The Neoconservative Madrassa

VI DAY

2008-11-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

Victory in Iraq Day
November 22, 2008

A hearty salute to the troops!

Let the record reflect the great truth: the US led coalition defeated Saddam Hussein and ousted a fascist regime responsible for the murders of upwards of a million people and the displacement of millions more. Let it further show that Democracy's enemies, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, in conjunction with survivors of Saddam's regime, launched a vicious terror war that killed tens of thousands of Iraq's civilians and thousands of coalition troops and injured many more. Despite despite defeatism and craven indifference from "well meaning," "peace loving" fools who believed that a military defeat to al Qaeda and the Iranian axis was somehow in humanities best interests, a great victory is won. Iraq is now more peaceful than Chicago and has a bright future as the most democratic Arab state in the middle east.

Not only must we salute the brilliant military leadership that turned defeat into victory and a few courageous political leaders who did not accept defeat as an option, we must honor the sacrifice of the troops and their families who demonstrated time and again that they are the best America has to offer.

When you are right you are right

2008-07-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

This report was just presented by a blue ribbon commission looking into the threat of an EMP attack on the US launched from a ship offshore. I posted The End of the City on the Hill (see below) two years ago. I have noted on more than one occasion that we are living in a bad Tom Clancy novel and the US does not necessarily have to win.

We live in a dangerous world with irrational actors who despise and hate this country for the sin of our existence, our success, our democracy, our rule of law and our egalitarian pluralism. In their minds, we should not be possible; so we are deemed evil and must be destroyed. The sentence has already been passed, our enemies are working on the summary execution.

Today in Lebanon, there is dancing in the streets over the freedom for a man who bashed in a little girl's head in with a rifle butt. Hezbollah is the foremost expression of Iran's global ambitions. They are deadly, they are evil incarnate and they are ready for war.

The question is not when war will break out in the middle east but when.

If you think oil prices are high now, wait until Iran has the bomb and tells us what they are.

George Bush will go down in history as the founder of a modern era of global progress shielded by American might or the idiot who threw civilization to the mercy of the new barbarians.

In the next six months the fate of the world will be decided.

The Very Big War

2008-05-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Very Big War

-Dedicated to the memory of the Six Million

“patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” -Ayatollah Khomeini

Here are the facts:

George Bush leaves office in January 2009

Iran's nuclear program is going full steam ahead, they are at or near the point of no return

Hezbollah has a 40,000 missile arsenal and is in open rebellion against the lawful government of Lebanon

Hamas is committing daily acts of terrorism against Israeli territory

Syria is at the highest level of mobilization seen in 25 years.

It has been several decades since the last major Middle East war. For a variety of reasons, there are forces at work almost guaranteeing the Very Big War is coming soon.

The Very Big War will have two fronts of fighting but spillover fighting and terrorism that can erupt in places all over the world. The fronts are the Israel-Gaza/Syria/Hezbollah and the Iranian Front.

The advent of $120 per barrel oil and the global ambitions of the Iranian clerical regime and the internal political pressures of the region’s undemocratic authoritarian regimes have created a roiling cauldron, ready to explode.

A strategic overview of the kind of war that will be waged and its costs is helpful to understanding what we are about to witness.

The Israel Front

It is possible that Israel can be the only western combatant in the war. It is unlikely that Iran, if attacked, (and it will be attacked), will not lash out at the US and our allies in the region. Iran has threatened to do so and it is ideologically consistent for them to do so. But war netween Israel and Iran is a given.

The 2006 inconclusive war in Lebanon was very much the model for what we can expect in the coming Very Big War. In 2006, Hamas and Hezbollah committed coordinated terror-kidnap strikes on Israeli territory, leading to a major Israeli mobilization and, ultimately, war. Because of poor leadership on the Israeli side, the war was inconclusive, both sides came away licking their wounds but claiming victory. Since the end of hostilities, both two sides have addressed what they determined were the lessons from the 2006 conflict. The Israelis focused on correcting, poor leadership, poor equipment, preparation and planning. The net result of the 2006 war was a shakeup in the political and military defense commands, with a rededication to better preparation for fighting the next war better. The current Defense Minister, and Chief of Staff are highly regarded military officers, who will not be content to repeat the tactical and strategic blunders of the 2006 war: not attacking and destroying enemy infrastructure, regardless of location, and fighting in a way that best uses Israel's overwhelming conventional military power. New plans call for the IDF to deeply penetrate enemy territory to locate, target and destroy enemy military capacity. In particular, Israel's failure to punish Hezbollah's major sponsor, Syria, is viewed as a major strategic mistake that will not be repeated in the coming war.

From the perspective of what Professor Barry Rubin calls HISH (short for Hamas, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah), the 2006 war displayed weakness in Israeli military doctrine. To their thinking, they have developed a new form of warfare that permits nations, unable to field successful conventional armies, to use unconventional forces and tactics to create not just military deterrence and parity, but the tantalizing prospect of actual victory over a modern Western force. Using their favorite tactic of depraved indifference to civilian life, coupled with low cost but highly destructive modern weapons, the new tactics seek to limit the advantages of Western-style conventional military operations. Under this new doctrine, terror-military forces, with some air protection from portable anti-air missiles, use long-range rockets to strike and destroy distant civilian targets while heavily bunkered conventional military units bleed the enemy for every inch of ground gained. Using numbers of specially equipped suicide commandos, the new strategy channels the fighting into costly village to village, street to street and bunker to bunker fighting to slowdown the enemy advance forcing the opponent to pay for every inch of territory in blood.

HISH has lavishly supplemented its conventional abilities with the latest Russian antiaircraft cover, Chinese anti-ship missiles with the proven tank busting capabilities with preplaced 1,000 pound mines and EFP's (the very same weapons that have shredded the bodies of thousands of Americans, allies and Iraqis).

Just as the 2006 war began with the kidnapping/cross-border attacks from Israel's north and south, we can expect the same kind of ever escalating attacks similar to what we've seen in the last few days along Israel's borders. These are coordinated strikes by the too H's in HISH, Hamas and Hezbollah, under the direction of Iranian command and control units based in the region. At the direction of these Iranian masters, the attempt is to provoke a major military response by Israel under the reasonable belief that the international community will prevent Israel from striking too hard against Iran's proxies or that Israel will not dare escalate things too far.

The assumed deterrence factors are Israel's reluctance to fight in a war, political weakness in the person of the sitting prime minister and the very real understanding and Israel's part that HISH has deployed a specially developed arsenal of long-range rockets and missiles designed to batter the Jewish state and cause a huge price to be paid in civilian and military fronts. It is the hailstorm of short and long-range rockets, some precision guided that can be expected to kill hundreds of civilians and destroy hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, in damage that are hoped to present so high a cost to Israel that she will accede to another draw and accept the new norms of escalating perpetual violence against Israel awaiting the day when Iran is finally able to deploy nuclear weapons against Israel.

Israel has developed a real and credible plan for attacking and destroying, or, at the very least, delaying is Iran’s nuclear program. It will require a large number of airstrikes over many days to achieve the desired objective, albeit at a very high cost to Israel's air force and human lives. For Israel, the possibility of an Iranian bomb is completely unacceptable. Regardless of what the US 2007 NIE said, Israel believes that it has a dwindling amount of time and few prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough for a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Iran wants the nuclear weapons; the current Clerical leadership will never peacefully agree to give up their illegal nuclear weapons program.

The regime’s Holocaust denial and open calls for Israel's annihilation are sincere. The Very Big War’s raison d’être is quite simply, Iran using its proxies, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas to tie down Israel and run out the clock while they get the bomb; those same forces compel Israel to act before it is too late. Iran’s actions in the region are only explainable as being in direct furtherance of their stated propaganda goals. What began as nasty pinprick terror attacks in Lebanon in the early 1980’s has blossomed into a multibillion dollar a year export industry of global mayhem and terror against Iran’s main targets: regime opponents, Jews, Israelis, and Americans. Terror is and always has been the primary foreign policy of the Iranian regime.

In terms of propaganda, Iran has built giant media empires blaring demonization and open calls for genocide against Israel. The hatred is too large to be accidental; rather, it is deliberate, specially ordered, and content too pungent to be anything other than what it is. Yet, for many of the same reasons the world did not respond in the late 1930’s to Nazi aggression, the same blind pacifism is advocated by the far left, despite overwhelming evidence of an intent to commit an aggressive genocidal war, is once again ignored. Even when Iranian proxies deliberately ignore the use of the same terms used by the Nazis to refer to Jews, even when they use the Hitler salute, the world pretends it is not happening. Just in the past weeks, a senior leader in Iran reiterated that they really do mean it when they use the slogans. "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." These are the real desires and objectives of the regime and repeated for all to hear- totalitarian regimes not only proclaim such objectives to intimidate their enemies, such propaganda energizes their followers demanding the blind obedience that is the hallmark of the totalitarian state.

Leftist come in two flavors: Idealists that believe whatever PC doctrine is the current wisdom and the knowing cynics whose soulless hatred of the West enables them to collaborate happily with the likes of Hitler when politics demands it. We are seeing one of the surest signs war is coming- Former President Carter’s visits to the region and peace activists making pilgrimage to Tehran. It is pure leftist egoism to think the language of their nice salons in the west have the least resonance with brutes who hang women and gays from cranes and stone women to death for adultery.

Pre-war Europe ignored Jews being beaten death on the streets by Hitler’s goons then complained they did not know his intentions when they arrived on their doorsteps. The left has created magnificent cathedrals of denial to ignore or explain Iranian behavior. Only fools can be credulous enough to believe, the Iranian protestations about the peaceful nature of their nuclear program: from acquisition to specialized nuclear triggers, ballistic missiles that are only good for caring nuclear warheads, to Iranian warhead referencing documents mistakenly given to be IAEA, to say nothing of the largest underground "peaceful" nuclear fuel processing facility in the world. One either can take the Iranians regimes overt calls for Israel's destruction at their face value, or be prepared to proven wrong a nuclear Holocaust against the Jewish people. The latter is just fine with Nazis and leftists (isn’t it nice to see them working productively together again after all these years?), however the Jewish State and its leadership and the Jewish world take seriously the Iranian threat and understand the danger only grows as diplomatic efforts grow ever more futile.

The cost of stopping Hitler kept rising with each passing year of not facing the facts of who he was and the danger he presented. He could have been stopped with a few thousand men in 1935, a few hundred thousand in 1937, and a couple million in 1938. Yet, at each point, the West did not defend itself in the shortsighted ideas Hitler could be appeased, that no one really wants war and peace could be cheaply bought, that trumped common sense in the face of clear evidence that the Nazi regime was a different kind of operation. Western leaders refused to label the danger, much less act to deter the aggressor. Iranian military aggression and ideology are facts: from the first days of the regime attacking the US Embassy until today Iran has been guilty of any number of vicious attacks against its enemies, using all means, no matter how reprehensible, in the same ever escalating spiral of violence. Anyone with a clear understanding of the historical details of the occupation of Iraq since 2003 knows the Iranian government has spent billions of dollars doing everything he can to rip Iraq apart and kill as many Americans as possible.

Aggressors commit aggression. Only credible deterrence works but only to a point- some regimes require war to destroy. With the sole exception of US naval operations in the Gulf in the 80’s, the world has failed to deter Iranian rogue behavior.

