored something else that would have achieved the same thing:

The Obama Campaign Points To Barack Obama’s Co-Sponsorship Of The Iran Counter-Proliferation Act (S.970) As Evidence That He Favors Designating The IRGC As A Terrorist Organization. “Obama Cosponsored The Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, Which Would Designate The Iranian Revolutionary Guard As A Terrorist Organization.” (”Obama Camp Response to McCain’s AIPAC Speech,” Time’s “The Page,” http://thepage.time.com, Accessed 6/2/08)

There Has Been No Floor Action On S.970 Since 3/22/07 And It Has Never Been The Subject Of A Floor Vote. (S.970, Introduced 3/22/07, Referred To The Committee On Finance, 3/22/07)

Why did Obama’s bill fail to catch on? Maybe he isn’t as post-partisan as he would like us to believe.

I thought it was a joke when I first read about it at Jim Hoft’s blog, but the Speaker of the House recently told a newspaper in her hometown:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal.

And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Why is our Speaker of the House giving props to the Iranian government? WTF? How do these Leftist idiots live with themselves? She and Obama must be planning a surrender tour.

David Wright with ABC News was saying earlier that Obama’s policy is to not deal with Hamas because they’re not heads of state, but a terrorist group. Hmm. A very tough line to take, one would think.

But then it is also Obama’s position that, as President, he would meet with the leadership of Iran and Syria and presumably other terrorist-sponsoring states without preconditions?

Does the man who wishes to lead these 57 United States not understand that Hamas is a tool of Iran and that Iran is the actual problem?

With thanks to the Power Line boys, read this David Brooks’ column for the latest on Obama’s approach to our enemies:

“The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.”

Obama said he found that the military brass thinks the way he does: “The generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get the job done rather than look tough.”

What “job” have Obama and the general officers of America’s military settled on? Since the first job of our armed forces is to prosecute war against our enemies, I’d like to know what Obama means by this. Invading Pakistan? I think he’s suggested as much before, so why doesn’t he address it more fully now? Is he in favor of undermining the government of Iran since he sometimes appears to understand that they are one of those “root causes” we need to know so much more about? Let’s hear him say what he ought to be saying —now that he doesn’t need to fight for his own nomination anymore.

John Hinderaker observes:

Every NIE is, by definition, supposed to represent a “consensus” of all of the intelligence agencies. Yet those who actually write the report obviously exercise great influence, and when the “consensus” of seventeen agencies does a 180-degree U-turn, it is reasonable to shine a spotlight on the authors.

This is the same thinking that invited the scrutiny of Robert Novak and others into the backstory of Joe Wilson’s notorious excretions in the New York Times. Who, exactly, is writing this stuff is of great interest to all and I think more should be said about it.

Remember Alger Hiss? He was exactly who Richard Nixon said he was.

Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian Unlimited writes:

But pivotal to the US investigation into Iran’s suspect nuclear weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar. He was the principal author of an intelligence report published on Monday that concluded Iran, contrary to previous US claims, had halted its covert programme four years ago and had not restarted it. Almost single-handedly he has stopped - or, at the very least, postponed - any US military action against Iran.

His report marks a decisive moment in the battle between American neoconservatives and Washington’s foreign policy and intelligence professionals - between ideologues and pragmatists. It provided an unexpected victory for those opposed to the neocon plans for a military strike.

The report, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represents the consensus of the 16 US intelligence agencies, gave President George Bush one of his most difficult weeks since taking office in January 2001.

Fingar’s findings were met in many Washington offices occupied by foreign policy and intelligence professionals not only with relief but with rejoicing. They had lost out in the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, but they are winning this one.

Well…one can plainly see the importance that Iran’s sympathizers and apologists have invested this NIE with. The degenerate pacifists of Eurabia are determined to sell out their own civilization to keep the peace with Islamist psychopaths. Disgusting.

A couple of days ago, an Iranian ”supervision bureau” executed a 21 year-old gay man for sex-related crimes he supposedly committed several years before.

Government-ordered executions of homosexuals is one of those things one might suppose would anger the “progressive” West, but no. It’s more important to undermine Bush in his fight against the mullahcracy.

The assessment by some in the anti-war/anti-Bush segments of the IC and diplomatic communities that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is, as I have explained elsewhere, irrelevant. But, while its authors may have had their own agenda in promulgating it, the NIE may ultimately serve instead to divine where people stand on the issue of Iran with the Bomb.

If this be disinformation, make the most of it.

I encourage all Democrats opposed to this Administration’s policies in the Middle East to step up and declare with all their heart their firm belief that they know for a fact that Iran stopped and has not restarted its nuclear weapons program.

Please. Step up.

On the issue of this new NIE thing and how incompetent Bu$hitler has been in dealing with the peace-loving mullahcracy in Iran, Kevin Drum says:

There may have been multiple reasons why Iran shut down its bomb program, but I think you’d have to do some pretty serious special pleading to argue that our invasion of Iraq wasn’t one of them.

If Drum were better acquainted with intellectual honesty, he wouldn’t have to use such awkward phraseology.

The Democrats aren’t buying this crap about the President not knowing until just recently that the NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program says that it was stopped in 2003. They believe he must have known about it no later than this past summer.

In an October 17 news conference, Bush said that “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

And four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney told a Washington think tank that Iran would face “serious consequences” from the international community if it continued to enrich uranium.

You’ll notice that neither man’s remark really has anything at all to do with the NIE’s findings. It is, in fact, our purpose to keep Iran from getting the Bomb and destroying Israel. You can be sure that’s Israel’s purpose. And, bless their hearts, the Israelis’ standard of proof on this particular issue remains somewhat higher than our own. They’re just not as goddamned certain as Joe Biden is, but what are you going to do?

We don’t want World War III. Therefore, we will see to it that there are serious consequences if the Iranians don’t stop enriching uranium for their so-called civilian energy sector. They are doing that, regardless of how high the “confidence” is that they’ve stopped it with respect to weapons. 

The President and Mr. Cheney misspoke? Not to this, they didn’t.

At the bottom of these controversies over our intelligence assessments of Iran lies a single fact: none of them matters. Right or wrong, yes or no, the inevitability of conflict with Iran was begun when the nauseating Jimmy Carter allowed them to humiliate us in 1979. That debt has never been paid. It is right that we should plant our foot in Iran —like some colossal Alexander of infidel proportions.

The Dinnerjacket and his fellow revolutionaries will surely live long enough to see their movement come to be reviled and discarded by their own children and grandchildren. Then a fine market will Persia make!

Joe Klein is saying that’s he’s just spoken to a “senior U.S. intelligence official” who told him that the NIE was released now because

our “collection” capability within Iran has improved considerably over the past few years.

That would be directly attributable to our presence in Iraq. Such intelligence-collecting was finally possible once we were in a position to exploit the cross-border traffic between Iraq and Iran.

Thus, if one believes that Iran did suspend its nuclear weapons program, it must also be one’s belief that they did have one to suspend. Right? But why should the intelligence community —which has now apparently been upgraded to “IC” for Intelligence Community— even be trusted on this? Didn’t they and the President say just two years ago that Iran was furiously working away at nuclear weapons? Now that they supposedly aren’t, what are we to think?

That the dominoes keep falling. Future wars are averted because present wars are waged. The tacit and not-so-tacit threats of annihilation are justified when their outcome is peace.

I am eager to see how Dinnerjacket reacts to all of this. Maybe it will somehow serve to weaken his credibility with those who believed in all of his code words and suggestions of Iran’s right to the Bomb.