The Very Big War will have some triggering event; a large successful terrorist strike by Hamas or Hezbollah is a safe bet for how things will start. Kidnapping three Israeli soldiers in 2006 worked out better than the Iranians could ever have hoped, Israel continuously tried through various intermediaries to get the release of her three captured soldiers. But every deal fails. HISH would like nothing to have a dozen or so more captives to dangle before their enemies.

Tensions in the region already very high; the level of violence from Gaza already has many in Israel talking in terms of a need for, at the very least, a major incursion into Gaza. Even a large unsuccessful terror attack may draw a maximal response. HISH will keep raising the ante until it eventually provokes response: a war to divert world attention from Iran’s nuclear program.

One fears Israeli leadership will suffer the same failure of will as seen in 2006. Unless the Israel strikes very hard, fast and deep into HISH territory, the damage to civilian lives and infrastructure will be very dear indeed: the HISH rocket arsenal will be unleashed when the war starts. Unless she decisively puts troops deep into Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, Israel will suffer enormous amounts of rocket damage. Israel’s military planning structure has created appropriate strategies to deal with the current situation. The question is whether Israel’s senior political leadership will see those plans though to victory. HISH is counting on just such a failure of will on Israel’s part. Only Israeli military action that rapidly paralyzes HISH military command in Lebanon and Syria can avert the destruction aimed at Israel. Unless Southern Lebanon is quickly cut off and overrun, an endless rain of rockets will be falling on Israel.

Fighting in Gaza, will be punctuated by vicious house-to-house and bunker-to-bunker combat with high casualties on both sides. Hamas has used the last year to turn much of Gaza possible into a deathtrap. One hopes Israel will kill and capture most of the Hamas leadership and then hand over the territory to an international force. Only a decisive military defeat in Gaza can convince Palestinians of the futility of their armed struggle.

Now let’s turn to the rockets that will be fired in the Very Big War. While Israel fields on of the most effective ABM systems in the world, hundreds of rockets are to get through; expect particularly horrific television images. The HISH rocket arsenal is almost four times the size it was in 2006 with many more long-range, blockbuster missiles. Hundreds of HISH rockets will be fired indiscriminately; there will be widespread destruction; many are specially designed to blast ball bearings to kill civilians. The mere existence of these rockets is a war-crime. The world was silent about them in 2006, so HISH built thousands more of them. There is also the very real possibility of poison gas or biological warheads: Hamas used anti-coagulants in their suicide belt bombs; they are no moral lower thresholds that are beneath HISH. These rockets are aimed against Jewish people and property solely because of their religion. HISH possesses some drone and precision guidance missile capabilities. Israel will find out the hard way what those are.

In 2006, the international community and the United States called on southern Lebanon to be disarmed and for all countries and groups to cease and desist shipping any kind of military hardware to any groups in the Lebanon. Syria, Hezbollah and Iran wiped their collective bottoms with this agreement. The failure of these international guarantees is going to result in a number of Jewish civilians being killed in the Very Big War, expect the usual meaningless expressions of regret from the international diplomatic community. That all this takes place 68 years after the single greatest genocide in history speaks volumes of European indifference, UN ineffectiveness, and the depraved hearts of the perpetrator regimes and groups.

HISH believes it can force Israel to fight the same kind of war in 2008 as was fought in 2006. The reasoning is that HISH’s belief Israel’s leaders will only fight the smallest war possible choosing Iran’s proxies over a wider war. This will allow Iran to accomplish its goal in the war: completing its nuclear weapons without interruption. HISH assumes the United States is politically paralyzed, in an election year and that Israel is deterred by the cost of all out war against the cost of Iran’s getting nuclear weapons. Every government has the intelligence assessment that says Iran will behave rationally once they get the bomb. Iran believes once they have the bomb the world permanently changes in their favor; they could even be right about this latter point. As HISH sees things right now, the more destruction in the near term, the better for their long-range plan.

For supporters of the Israel, we, must hope Israel’s leadership, have learned their lesson from the last war and are dead set against not repeating the same mistakes. The worst mistake you can make in war is to let your enemy determined the where, the when and the how of the fight. Conversely, if you can fight as much as possible on your terms, you have a pretty good chance of winning.

We should not be surprised to see a very large Israeli military incursion deep into Lebanon and a very hard drive east to deliver a terrible and crushing blow to the regime of Assad’s Syria. With luck, we’ll be treated to one of the happier images you will ever see on television: an Israeli task force doing a Thunder Run into downtown Damascus. If Israel is forced to go to war against HISH, she will use the occasion to launch long-range strikes against Iran’s nuclear program. Those strikes will go on for some period. Given the already high cost already built into this war, Israel would be wise to remove Iran’s key motivating factor in their behavior. The enormous dangers posed by the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, even if they make good on their threats of conventional or biochemical ballistic missile retaliation, makes the cost of their revenge a bearable- when the choice is suffer some or die, you accept the suffering.

The most important factor in any decision to go to war is the uncertainty of its outcome; war really is the most uncertain of all human endeavors. You can maximize your ability to get your desired result but that does not mean it can or will happen the way you plan. Just ask President Bush. Leaders who send their nations to war reap the results, good or bad and, as Argentina’s Junta learned, even dictators can get blowback. Israel is shot at every day and bigger attacks are planned against her every day. Israel weighs the uncertainty of all out war against lesser responses- a hedgehog strategy to survive or larger scale counterstrikes. No one is going to do it for Israel and she knows it. Her trigger points are what she knows about Iran’s nuclear program and a date, after which they cannot realistically stop it and an attack or event that requires war.

If war breaks out, Iran will be bombed. Acclaimed journalists and other fools (Seymour Hersh has the distinction of being both) have already declared Israel will use nuclear weapons against Iran; Israeli military doctrine requires a doomsday scenario before such weapons would ever be used, conventional force will be tried first in their attacks on Iran. This is a 100% certainty, something anyone who knows anything about Israeli military doctrine understands but is news to leftists and journalists everywhere. There is a possibility of nuclear fallout from Israel’s strikes. Nuclear facilities really should not be bombed but Israel has shown it has a certain flair for this activity. Israel will do everything they can to avoid fallout, but they had no say in what Iran is doing and how Iran’s engineers designed their facilities. There is one form of good “fallout” from any Israeli attack: there is some chance it may politically destabilize the Iranian regime, which would be a wonderful outcome; the absolutely worst case scenario: the strike would only slow down Iran’s race for the bomb.

Mentioning Hersh is always a good segue into discussion about the propaganda and false accusations against Israel that will be part of the war. The 2006 wars saw a number of false accusations of war crimes against Israel. It is quite clear there are special HISH propaganda units tasked with false accusation manufacturing. Using sympathetic and uncritical, even complicit, leftist and Islamist journalists willing to abet staging photo opportunities. HISH’s propaganda units stand ready to accuse Israel of anything. Note too, a recent announcement by Iran calling for reporter volunteers to “embed” into HISH force structures. Not only does also show HISH thinks war is imminent, this stratagem also provides a cynical opportunity that would make Joseph Goebbels proud: a free supply of hostages that can be “captured” by splinter groups and then ransomed back to Western news agencies for a tidy profit. So assuming the tortured bodies of political opponents and their families are probably kept in a special morgue awaiting display as “victims” of Israeli aggression is a safe assumption. Witness the “Green Helmet Guy” of the Lebanon War who paraded the body of a child back and forth for the waiting cameras and the equally odious rusted ambulances that were allegedly targeted by Israeli air to ground missiles. HISH will seek similar propaganda successes.

The Internet will be permanently polluted with execution videos of any American or Israeli unfortunate enough to fall into enemy hands during and after the war. Civilian or military status is utterly irrelevant to HISH. Israel military doctrine seeks to minimize civilian damage (those who believe otherwise can read a single booklet of allied bombing raids during WWII to understand what the real use of modern air power against civilian targets really is); conversely, HISH doctrine specifically mandates emplacement of units in civilian areas and maximal targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Perversely, while they claim to act form Islamic religious morality and norms, HISH fighting doctrine long ago decided that, contrary to the Geneva Convention (and the Koran for that matter) any number of casualties even Christian and Muslim Palestinian or Lebanese are perfectly acceptable results.

The American Front

The single biggest X-factor in the coming war will be how Iran responds with respect to US forces in Iraq and the region. The US is not necessarily wedded to attacking Iran if there is war. While there is mounting evidence that the US military is preparing to launch punitive raids against Iranian terror/military/nuclear sites on our own, it does not necessarily mean US involvement in the war. The new CENTCOM commander, Petreaus, has spoken loud and often about Iran killing our soldiers in Iraq. He replaces a commander who famously vowed he would never attack Iran. The American Front is optional, to Iran and the US. There is some threshold that triggers a US response; but one can only conjecture as to what it is.

Iran has spent heavily building up her capability in Iraq. Recent US and Iraqi government strikes against Iranian proxies in Iraq have greatly degraded these capabilities, a possible precursor to debilitate Iranian capability in Iraq before war or, the opening salvo; given how fluid things are over there, it might even be a bit of both. If war breaks out, Iran might attack US forces in Iraq to cause as much damage as possible to Iraq. They are more than willing to fire over the border into Iraq using longer-range weaponry. The bigger issue is Iranian plans to attack and disrupt oil production infrastructure throughout the region to create worldwide economic chaos and otherwise punish the West for daring to deny them their nuclear dreams.

What keeps me up late at night is the prospect of an Iranian sneak attack against a US carrier group launching a hail of C-802 antiship missiles at near point-blank range. Imagine the propaganda coup of Iran sinking or damaging a US carrier. If you look at the Iranian naval capabilities, you see lots of “skeet” but also numbers of sophisticated high quality weaponry. The strategy is to skeet to distract and confuse from the more sophisticated threat. A C-802, launched close enough might give the target ship only a few minutes to defend itself.

In the event of war in the Gulf, the US navy will light up the shores of Iran from one end to another. The Iranian Navy and Air Force will cease to exist after, at most, three days. Terror camps in Iran will be bombed, any nuclear facility the US feels Israel did not destroy sufficiently, will be thoroughly destroyed by the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the world. US forces will seize coastal military objectives; there will not be a full-scale invasion. Iranian military units will find themselves the recipients of hell from the skies. Her leaders will be driven underground or they will flee the country. Within hours, the US will have air superiority over all of Iran. Revolution minded Iranians would face a government on the run. Inserted US special forces could quickly partner with local militias and drive out the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Basiji and the Pasdaran- no military formation can function, much less survive very long, under sustained precision aerial bombardment.

The Home Front

There is also Iran’s ally, Al Qaeda. In the event of war, Iranian embassies throughout the Western world might handoff dozens of suicide vests for use on the mass transit and malls of Europe and the US. While the United States is blessed not to have too much of a Iranian diplomatic presence on our soil, Hamas and Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, in the event of war, will unleash every bit as hell they possibly can in America. There are too many anecdotal stories of Middle Easterners posing in front of Jewish institutions not to take the threat seriously.

This war is going to hurt everywhere.

Friends of Israel are sure to face accusations Israeli friendship costs American lives. Most Americans are sophisticated enough to know that anyone willing to attack you for your friendships with others is an implacable enemy whom you are destined to fight.

Final Countdown to War

Israel’s fixed date after which it believes she must attack Iran or forever lose the chance to interdict Iran’s nuclear program is fast approaching. Recent reports of Israel briefing British officials on the same kind of “smoking gun” intelligence that preceded Israel’s attack on Syria’s plutonium reactor indicate the time for diplomacy is all but at an end.

Iran’s hope a proxy war will forestall attack on its nuclear program is badly placed. Viewed in its most cynical light, this strategy is particularly exploitative of the relatively weak, and, frankly, stupid Palestinians, Syrians and, Lebanese allies of Iran; it seems crazy to allow your own country to be destroyed to assist another country destroy yet a third country. The Iranian clerical regime have been bad actors since their first inception and nothing has changed that. Iran made a great show after the 2006 war of waving fistfuls of counterfeit US currency, allegedly being passing out cash to rebuild southern Lebanon; the fact is Iran did very little civilian rebuilding but they spent an absolute fortune rearming and replacing Hezbollah weaponry expended in 2006 and billions more arming Syria to the teeth.

Adolf Eichmann, prior to his capture by Israel, famously commented that he would jump into his grave with glee for what he had done; the current Iranian leadership are kindred spirits of Eichmann in every respect. Their solitary focus and desire to destroy Israel steeped in the deepest and basest of hatreds, is the sincerest expression of Iran’s intentions. No one makes them do what they do. They are driven by their core beliefs and will not stop until they are destroyed.

We always want their prognostications of bad tidings to be wrong. In the Middle East, the hand writing for war coming soon is clearly on the wall. We have multiple speeding buses all heading towards the same intersection, no one is slowing down; it doesn’t even matter what color the light is. On some of the buses the drivers actually want to die and take as many people with them as possible. The only question is who is going to die in the collision and what the collateral damage will be.

The Very Big War does not have to be lost by Israel and the United States. Indeed, if they act wisely and quickly, our overwhelming conventional military superiority can crush a relatively weak enemy. However, we should remember that just because you have a gun and are going against a lunatic with a knife does not necessarily mean that you will win. In certain flights, the wrong guy can win. Iran is perfectly happy if their proxies suffer catastrophic defeat if they gain the strategic victory of getting the bomb. By their thinking. Even if they only succeed in doing billions of dollars damage to Israeli civilian infrastructure or kill hundreds of Americans, they are happy.

Above all Iran wants to get the bomb, only the bomb matters, it is more important than any and every other consideration. It is not just any bomb; it is Khomeini’s bomb, an instrument for etching his evil into the face of the earth and history itself. Ahmadinejad visits to the bomb factories, even when they leak secrets about the program are as one with Hitler’s torch lit parades celebrating National Socialism. The psychological will to violent power is textbook totalitarian behavior. The only acceptable outcome, should this war break out, is one in which the Iranian clerical regime and their nuclear program are wiped from the face of the earth. At least 80% of Iranians chose not to vote in last month’s elections. A huge number of the ballots that appeared to be cast were cast in favor of the candidates with the least ostensible ties to the regime. The Iranian people are no less hostages of these criminal the criminal barbarians as are the innocent civilian populations of Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria are taking their people into a war, paid for with their blood, on their soil, at the behest of a foreign international interloper; they will all pay dearly for allying their people with Iran’s regime.

The great lesson of 9/11 is the danger of state-sponsored terrorism: the modern nation-state can inflict serious damage on any open democratic society; using small groups that do the damage for them limits their risk of being caught. 9/11 teaches us such regimes can never be permitted to get nuclear weapons and, ultimately, they have to be driven out of the business of exporting terrorism. Thousands of Americans, Afghans, Iraqis and Israelis have died, because of state-sponsored terrorism directed against them. The culprit: HISH. Acting through their proxies, even working with al Qaeda, the Islamic Republic of Iran has created whole armies for terror and mass murder. Only when Iran, and its foremost stooge, Syria, are utterly defeated will we see a major decline in state-sponsored terrorism. The Very Big War can break out at any moment. Let us hope that the leaders of the West have the courage and determination, to go right for Iran’s jugular and destroy the clerical regime and their allies once and for all.

The Price of HISH

26 years ago, a young Israeli flyer in the name of Ron Arad was shot down over Lebanon; he is known to have ejected safely and to have been captured in by Shiite militias. It is not publicly known whether he is currently in Lebanon or Iran, alive or dead, but the mere fact that this man was taken and held as a permanent hostage by HISH speaks worlds about this enemy. The current Iranian regime views any of us and all of us as the next Ron Arad. Whether it’s flying in a plane, taking the train, praying at our preferred house of the worship, shopping at the mall, watching a movie in the theater or just walking in the crowded streets of any downtown, the places we’d go and the things we do have been cased and considered by specialists in mass murder as prospective targets. We can live in a world in which never know, if or when, we, or someone we know or love, might become the next Ron Arad. We can live in a world that doesn’t have the sort of people that puts the entire resources of their nation into killing people for the supposed sin of their existence. It is not a crime to be European or American, much less Christian or Jewish. The fanatical gleam in their eye, and an insatiable thirst for blood of people they never met is the problem, not anything any person alive ever did. The question before us is whether we are foolish enough to allow people who openly call for our deaths to gain the means of actually doing something in furtherance of those stated desires. Unlike the Communist regimes of the Cold War, the new enemy advocates committing suicide if it means they can destroy the West. At least one can say the lives of their people mattered more to the Soviets than destroying the West.

Whether HISH provokes the Very Big War or not, in many respects Very Big War is already being fought. When the time comes, let us pray Western leaders have the courage to see the fight to its just end, that we may see the liberation of millions of Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, and Iranians. Wars are awful but some wars really are necessary and this war is against an existential threat to the entire world. Since it must be fought, let there be no half measures, let victory be total. Any other result insults the memory of those already killed in this conflict and means that, ultimately, we will face a future nuclear war that will see tens of millions of us die.

See the picture?

2008-03-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

This is the logo for Hezbollah. The US government has designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The groups has been implicated in terror activities all over the world. Iran's Foreign Minister personally attended the funeral of Imad Mughnieyh a man who Hezbollah denied knowing anything about but then admitted he was their top commander.

This is the logo for a Iranian sponsored terrorist group in Iraq.

The very existence of this group is an act of war against the United States. This group has killed American soldiers
and resists US efforts to transform Iraq into an independent democratic state.

The logos use the same theme, same hand, notice the globe in both.

And add this to your data points:

Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mehdi Army, admitted to "formal links" with Hizbollah.
"We have formal links with Hizbollah, we do exchange ideas and discuss the situation facing Shiites in both countries," he said. "It is natural that we would want to improve ourselves by learning from each other. We copy Hizbollah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this."
Mr Sadr said members of the Mehdi Army had travelled to Lebanon, and would continue to do so. "We go and discuss what Israel's future plans are in the Middle East because we are part of whatever will happen," he said.

STATEMENT ENCLOSED

2007-01-31T07:59:00.000-08:00

YOUR ACCOUNT IS PAST DUE

Item ....................................................................................Price............Cost

Iraq
Coalition Troops

750 Wrongful Death Claim ........................................2400000 ........1800000000
Loss of Consortium to Families .................... ................845000 ........633750000
Training, Recruiting and Replacement costs.....................250000 ....187500000

5400 Wounded Coalition Soldiers

Pain Suffering Lost Future Earnings.............................. 1200000 ....6480000000
Loss of Consortium to Families ..........................................325000 ....1755000000
Training, Recruiting and Replacement costs.....................250000 ....2100000000

200 Civilian Contractors

Wrongful Death Claim ....................................................2400000 ....264000000
Loss of Consortium to Families ............................... ..........845000 ....92950000
Training, Recruiting and Replacement costs.....................35000 ........3850000
Personnel Subtotal ..................................................................... ....$13,317,050,000

Vehicles

Cars and Light Trucks
800 Destroyed ..................................................................14500 ........11600000
2300 Damaged ......................................................................2200 ........5060000

Hummers
450 Destroyed..................................................................... 124000 ....55800000
650 Damaged ......................................................................37000........ 24050000
Trucks
300 Destroyed ....................................................................132000 ....39600000
600 Damaged .......................................................................23000 ....13800000
....
Tanks ................................................................................................
3 Destroyed .....................................................................9000000 ....27000000
15 Damaged ..................................................................2700000.... ....40500000
Planes and Helicopters

15 Destroyed................................................................. 75000000 ....1125000000
33 Damaged ...................................................................10000000 ....330000000
Vehicle Subtotal ........................................................................... ........1672410000

Infrastructure

500 Destroyed Facilities .................................................95000 ....47500000
2000 Damaged Facilitated .............................................22000 ....484000000
Iraq Subtotal ..........................................................................$15,520,960,000

Al Khobar, Lebanon and Argentina

Al Khobar, AMIA Embassies, Barracks .................46000000.... 230000000
Damaged Embassies and Barracks ...........................2000000 ....4000000

Killed and Injured
Civilians, Staff Employees and Troops

440 Wrongful Death Claims .......................................2400000 ....1296000000
Loss of Consortium to Families ......................................845000 ....371800000

Kidnappings

Cpl. R. Steatham ................................................. ..........35000000 ....35000000
Col. William Higgins ..................................................250000000 ....250000000
Lebanese Hostage Crisis ...........................................200000000 ....200000000
Al- Khobar, Lebanon and Argentina Subtotal..................$2386800000

US Embassy Takeover 1979-81

Property Damage ........................................................250000000 ....250000000
Compensation to Personel x 444 days .................. √ ççç3000 ....105228000

Grand Total ............................................................................$18,262,988,000

In Memory of Kathleen A. Burns

2006-09-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

When I agreed to write a memorial to the memory of Kathleen Burns, I realized three things: I knew nothing about her, nothing about how she died and nothing about what her loss meant to friends and family. I can only speak from personal knowledge of what her loss means to me as a fellow American who never knew her.

All I know for sure is that on that fateful day five years ago, she was a fellow one three hundred millionth of America. If she was descended from the Mayflower pilgrims or first generation, Kathleen was my partner in a greater enterprise called the United States of America.

She was a sister I never knew I had, until I agreed to remember in words one victim of 9-11. I thought about contacting her family, send a nice letter explaining what I was doing and would they be so kind as to let me interview them about Kathleen.

But I could not send the letter because I felt I did not have a right to intrude on their privacy or to cause Kathleen’s family the slightest additional pain at their loss. If perhaps, they might have felt better about talking about her and further embellishing their memories and details of who Kathleen, I apologize to them and give them something I never give anyone the right to do- to edit my words or strike them completely, I will comply with whatever request they have regarding this post.

While all Americans feel the loss of “that day,” it is the actual families that live with the reality of it everyday. And I try never to forget the thousands of injured, those who were seriously hurt and those who bear lasting and ongoing medical issues for the “crime” of living in the United States of America.

Who are these wicked men to act our judges? Were they our intellectual or spiritual betters? Had they advanced the world or humanity in any way; will their efforts and thinking ever lead to a single scientific or social advancement that had the merit of a single hair of Kathleen Burns? Never. The men who perpetrated Kathleen’s murder were the marginal losers and rejects from the marginal and failed states whose citizens all share a burning desire to leave.

What little I know of Kathleen were the words from obituaries written by others. Kathleen lived at home with her folks. I assume they were a close-knit family: Kathleen loved her family and was loved in return. She was well regarded by her co-workers and she had advanced in her career in computer technology for the financial industry. Kathleen ran the department that ran the computers that ran the office that managed a lot of money for a lot of people. This was a job of trust. Kathleen Burns was someone you could trust.

So it was on a beautiful morning in September, Kathleen was living her life, went to work and did not come home. I know nothing of her last hours in life; I only hope she did not suffer. All of us have our 9-11 memories: when we first heard, what our first impressions of the situation were and then our realizations as events went forward from bad to worse.

The Burns family’s memory are different; they are personal: for them they will remember Kathleen’s last words to them, what she was wearing the last time they saw her and all the kaleidoscope of memories of her that all of us, when we close our eyes and think about it, remember of our lives and the people in it.

Some people you know everything about them because they tell you what they think and feel, others are quiet and introspective with their thoughts and feelings too personal to share with others. I do not know what Kathleen was like in this regard, was she all business all the time? The quiet and thoughtful type that after a forty minute meeting raises their hand, says how to solve the problem and the meeting is over?

Was Kathleen a slug you in the arm “How about the game last night type?” or was she pink and ruffles? Was she an athlete? A runner? Han gliding! Did she always want to hang-glide? Perhaps she loved avante garde film and listening to punk rock. Did she keep a picture of a beloved pet in her wallet? Did she take different ways to work to see different parts of the city every day? Did she and a group of friends have a regular Tuesday dinner where they would get together and talk?

If Kathleen was some of these things or all of them, whatever she was and whatever she did, all of it stopped.

And when she stopped, many things happened. There were the tears and the sadness; the counting of the loss. But something else happened, something magnificent and special, something transcendent and forever: an entire great nation stopped whatever it was doing and did whatever it could to help the victims and their families. All differences were forgotten as we filled the boots of firemen all over the nation to send on to New York; we called the telethons, we prayed and held hands of perfect strangers. We unified because it took the death of Kathleen Burn and 2995 other equally special and decent people to make us appreciate what we have and that within this nation is a deeply decent organic society that links a computer department manger in New York to the taxi driver, the police man, the garbage man, the professor, the con-man, the slacker, the hacker, the PR lady, the realtor, the beet farmer and the sign maker all in a mash-up of our comings and goings, our meals and elections, our religious services and our kid’s soccer games; Kathleen was one of us, with her own mind, her own life and her own dreams.

To punish Kathleen Burn’s killers and stop any other who might decide to follow, we have sent soldiers all over the world and sent our sons and daughters into 125 degree hellholes with camel spiders larger than paperback novels and 109 and other countries more. Kathleen and those who fell with her represent us all; each of us realizes that any of us could have been a victim that day; were all attacked. Fate determined that Kathleen’s story would stop on that day but the hand that struck was aiming for us all.

I looked at the pictures of Kathleen online, she comes across as someone who did not put on airs, she had a mischievous smile and twinkle to her eye that suggested that she was a great person. I do not know if she was volunteer in her community, a Republican or a Democrat, an avid reader or liked doing crossword puzzles, whether she liked the Jets or Giants, even the Raiders or Cowboys or hated football but loved baseball, if she went to church every Sunday or never went to a service ever, she was Kathleen Burns, a fellow American, citizen, a resident of New York and the world is less of a place without her in it.

I only know that she had family and friends who loved her and miss her deeply that she was special to them and they were special to her. I only know that no one had a right to take her life; if they can pay for it in this world, great, and they will pay in the next for certain. There cannot be a G-d that says slay as many innocents as you can to get at the guilty, any faith, or any G-d that tells its followers such madness cannot deserve credence. Any faith that G-d that accepts Kathleen’s killers as saints deserves to die.

I imagine Kathleen when she was a little girl opening presents in the family room on Christmas morning; how happy she must of have been. Jumping with happiness opening a present, the one she really wanted and her folks looking on contentedly, smiling; she was theirs and all the problems of the world and difficulties of day to day life were wiped away with her happiness. There are a lot of happy little kids on Christmas morning, but for the Burns family, their happy child was Kathleen.

I only have pseudo-memories of her, those who knew and loved her have real memories, and real pain at her loss. Kathleen was real, she mattered and she still matters today and she will matter many years from now. She will matter because however we view our society and our lives all of us live in this place called America and every one of us must respect and protect each other. For our society to survive and prevail, we must look at our friends neighbors and passersby as partners in a giant living and breathing organism called the United States of America. Each of us doing our part is the only way the entire improvised system survives.

For some it will just be paying taxes, others will fight, and sadly, for a few, it will be their fate to fall. No one expected that a fine September morning in 2001 would add new war memorials to American national memory but America is very good at remembering.

We also never quit. While the towers burned we saved lives and planned to repair them and when they fell we resolved to rebuild. Whether etched in granite, glass or paper at ground zero, the name Kathleen Burns stands not just for a 49 year old American lady; it stands for each and every one of us. If we cannot remember Kathleen and those who fell with her, we do not deserve to be a nation.

Kathleen, I know very little more about you than when I began, but you are not forgotten and never will be. I will do my part, others will do theirs; we know it cannot bring you back to us.

To the Burns family, again, my deepest condolences.

Kathleen Burns: may your memory and all those who fell with you on September 11^th be for a blessing in this world.

8-22 Marathon Bloggin

2006-08-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

I set up 8-22 to cover the events of tomorrow. Having done my best to educate and inform people about the Iranian danger, I take no pleasure in whatever bad news comes down tomorrow.

For posterity's sake, I hope that whatever happens tomorrow is not too precipitious and that finally the world will see the danger and act.

The End of the City on the Hill

2006-05-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

The End of the City on the Hill

The Kozawi Maru was an old container ship built in the early 1980s at the peak of Japan's booming economy. Older now, she sailed slowly north in the easy Atlantic swell. Rusty and a little slower than when she was built the Kozawi was still graceful enough to easily move at eight knots on her listed course to Newark. The Kozawi had sailed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, gone north to Hong Kong and dropped three dozen empty containers and sixty containers of cargo. Loading 110 containers bound for the middle east, Europe and the US, she sailed south making stops in Singapore, Lahore, Bangalore, Dubai and Cadiz before she reached her current point, 160 miles southeast of Baltimore on a clear starlit night.

The Captain had joined the ship at Dubai disguised as a sailor. Now he was its new Captain. Sitting calmly on the bridge, looking over the glistening dark sea, he reached for his satellite phone and dialed a number in Beirut.

"Is Mehrak there?"

"He is not in, would you like me to take a message?"

"No need, I will be in port tomorrow and will call him then"

"Farewell"

The Captain began to say "All...." but cut himself off before he finished with "...ahu Akbar." He switched the phone off.

A full Colonel in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Captain had just been told that he was to proceed with his mission the next day. If his masters in Tehran had any second thoughts or doubts now, the only way they could stop him from doing what he was about to do was to inform the US Navy of his intentions. That was not going to happen. The Captain stepped outside the bridge and threw the satellite phone into the water. There were no more calls to make or receive now.

The most of the former crew of the Kozawi had been killed the same night when the Captain came on board; he had opened the containers his current crew was hiding in. Twenty minutes later, most of the original crew was dead except the radio operator and the engine crew. The Radio operator sent back the daily and weekly reports to the ships owner; this avoided calling the ship's change of control to her owner's attention. The new crew were handpicked men from the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian Navy.

Operation Khomeini had been first conceived in 1994 as part of the final approval to build a nuclear program given by the Supreme Ruling Council of Iran. The plan was simple. Build a nuclear program. Build an arsenal of nuclear weapons; then launch a first strike on the US, Europe and Israel. The voice that had said farewell on the phone was Imad Mugniyeh, the foremost terror mastermind in the world, he had two other calls that night on three other lines from two other ships. For many years the Iranian regime's followers had marched in the streets chanting "Death to America." It had taken millions of man months of engineering and labor as well as twenty billion dollars; Iran now was ready to do what it always said and kill America.

Sitting in the containers of the ships were more than two dozen nuclear tipped cruise missiles. With a flying speed of 700 kph, most of their intended targets would be hit less than twenty minutes after launch. Unless there were dozens of warplanes ready to intercept them, surprise would be complete, there would be no way to stop the missiles from hitting their targets. If the missiles launched successfully, there would be little or no warning, low flying cruise missiles are notoriously hard to spot on radar, even if spotted, almost impossible to intercept. The United States did not know it, but she was about to be surprised far worse than Pearl Harbor or 9-11. The Great Republic was about to awake to the first multi-city nuclear surprise attack in human history.

The Captain went below to his cabin for a few hours sleep before things would get very busy. He lay down in his bunk and ignored the gory bloodstain on the wall, a grim reminder there had been a previous occupant.

That did not matter, the weather was clear for the next day and all that mattered now was a little luck and the quality of Iranian nuclear and missile engineering.

The Kozawi Maru was sixty miles off the coast of Maryland at 4:30 a.m. when the Captain awoke and began overseeing the final preparations for the attack. The missile container doors were open and held in place by wood trestles that fit the top of the container and held the doors open at 90 degrees. To hide the missiles and the lights working on them during final arming and fire preparation sequences, temporary tarps were laid over the entrance of each container. When daylight arrived, the open containers would only seem out of place to a very close plane or ship, the planners placed the ship's course twenty miles further out to sea to avoid such prying eyes.

The fire control panels for the missiles were lined up along the deck below the containers. Each panel had a spare in case of failure. Wires from the panels snaked down the deck and up to through the open doors of a container to a nuclear tipped cruise missile.

Dawn broke over the eastern horizon and the Captain led his men in prayers as he had throughout the voyage. As the men stood up from their prayers, he called them together and spoke softly to them: "Today we and our brothers will destroy the Great Satan and the Little Satan once and for all. We have been given permission by the relgious and political authorities to avenge the evils committed against our great nation and our religion. You all know what to do. Make no mistakes; we must be perfect this morning. Once the missiles are launched, get to your assigned lifeboat right away."

He reached into his pocket and handed each man a headband and tied one about his head as well. The men cheered and went to their assigned stations.

Twelve missiles pointed west from their containers- two for New York and Washington D.C, one each for Miami, Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Boston.

The Pacific ship would launch six missiles just south of San Francisco while the Mediterranean ship would attack Israel and Europe. Simultaneous launches would begin at 13:30 GMT, (8:30 a.m. EST or 5:30 PST), the missiles with the longest flight paths would be given a twenty-minute head start to maximize surprise and minimize any possible reaction to the strike. The hope was to catch the entire western world commuting to or from work. Coated in expensive radar absorbing composites, the missiles would have the radar signature of a large bird. Their flight speed from their small efficient jet engines would be about 450 miles per hour and relatively unsophisticated GPS guidance units that would fly them at an altitude of a little less than a hundred feet would guide them. To get over any high hills or mountains, the missiles' routes over land had been planned in advance with the help of terrain maps and Iranian agents. At given coordinates the missiles would be at given heights, the routes were selected to allow the missiles to be off by up to 1000 meters and not hit anything. A US cruise missile engineer from the late seventies might have scoffed but the guidance did not have to be fancy, it just had to work.

At 8:15, the Captain finished arming the explosives to scuttle the Kozawi Maru twenty minutes after the launch. The remaining members of the original crew would go down with the ship leaving no trace of them or where the missiles came from. The Iranian crew had been told they would be picked up by another ship scheduled to meet the lifeboats an hour after launch.

8:30 a.m. A brief nod from the Captain and to the shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" the missiles aimed for Miami, Atlanta and Boston were fired. Bursting from their containers in a jet of flame, the missiles gained speed, leveled off at 90 feet and sped towards millions of people. Operation Khomeini had begun.

Twenty minutes later, they launched the nine missile second salvo. Fifteen minutes after that, the crew were in the lifeboats sailing to their expected rendezvous. A loud deep whump came from the bowels of the Kozawi Maru. Almost immediately, the big ship began to list and settle into the water to begin her brief journey to the bottom.

As the crew watched her settle and began embracing and congratulating each other on their performance, the Captain removed a small device from his pocket and pointed it at the second lifeboat. He walked forward to be surrounded by the hugs and well wishes of his men. The instant he heard the bomb destroy the second lifeboat, he pulled the cords on his own suicide bomb-vest: there would be no witnesses. Within a few seconds, the entire crew was dead.

Surprise was complete; within forty minutes, ten 200-kiloton bombs detonated over ten US cities. The missiles aimed at Chicago and Boston crashed, as did the ones targeting Jerusalem and Las Vegas. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 5-kiloton bombs. These bombs were forty times more powerful. Paris, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Rome, Berlin, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle all burned in superheated radioactive fire and smoke consuming tens of thousands of lives, men women and children each second. They burned for hours. Finally, the firestorms ran out of oxygen, people, and property to burn. Anything above ground within ten miles of the blast was disintegrated or burned to nothing. Washington, New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv were each hit twice, the bombs spaced four miles apart to ensure maximum damage.

Whether the death toll was sixty million or a hundred million, the damage and destruction to the United States was complete. The United State had ceased to exist, as had sixteen major US cities. The American Age had come to an abrupt end.

Historians would look back at nation the led the world in commerce, science and the arts and wonder how a small embittered Iran could have been allowed to perpetrate its lethal death-stroke. The signs were all there: the nuclear program, the missile testing, the technology acquisition patterns and even the test firing of cruise missiles from containers.

Was the nation too weary after five years of war to act to stop Iran in 2006? Was it the wasted political capital or fallout from hurricane Katrina? Was the nation too jaded after three years in Iraq to move on Iran? Was it obstructionist opposition? Was it the result of well-meaning or not so well meaning pacifism?

In the end, the time to safely act came and went. The lights went out forever in the City on the Hill and mankind never saw her likes again.

The Summer of War

2006-05-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Summer of War

I cannot predict how much longer the guns will remain silent, all signs are pointing to a rather big nasty war, sooner rather than later. Iran will not agree to end its nuclear program so there are no peaceful avenues left. War is certain but how and when it breaks out is what matters most.

If you are Ahmadinejad, your only chance of surviving to 2009 are if you get your hands on nukes, terrorize your people into submission and prevent Bush from attacking. To do that you need time. Smashing your own people on the streets and hanging children from cranes is the easy part. I have been informed that Iran has imported foreign terrorists, one can assume these are Hezbollah and Palestinian mercenaries who are retained for extreme counterdemonstration operations. On call 24/7, these very special barbarians live in special barracks that provide them women, boys and entertainment. At the first sign of protest, they hop on their motos and brutality ensues.

This can work for a while but is an exceedingly dangerous way to perpetuate your regime but Iran only needs a couple more years to get the bomb and attack the US and Israel.

Getting the bomb and surviving Bush are really one and the same thing but break into two components: play the rest of the world off against Bush, make the price of war so high Bush dares not to attack.

China, Russia and anti-alanticists/anti-Americans are paid or naturally rally around the key points of preventing US unilateral action on Iran:

1- Bush was "wrong" on Iraq so he must be wrong on Iran
2- Negotiations will work
3- Iran is not a threat

While none of this in any way news to readers here, what is not being discussed is Iran's war preparations. The kind invitation to become Muslim in this week's peace letter was a final warning and an open declaration of war to come. The nature of this war is key to Ahamadinejad's strategy: create so much mayhem that Bush is discredited as a leader and unable to launch war on Iran during his presidency. Part and parcel of this strategy is to drive oil prices sky-high.

This makes a lot of sense. The Iranians are not dumb, they know how our system works, if the Democrats get control of Congress, how likely are they to vote for war with Iran? None of the Democrat leaders were formed in the days of FDR, there are a few Kennedy administration era and fewer still able to see Rwanda, Darfur and Baghdad as a single morally imperative war. The only Democrats who might go along with it are those pro-Israel enough to recognize that there is no time to act and if Iran gets the bomb, the second Shoah follows.

We know now that the London 7/7 plot cost the bombers 8000 UK pounds and couple of flights to Pakistan for "spiritual counseling" to get in touch with their inner Jihadi.

One bomb lab on the east coast could disperse several hundred bomb vests all over the country; the scum willing to blow themselves up are easy to find. Give them a good Qawadiri/Zawahiri/Bin Laden CD and they will start shaving their pubes and recording their final rants.

While there might be quite a bit of backlash against Islam in America, the planners think that committing such acts actually draws more people to Islam; in this regard, their thinking is far different than ours. Remember that this war is very much a shadow war, good intelligence is the key to winning. It should come as no surprise to the readers of this blog that the likes of Seymour Hersh the NYT and now USA Today are doing everything they can to destroy US intelligence capabilities. When you can't see into the shadows, you can't see the knife aimed for your heart. US intel before the war was weak, I submit that we have made some progress since 9-11 but mostly we have been lucky and, taking the fight to the enemy, have mostly kept terrorism from hitting our shores again.

There are two significant virulently anti-American terrorist networks in the US that have extensive operations and have largely not been touched by US counterintelligence: Hezbollah and Hamas.

These groups cannot survive without Iran; Iran is threatened and there are plenty of indications that they have been called upon to defend their patron and have agreed to do so.

For Iran, there is ZERO downside to launching an all-out terror war. Islamicly, it is the correct thing to do, strategically Bush is the uber-Enemy; Hamas hates him for destroying their beloved Saddam, Hezbollah hates him for destroying the Taleban and threatening Iran. As a bonus, Jewish targets will figure prominently in the mayhem.

Also making Iran's trigger finger itchy is the fact that they twice watched Saddam sit while the US deployed against him and then attacked when we were ready. Even after 9-11 it took six weeks before the US could respond in any real way. If they can hit hard enough and big enough, worldwide and with massive casualties they believe they can destabilize the weak western allies and neuter Bush.

In war momentum is everything. If Iran succeeded in stopping Gulf oil shipments for just a few months, they might cause the whole world to turn on the US and demand Bush back down and accede to Iranian ambitions.

This is what seems to be their thinking.

If Iran stalls long enough they get the bomb, if war breaks out, they hasten the return of the occluded 12th Imam and perhaps rally the Iranian nation to defend their regime.

There is no way to defeat the US military, the only way to defeat it is to prevent its deployment against you.

It is my belief that Bush has already decided to act. It is my further belief that in his meetings with PM Olmert this week, the US and Israel will finalize arrangements for the upcoming war. It has been my position for some time that the administration's post 9-11 strategy has been to finish every single terror sponsoring regime before 2009, the Taleban, Saddam, Iran, Hezbollah, North Korea, Syria and Khaddafy were all marked for elimination. Afghanistan was target one because it was the source of 9-11, Saddam was next because his regime required the most military force to take down. Khaddafy folded up shop when he saw what happened to Saddam; Iran is the last great nexus, victory there destroys Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas and many smaller groups.

On 9-11 Bush said our war was with terrorists and nations that sponsor terrorism; Iran has had five years to take itself off the list but has rather made its case only more urgent.

As in 2003, in 2006 we face the lesser powers seeking to deflate American global supremacy; while it is natural for nations to desire more power for themselves, China and Russia offer no model of a better world order than 61 years of American dominance. We may bruise their feelings acting unilaterally but for our way to prevail, Iran as we know it must end. The European Allies have only gone into a steeper decline since 9-11; we never did need their permission to act and the doddering scolding of a spinster Leftist aunt is never a reason for a young vital nation to stand for its core beliefs and act to the betterment of all mankind.

The Summer of War is here. It will be fought not just in the skies and waters of the Gulf but in the South American triangle, the streets of Europe, the borders of Israel, jungles of south Asia and in US cities. When the balloon goes up, all hell will break lose; the question on which thousands of lives stand at risk is who will act first. This will be a very big war. But it does not have to be as big as it could get if the US and its allies act by acting first. For all our sakes, I hope Bush acts immediately.

Fisking Ahmadinejad's Letter

2006-05-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

It took a little while but the deed is now done; the Ahmadinejad letter is Fisked.

Before reading the fisking, put yourself in the right mindset as to just how guilty Iran is and just what a turd in the puchbowl of diplomacy that this letter is.

Iran's involvement in the 9-11 conspiracy

All comments are noted **, and now on with the fisking:

"Mr. George Bush, president of the United States of America

** This is the only accurate and truthful thing in the letter

For some time now, I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena -- which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain unanswered. Those have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hopes that it might bring about an opportunity to redress them.

**This is gibberish. Ahmadinejad is having discussions with no one but himself and the voices he hears in his head. I wonder if he had a green aura glowing when he wrote this.

Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him), the great Messenger of God, **millions of people do

Feel obliged to respect human rights, **we do; the average Iranian has no rights and the average American has more rights than anyone.

Present liberalism as a civilization model, ** if you are referring to Jeffersonian liberalism, the antithesis of your government and its behavior for the last 27 years, you are right.

Announce one's opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMDs,

** The nutball writing this letter is a poster child for unilateral proliferation prevention

Make "War on Terror" his slogan, ** some one has to stop Iran’s major export

And finally,

work towards the establishment of an unified international community -- a community which Christ and the virtuous of the Earth will one day govern,

** You torture and murder dissidents and suppress your people and most members of the international community have a shared vision of people like you have power over us. How about never will the US let that happen.

But at the same time,

Have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.

** Iran sponsors suicide bombings and lectures the US on the morality of war?

Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around 100,000 people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps 50 years.

** All lies and he does not note his government is responsible for half the chaos in Iraq and well over half of US casualties.

At what price? Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women -- as occupation troops -- put in harms way, taken away from family and loved ones, their hands stained with the blood of others, subjected to so much psychological pressure that everyday some commit suicide and those returning home suffer depression, become sickly and grapple with all sorts of ailments; while some are killed and their bodies handed to their families.

** Iran aids Al Qaeda and they, in turn, murder shias, anything to oppose US policy

On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.

** Right

Of course, Saddam was a murderous dictator. But the war was not waged to topple him, the announced goal of the war was to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. He was toppled along the way towards another goal; nevertheless the people of the region are happy about it. I point out that throughout the many years of the imposed war on Iran Saddam was supported by the West. ** the US actually did authorize Saddam to be overthrown; this clown is ignorant, meanwhile, as Iran knows, Iraqi WMD were smuggled to Syria

Mr. President,

You might know that I am a teacher. My students ask me how can these actions be reconciled with the values outlined at the beginning of this letter and duty to the tradition of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him), the Messenger of peace and forgiveness?

** We westerners reconcile the Christian tradition with the notion that if you blow up buildings in our cities without reason, we destroy the perpetrators. Several 9-11 conspirators went through Iran on their way to the US. Many senior AQ scum reside in Iran; Iran has not turned them over to us.

There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals.

** They are enemy combatants; they have little more legal status than the leaders of the Iranian criminal regime will have when their people put them on trial.

European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret prisons in Europe too. I could not correlate the abduction of a person, and him or her being kept in secret prisons, with the provisions of any judicial system. For that matter, I fail to understand how such actions correspond to the values outlined in the beginning of this letter, i.e. the teachings of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him), human rights and liberal values.

** The leader of Iran lecturing the US on human rights is pretty funny. Most Americans don’t know about the mass executions at Tehran’s Evrin prison last month, but they did happen.

Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them.

Throughout history, many countries have been occupied, but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people, is a new phenomenon that is exclusive to our times. **It is called reparations for two millennia of people like you.

Students are saying that 60 years ago such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel. **Try the 2000-year-old maps

I tell them to study the history of WWI and II. One of my students told me that during WWII, which more than tens of millions of people perished in, news about the war, was quickly disseminated by the warring parties. Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party. After the war they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families. Again let us assume that these events are true. ** Very daring on his part- he is showing how reasonable he can be.

Does that logically translate into the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East or support for such a state? ** Yes

How can this phenomenon be rationalized or explained? ** By you looking the mirror, idiot

** What a great way to open avenues to the President of the US, do some more holocaust denial!

Mr. President,

I am sure you know how -- and at what cost -- Israel was established:

-- Many thousands were killed in the process. **In an unnecessary war to annihilate the Jews of the new state

-- Millions of indigenous people were made refugees. ** Weak on facts, weak on ideas. Hey Jerk, about equal number of Jews from Arab countries were expelled to match roughly the same number of Palestinians, most of whom voluntarily fled

-- Hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland, olive plantations, towns and villages were destroyed. ** Did he consult Hamas to get these false factoids?

This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment; unfortunately it has been ongoing for 60 years now. **And the US and Israel have been trying to make things right ever since.

A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, announces beforehand its list and plans to assassinate Palestinian figures, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison. Such a phenomenon is unique -- or at the very least extremely rare -- in recent memory.

** Actually Israel has suffered innumerable casualties avoiding civilian casualties, shall we talk about Iran’s sponsorship of terror groups now of shall we wait a while?

Another big question asked by the people is "why is this regime being supported?" ** Because scum like you seek to destroy it/

Is support for this regime in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) or Moses (Peace Be Upon Him) or liberal values? ** Believe it or not Ahmadinejad, Jesus was Jewish and the behavior of Israel is considered exemplary by the strictest standards of the two foremost personalities of Christianity and Judaism

Or are we to understand that allowing the original inhabitants of these lands -- inside and outside Palestine -- whether they are Christian, Muslim or Jew, to determine their fate, runs contrary to principles of democracy, human rights and the teachings of prophets? If not, why is there so much opposition to a referendum? ** The Jews are the original inhabitants; when this jerk lectures on democracy to destroy a democracy and commit genocide, he is showing just how ignorant he is.

The newly elected Palestinian administration recently took office. All independent observers have confirmed that this government represents the electorate. Unbelievingly, they have put the elected government under pressure and have advised it to recognize the Israeli regime, abandon the struggle and follow the programs of the previous government.

** The US and Israel are treating the fascist Hamas Nazis, as the scum they are. Iran ideologically differs from Hamas only to the extent that Hamas is Sunni and Iran is Shia

If the current Palestinian government had run on the above platform, would the Palestinian people have voted for it? Again, can such position taken in opposition to the Palestinian government be reconciled with the values outlined earlier? The people are, also asking "why are all UNSC resolutions in condemnation of Israel vetoed?" ** To prevent the International Community from destroying Israel

Mr. President,

As you are well aware, I live amongst the people and am in constant contact with them – ** Damn shame none of them have put a slug in your skinny butt ugly head.

many people from around the Middle East manage to contact me as well. They do not have faith in there dubious policies either. There is evidence that the people of the region are becoming increasingly angry with such policies.

** Because they are as ignorant and misinformed as you are

It is not my intention to pose too many questions, but I need to refer to other points as well. ** Trust me buddy, no one will mistake your snakes in the brain logic for Aristotelian reason, but keep trying, this writing stuff may just be your strong suit

Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D one of the basic rights of nations?

** Excellent lie and mischaracterization of Iran’s baleful intentions. This schmuck says this after he has made the comments he has about Israel. This fellow has a slim tether to reality.

You are familiar with history.

** YOU aren’t Aside from the middle Ages; in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime?

** Publish a few papers on the differences Islamic cosmology and modern astronomy and then ask this

Can the possibility of scientific achievements being utilized for military purposes be reason enough to oppose science and technology altogether?

** In Iran’s case yes

If such a supposition is true, then all scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, engineering, etc, must be opposed. ** Brilliant logic, as though all science is equal and Iran’s use of the science, given your psychotic behavior, is more than ample reason

Lies were told in the Iraqi matter. What was the result? I have no doubt that telling lies is reprehensible in any culture, and you do not like to be lied to.

***Now here is a way to worm your way into Bush’s heart, call him a liar. How about Iran’s lies? Iran has lied about its program; Iran lied during the negotiations with France Germany and the UK and then admitted it was all a stall. Bush went into Iraq on bad intelligence; he did not lie. But bad intelligence is what this war is all about, the problem is, in the age of lethal mass-casualty transnational terrorism, rogue regimes (and Iran is the most rogue of them all) are presumed to be at their worst (a safe assumption- are you and your kids better off without Saddam in Power? Yes, and the same applies when the US finishes Iran’s regime off).

Mr. President,

Don't Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected government are being opposed and coup leaders supported? Or, Why must they constantly be threatened and live in fear?

** It appears Mr. Ahmadinejad has been conspiring with Cuba and Venezuela against US interests; add invocation of the Monroe Doctrine to the causus belli, the Doctrine opposes ANY foreign nation interfering in the Americas. Thanks Mahmoud, for a new reason to demolish your regime.

The people of Africa are hard-working, creative and talented. They can play an important and valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity and contribute to its material and spiritual progress. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening.

** He did it again! He said something remotely true!

Don't they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth -- including minerals -- is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others?

** Ah hello, we pay full market price and spend billions on aid to Africa. Iran, contrast, has billions for an illegal nuclear weapons program and supporting terrorist groups but does not spend a cent on foreign aid. One should also mention that most contracts with the Iranian government provide for the corrupt leaders, Mullahs and their families add 15-35% to the price of goods and services as graft skimmed off mostly to Swiss bank accounts. Iranians have seen a huge drop in their standard of living, mostly because their oil wealth is siphoned off and much the way that far too much aid to Africa is siphoned off by African despots and kleptocrats.

Again, do such actions correspond to the teachings of Christ and the tenets of human rights?

** As the wealthiest nation on Earth, the US takes its responsibility to our fellow man quite seriously, not only do we aid in the time of disaster, Iran did nothing for the Tsunami victims; the US saved tens of thousands of lives, we also have made war against totalitarian regimes and destroyed them even though we could just as easily done nothing and not gotten involved at all. This is particularly bad for your regime, Ahmadinejad; there are hundreds of millions of people who do not want to live under your nuclear umbrella. We will be doing a great public service stopping your regime.

The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d'etat of 1953

** Yeah, yeah, we said we were sorry and we let the Shah go to make up for it. Unfortunately, we got you so by not doing it right in ’53 we have to go back and clean up the mess. History is just a bear.

and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution

** If we had had a President with vision and testicle in 1979, we might have handled things differently

, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim),

** You and your brothers in terror invaded sovereign US soil and held our diplomats hostage. Aside from the insane worldview, that holds this remotely acceptable; your reminding the American people of the illegal, grotesque and vile abuse of our property is testimony to just what an uneducated rube you are. First, we have a right to do ANYTHING we want in our Embassy. Second, US policy was neutral to your regime until you committed this act of war against us and thirdly you have NEVER been held to account for it and finally Iran has attacked American embassies, diplomats and government personnel directly and indirectly over the years. Given this track record of barbarism and stupidity, we can support whoever we want to replace your loathsome regime; in fact, I think that we have decided to just destroy your regime and then let your people pick new leaders.

support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran,

** Actually, we supplied your regime weapons too. As a result, Ronald Reagan’s presidency achieved a black mark against it. Henry Kissinger announced our official policy: “It’s a shame they both can’t lose.” Saddam initiated the war and Iran kept prosecuting the war long after any normal sane nation would have stopped. Did we supply Saddam a little intelligence that let him seize the Faw peninsula? Probably. However, after a million and a half people had died, it was time to end the war and Iranian attempts to overrun Iraq. And one other thing, you use of children to clear landmines was one of the most despicable war crimes ever invented, congratulations on inventing a new one.

the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane,

** Normal countries do not initiate acts of war and then send civilian airliners into the same combat zones. In addition, really smart people route planes away from danger, in America we route planes away from anything unpleasant, even bad weather. Also for a regime that has blown up civilian Airliners (Iran was complicit in the downing of Pan Am 103 and there were reports of Iranian leaders celebrating the downing of TWA 800), the Iranian President is magnificently unaware how clueless and stupid he appears raising this issue. There is also the small matter of Iran’s attempted bombing of the Rogers’ family minivan (Rogers was the Captain of the Vincennes, the ship that shot down the Iranian plane).

freezing the assets of the Iranian nation,

** These assets are needed to compensate the many victims of Iranian terror and criminality

Increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-à-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country's progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.

** The only time “all” Iranians will be jubilant again is if they win the World Cup for Soccer or your regime becomes history. However, you will, never be allowed to get the bomb.

Mr. President,

September Eleven was a horrendous incident.

** and your boy Imad Mugniyeh (opps I said it, the one name for which the United States would be in its rights to vaporize all of Iran) was probably the operational planner and commander of 9-11. Didn’t you or members of your government recently meet with him? I also recall Iran celebrating the attack and saying we deserved it. This also raises the questions of ratification and aiding and abetting- under American law, assisting a criminal after the crime is an act commensurate to the original crime itself and ratification is an act to make an illegal act one’s own. This too, under American law is considered a crime equal to the original act itself.

On the evening of 9-11, Mr. Bush said that our war was against terror and regimes that sponsor terror. That means the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad. Thanks for reminding us!

The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. Our government immediately declared its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.

** And giggled the whole time you said it.

All governments have a duty to protect the lives, property and good standing of their citizens.

** A duty Iran’s government famously ignores, witness 85%+ of all Iranians want he regime out

Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems -- and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation.

**As you know all too well

Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services -- or their extensive infiltration?

** Absolutely not. Iran’s intelligence and security networks were in 9-11 up to their pupiks

Of course this is just an educated guess.

** This is so funny. He is all but accusing Bush of being in on 9-11 when Bush knows he knew nothing about 9-11 but has reports proving Iran was in on 9-11 and Ahmadinejad, in his letter to Bush is thoughtfully implying that Bush knew! This is insanity in the extreme! If Bush was in on 9-11 and Iran had proof of it they could do what they could destroy Bush but if Bush did not know, Iran is appropriating the conspiracy theorists most radical ideas and suggesting them as reality! This is a virtuoso performance of leading while Islamist!

Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret?

** Appealing to Bush’s most radicalized supporters and conspiracy buffs is a great peace overture. Have to remember that one

Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities?

** Yes please provide detailed information on current US intelligence weaknesses, inquiring minds want to know

And, why aren't those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial? ** This schmuck does not know the first thing about our government

All governments have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens. For some years now, the people of your country and neighbors of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind. After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people -- who had been immensely traumatized by the attacks -- some Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity -- some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?

** The writer seems to imply that the US had no right to respond to 9-11 and that we should have just tolerated the murder of our citizens, something that is firmly in Iranian terrorist interest.

American citizens lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place. They felt insecure in the street, in their place of work and at home. Who would be happy with this situation? Why was the media, instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind, giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?

**OH maybe because four US airliners hit three US national landmarks, destroying two, damaging a third and missing a fourth?

Some believe that the hype paved the way -- and was the justification -- for an attack on Afghanistan. Again I need to refer to the role of media. In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles.

** Iran aided and aids bin Laden, this is yet one more lie in this letter. A deceit of a regime that is trying to blame the media (!!!) for US anger about 9-11, it could not have been the murder of 3000 Americans.

The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs. This was repeated incessantly -- for the public to finally believe -- and the ground set for an attack on Iraq.

** There were other good reasons to destroy Saddam, chiefly his sponsorship of terror. And you sir, are next.

Will the truth not be lost in a contrived and deceptive climate? Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values?

** War is truth buddy and coming your way soon

Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?

Mr. President,

In countries around the world, citizens provide for the expenses of governments so that their governments in turn are able to serve them.

** No government has ever served its people better than ours, Mr. Ahmadinejad; your government seems to export thinkers and opponents to your cruel and tyrannical leadership

The question here is "what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?"

** Three down (Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq) and four to go: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and North Korea. Please note when you go, the next two in my list fall too.

As Your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty.

** this guy is a miracle of stupidity

Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem.

** and we spend billions trying to improve things every day, the US still spends far more on social welfare that warfare

Of course these problems exist -- to a larger or lesser extent -- in other countries as well. With these conditions in mind, can the gargantuan expenses of the campaign -- paid from the public treasury -- be explained and be consistent with the aforementioned principles?

** Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad was elected in a banana boat election in which the government excluded 3000+ candidates and offered this murdering asshat and another murdering asshat, Rafsanjani as the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum candidates

What has been said, are some of the grievances of the people around the world, in our region and in your country. But my main contention -- which I am hoping you will agree to some of it -- is:

Those in power have a specific time in office and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be consistently judged in the immediate and distant futures.

** Hit the nail on the head buddy, Bush is out of office January 2009; you will never see the end of your term

The people will scrutinize our presidencies.

** They will indeed. Magnificent America led by a beleaguered and isolated George Bush stood up and looked criminally psychotic nutjobs in the eye and prevented them from gaining the most powerful weapons known to man

Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment?

** When you are gone Mr. Ahmadinejad, the world will be a much more peaceful place

Did we intend to establish justice or just supported special interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship made a few people rich and powerful -- thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs?

** The Persian Pericles lectures the shining city on the hill to ignore the black nuclear plot again the city: go to sleep that we can sneak up on you and slit your throats.

Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them?

** Bush has done more for the enslaved and hopeless under the Taliban Saddam and, soon, Ahmadinejad than any leader since FDR. If militant Islam is finally defeated, hundreds of millions of women in the Islamic world will leader better lives.

Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them?

** Buddy, there is this thing called self defense and you fall squarely into what we like to call “clear and present danger” territory. It was nice knowing you, you are the gold standard for clueless Islamist ignoramuses, a poster child for not standing by and letting evil happen

Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats?

** No threats, just your doom

Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it?

** Here is comedy. Did you know that anyone attempting to trace family trees of senior leaders of Iran go to jail? The dirty secret is the Iranian kleptocracy intermarries and uses self-dealing to siphon off the wealth of a very rich country.

Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors?

** 90% of your people label you as an oppressor; you dare lecture a man who is living proof of our electoral system?

Did our administrations set out to promote rational behavior?

** Is crashing plane into inhabited buildings rational behavior? How about hiring people to explode themselves in restaurants and buses? Iran pays al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to do such deeds in Israel Iraq and elsewhere.

logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns, Intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people's rights?

** the same applies to this man’s logic, ethics and justice

And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office -- to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets -- or not?

** We will be serving your people with a revolution and your head on a platter Mr. Ahmadinejad, if this letter is your idea of opening a communication with America’s people and leaders, you are one sorry dumb putz.

Mr. President,

How much longer can the world tolerate this situation?

** if the world has a problem with us, I am sure they will let us know; whenever the defecation hits the impeller they call out for your help and whenever nothing else is happening, the world whines and cries about how powerful the US is

Where will this trend lead the world to?

** End of your regime for certain. After that hopefully an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity

How long must the people of the world pay for the incorrect decisions of some rulers?

** Not much longer, the people of the world are sick of your depraved regime and will not have to worry about you getting nukes

How much longer will the specter of insecurity -- raised from the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- hunt the people of the world?

** This fellow needs psycho analysis- he pretends like the actions of his government are not happening.

How much longer will the blood of the innocent men, women and children be spilled on the streets, and people's houses destroyed over their heads?

** Since terrorists in Iran’s hire cause most casualties in Iraq, we would all like to know the answer to this question too

Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?

** NO. You are still in it

Do you think present policies can continue?

** As a matter of fact, yes

If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states, and extinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts, were would the world be today? Would not your government and people be justifiably proud?

Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger?

** Right again! Except you bastards were part of the 9-11 plot and help al Qaeda to this day. So there is war and you are going to get it in the neck

And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American government?

** Blah blah blah see comment above about what the world thinks

Mr. President, it is not my intention to distress anyone.

** You are not distressing anyone who is not stupid or asleep to Iran’s threat to the free world. Really, about now, Bush had to be reading this letter wondering what is this idiot saying and how dumb can any one person be and how in the hell could anyone let this deranged moron be President of a country much less one with nuclear ambitions?

If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph, or Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior? Will we be given a role to play in the promised world, where justice will become universal and Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) will be present? Will they even accept us?

** All but Ishmael would shout at the tops of their lungs- kill Ahmadinejad before he kills millions of members of my people and millions of innocent lives. President Bush, Ahmadinejad is helping here, he is giving you religious dispensation to do whatever is necessary; this is an insane man’s cry for help

My basic question is this: Is there no better way to interact with the rest of the world? Today there are hundreds of millions of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims and millions of people who follow the teachings of Moses (Peace Be Upon Him). All divine religions share and respect one word and that is "monotheism" or belief in a single God and no other in the world.

** Yes and your country has taken whatever is good in Islam and created an ideology of murder and lies. The foundation of this war was your beloved Khomeini. Like a bad vampire movie, the final reel is the part where the US Van Helsing puts a stake through the Iranian government’s heart.

The Holy Koran stresses this common word and calls on all followers of divine religions and says: (3.64) Say: O followers of the Book! come to an equitable proposition between us and you that we shall not serve any but Allah and (that) we shall not associate aught with Him, and (that) some of us shall not take others for lords besides Allah; but if they turn back, then say: Bear witness that we are Muslims. (The Family of Imran)

** No problem, you will be doing a lot witnessing very soon. Witness your regime’s downfall and destruction followed by the restoration of democracy in Iran and trial of your leaders for multiple acts of murder and terrorism both in Iran and all over the world

Mr. President,

According to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.

"To worship a God which is above all powers in the world and can do all He pleases." "the Lord which knows that which is hidden and visible, the past and the future, knows what goes on in the Hearts of His servants and records their deeds."

"The Lord who is the possessor of the heavens and the earth and all universe is His court" "planning for the universe is done by His hands, and gives His servants the glad tidings of mercy and forgiveness of sins" "He is the companion of the oppressed and the enemy of oppressors" "He is the Compassionate, the Merciful" "He is the recourse of the faithful and guides them towards the light from darkness" "He is witness to the actions of His servants" "He calls on servants to be faithful and do good deeds, and asks them to stay on the path of righteousness and remain steadfast" "Calls on servants to heed His prophets and He is a witness to their deeds" "A bad ending belongs only to those who have chosen the life of this world and disobey Him and oppress His servants" and "A good land and eternal paradise belong to those servants who fear His majesty and do not follow their lascivious selves."

** Nice try, but Mr. Bush is not converting to Islam this week

We believe a return to the teachings of the divine prophets is the only road leading to salvation and have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth.

** Mr. Bush is righteous in my book, if he knocks off your regime, I will refer to him as Bush the Righteous to the end of my days

We also believe that Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) was one of the great prophets of the Almighty. He has been repeatedly praised in the Koran. Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) has been quoted in Koran as well: (19.36) And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him; this is the right path.

Service to and obedience of the Almighty is the credo of all divine messengers.

** Right about hear Bush began banging his head on the desk going “Stop! When is this awful idiot going to stop or say anything intelligent? Where is something in this letter that is remotely useful or indicative of anything other than lunatic ravings and an open and shut business case for stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions at any price?”

The God of all people in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the Pacific and the rest of the world is one. He is the Almighty who wants to guide and give dignity to all His servants. He has given greatness to Humans.

**And for some reason HE has given Bush more greatness on this earth than any other man

We again read in the Holy Book: "The Almighty God sent His prophets with miracles and clear signs to guide the people and show them divine signs and purify them from sins and pollutions. And He sent the Book and the balance so that the people display justice and avoid the rebellious."

All of the above verses can be seen, one way or the other, in the Good Book as well.

Divine prophets have promised:

The day will come when all humans will congregate before the court of the Almighty, so that their deeds are examined, The good will be directed towards Haven and evildoers will meet divine retribution. I trust both of us believe in such a day, but it will not be easy to calculate the actions of rulers, because we must be answerable to our nation and all others whose lives have been directly or indirectly affected by our actions.

** Murdering the entire state of Israel and lying about the murder of six million other Jews is certain to earn you a special place Mr. President

All prophets, speak of peace and tranquillity for man -- based on monotheism, justice and respect for human dignity.

Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world -- that are the result of disobedience to the Almighty and the teachings of prophets -- and improve our performance?

** Mr. Bush’s peak will come as the first black planes wipe out your air defenses and hundreds of cruise missiles begin demolishing your feeble armed forces

Do you not think that belief in these principles promotes and guarantees peace, friendship and justice?

** Yes and if your lying murdering regime had any principles, we would not be at the brink of war

Do you not think that the aforementioned written or unwritten principles are universally represented?

** In normal civilized society yes, in you, not at all

Will you not accept this invitation?

** This was an invitation. Can’t you see Condi and a couple of Bush’s aids picking him up off the oval office rug as the man is laughing so hard he is practically having convulsions?

That is, a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and His prophets?

** This clown murdered political opponents of the Iranian government and lectures the US on obedience to the Almighty!

Mr. President,

History tells us that repressive and cruel governments do not survive.

** History is firing up the ash heap in preparation for your arrival; its is true you will not survive

God has entrusted the fate of men to them. The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices. Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments. These tell us that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by Him.

Can one deny the signs of change in the world today?

** the only sign of change is the men getting ready to attach some rather fearsome weapons to some plans bound to deliver them to Iran

Is the situation of the world today comparable to that of 10 years ago?

** What the F*ck does that mean? Nothing of any note happened 10 years ago that remotely applies to the current situation unless one is referring to Iran hosting conventions for most terror groups in the world to co-ordinate attacks and logistics (had to mention it folks).

Changes happen fast and come at a furious pace.

** Bush: “they do indeed , my man, they do indeed. In March 2003, Saddam was ruler of Iraq and by April 2003, he was not. Blink of an eye”

The people of the world are not happy with the status quo and pay little heed to the promises and comments made by a number of influential world leaders. Many people around the world feel insecure and oppose the spreading of insecurity and war and do not approve of and accept dubious policies.

The people are protesting the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the rich and poor countries.

** Iran is a rich country being looted to pay for terrorism and a nuclear program it does not need.

The people are disgusted with increasing corruption.

** They are indeed; you people mass in the streets and call for Bush to come to their aid, what do they know about corruption that you don’t?

The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the disintegration of families. They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion. The people of the world have no faith in international organizations, because their rights are not advocated by these organizations.

** Excellent lunacy here

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity.

** Is that why millions of Muslims immigrate to western countries every year? Offer a visa to anyone in the Mid East to Europe or the US and they leave before they even say good bye. The ideals of humanity certainly are not present in Iran’s government that is for sure

Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.

** Wow, thanks for the nice lecture using the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, very helpful. Bush had to think about converting to Islam when he read this. He must have been just gobsmacked by the intelligence and perspicacity of this sentence.

We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point -- that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: "Do you not want to join them?"

** Oh yes! Sign me right up! ME! Take me right now! If Allah can help unload this level of genius to Ahmadinejad, who knows what it could do for Bush or any of us?

Mr. President,

Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.

** Please re-read this last paragraph, this is the writers’ big pitch, to convince Bush the door is open, war can be averted and there was hope for peaceful resolution. Instead, the letter is a scathing indictment against leaving this deranged maniac in power a single moment longer. This is Iran’s big push for peace. War is now inevitable.

The Secret Weapon

2006-05-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

The advent of the national unity government in Iraq was a major breakthrough, it is ushering in the wind down of the US military presence. While there is terrorism and factionalism, there are also discussions between the various groups. Participation is rewarded and resistance is being punished. The fact that Iraq's leadership announced they have been holding talks at ending the internecine bloodshed is the best sign we have seen since the election.

With a new elected government in Iraq, that new government can begin looking after the Iraqi people, something they will be able to do far better than the US, but they will also begin having an independent foreign policy; it is this possibility, that Iraq will find its voice and become a leader for positive change in the region that can have a major impact that may ultimately validate the Iraqi venture by returning the US investment in Iraqi democracy into the emergence of a 21st century Arab world that seeks to meet the aspirations of their people.

The groundbreaking UN special report on Human development in the region cataloged the massive failings of a region rich with people and resources but poor in education, economics and freedom. The reason millions of people from the Arab world immigrate to other countries is the immigrants see no future for themselves where they are. With dysfuntional societies and tyrannical beauracracies, anyone who can leave, does.

What the Arab world needs is an example that shows them a way forward. The images of Iraqis voting profoundly impressed the people of the Middle East. If Iraqis can vote for their leaders, why can't Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians and Yemenis? No reason. With tyrannies to the east and west and south, Iraq will now look at her neighbors and see her long term security to coincide with democracy taking hold in the neighboring countries.

Iraqis, civilians, soldiers and police are dying every day for their right to be free; a good deal of the resistance that is stirring up much of the trouble is being trained, supported and supplied by Syria and Iran. The easiest way Iraq can make things difficult for these troublesome neighbors and stop them from killing Iraqis, is to take their case to the Iranian and Syrian people. Once Iran and Syria are fighting to survive as dictatorships, Iraq's internal situation will dramatically improve.

Iraq is also a member of two organizations that need significant reform: the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Countries. When Iraq attends these meetings, they will do so as a democracy with a constitution and 30 millions citizens who are showing the entire Islamic world a new and better way to conduct their political affairs. The OIC and Arab League have been abused for decades to excuse the cupidity, stupidity and vapidity of the national governments in the Arab World. Should Iraq choose to decide to make her democracy a clarion call to Arabs and Muslims everywhere, the Middle East might finally see changes that might eventually bring about an Islamic world that no longer completely lags the rest of the world.

The leaders of Syria and Iran, in particular, consider what I have described here as their nightmare scenario, for that reason alone, they are expending tremendousefforts to bring down Iraq and spark an all out civil war. Conversely, all who want Iraq to find stability, peace and progress to lead the people of the Middle East into a much better future should be cheering on the new Iraqi government.

Should Iraq succeed, and I believe that they are on track to do so; we are close to seeing sweeping change that will clean out the accumulated Augean stable of the last ninety years of Middle East history.

It is in this regard that Iraq is a secret weapon, not for US interests but rather for the hopes and aspirations of 300 million people in the Middle East.

Do or die

2006-04-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

One year from today the United States will either be standing in victory or on its way down to defeat and second power status.

Iran's leaders are a terrorist government; on September 11th, Mr. Bush said our war is against regimes like this.

* Iranian backed terrorists have murdered and maimed our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan- for this they deserve to die.
* Iran has significantly advanced towards a nuclear shield to protect her ability to sponsor terrorism worldwide- for this they deserve to die.
* Iran shelters al Qaeda operatives- for this they deserve to die.

In essence, Iran is an enemy purely at war with the United States; her nuclear ambitions represent a clear and present danger to US interests. Iran has relations with every major global terror network; if Iran has the bomb, al Qaeda and Hezbollah have the bomb.

Having used three years of negotiations to shield her illegal and unnecessary nuclear program, Iran has openly admitted it was all a game to stall the allies while development proceeded. Any negotiation with this regime is worthless because they can neither negotiate in good faith nor be trusted to keep their word.

So, what is left other than war? Very little.

The only thing not tried that might work is for Congress to pass a Use of Force resolution and for the Administration give the Ayatollah's a "We Meant What We Said To Saddam, Would You Like Adjoining Cells?" ultimatum.

While it would be nice to avoid the casualties, even if the Iranian nuclear sites were dismantled under western supervision, the nature of the terrorist regime would not be changed although one could hope that such a humiliation would bring down the regime. However, for precisely that reason, these barbarians, who have attacked Embassies directly and indirectly all over the world, will not back down. Without their nukes, they really are nothing. Thugs like this never back down; think of them as SS troops, they are fanatics who will defends their twisted evil ideology to the death; you just have to kill them.

However, will Bush go all the way? Six years into his administration, Bush is politically weakened and his fingers were badly singed by events in Iraq.

Getting a Congressional resolution in the hopes of averting war is not a sure thing. Democratic talking points are already scripted- "you got Iraq wrong, you will get Iran wrong," "the American people and the west don't want a wider war" and "think about the children!" All the tougher in an election year.

If war happens, Bush will advise the congressional leadership in advance and inform the American people he has invoked the War Powers Act when the bombs start to land.

I cannot predict the direction the war will take after the first strikes. I can predict if we act, a year from now, we will stand in victory and if we do not we will kneel at the filthy murderous feet of the Iranian clerical regime. The US will cease to be a great world power.

If Iran goes down, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda will all be deeply wounded. They will have lost their main source of money. The price of oil and gas will shoot higher, Iraq will explode, however, with the removal of Iranian influence and interference, the entire region will stabilize and become independent and more democratic faster. These benefits are real, without Iranian backing Syria cannot politically protect Hezbollah in Lebanon and the groups loses its main source of funding. Lebanon can finally disarm Hezbollah finally. The Assad regime is only held up by Iran, with Iran gone, Assad is gone. If Hezbollah or Assad attack Israel, they will be gone sooner and be completely killed off.

On the Israel-Palestinian front, the Palestinians backed another loser and will suffer political isolation form the US. North Korea might also change its tune when it realizes they are the only item not done on Bush' Axis of Evil to-do list.

For Europe, there will be anger but they had their chance to use soft power and their appeasement predictably failed to deter aggression yet again. They will never learn but they can get over it, or not: it does not matter, Europe is in sunset. They are declining and only they can save themselves. With Iran out of the picture, the war on terror becomes one of helping nations control their internal terror groups, there are no more enemies to invade.

Russia can just go screw itself. Putin has betrayed US friendship, reversed freedom and has openly obstructed our interests in Iran and Iraq. The value of Mr. Putin’s friendship will be seen for what it is. Putin will remain a problem but he will never more than a thorn in our side; he thinks he can win another cold war, Russia is even less equipped to win a second Cold War than they were the first time around. As for China, there will be anger but there will also be respect. As China rises, respect and strength are critical. As long as we are doing business together, there are great economic opportunities from co-operation under American global leadership. China will be a superpower.

Why one year? Many in the press have expressed the view that we have years before Iran gets the bomb. The lesson of this war is US intelligence is always wrong. Moreover, if we hope to prevent half the Middle East getting nukes, we have act soon.

We could wait but Iran is already acting like they have the bomb; we should treat them like they are about to get the bomb tomorrow. If you knew a dangerous maniac was going to attack the high school, would you wait until he gets in the car and heads for the school or get him while he is writing up his death lists.

We cannot afford to be wrong. When Iran cheers “Death to America,” they mean precisely what they say. Everything they do is aimed at us. They attack our troops in Iraq to defeat democracy, undermine US political consensus, and drink American blood. They are trying to set up a non-dollar based oil exchange to injure our financial interests. They sponsor terrorism because it costs us tens of billions to defend our interests against terror; this in turn hurts our economic and political interests. Iran is building cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and unconventional attack weapons; I believe they intend a simultaneous nuclear first strike on several US cities. If they succeeded America as we know it would be dead. The damge to US pretige and power, should we fail to stand strong, cannot be overstated. We said we are fighting a war on terror and knuckled under to a third rate bully who said he had a knife. You cannot be the guardian of the world and freedom's shield and cave in under these circumstances to this particular flavor of scum.

Here indeed is an enemy. An enemy we have ignored for far too long. An enemy who we should take at their word. If that enemy is potentially lethal, striking sooner, while we are strong enough to do something about and before they are too dangerous to risk attacking, it is not just sensible, it is a rational act of survival and self-defense.

“The Ominous Parallels.”

2006-01-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

The last few months have seen remarkable changes in Iran. The clerical regime ostensibly held an election and chose new leadership. Iran had already been hard at work building a nuclear capability and has long been in an undeclared state of war with the US and Israel. The election pitted the anti-Semitic anti-American Rafsanjani against a relatively unknown newcomer, Ahmadinejad.

It may well be that, looking back to 2006, historians will view the Iranian election of 2005 as the pivotal event of the year. When Iran chose Ahmadinejad, it began a series of events that will prove to be a straight march to war. After ignoring Europe's 2003 objections to war against Saddam, the Bush administration, busy in Iraq, agreed to allow three key European powers, Germany, France and the U.K. to handle the Iranian nuclear issue hoping to peacefully get Iran to give up its nuclear program. The Europeans, confident that this time, soft power, good intentions and appeasement were sure to work, held meetings, began a series of UN inspections and negotiating sessions with Iran. The results were as predictable as they were dismaying; Iran was given trade and economic incentives and then they went right on with what they were doing. Iran is floating in oil, they need a nuclear program like a human being needs a second appendix; and, the truth is, they have TWO nuclear programs, the one they admit to having and a secret program. Both have same single objective, nuclear weapons for Iran. Having learned from Saddam's setback at Osirak, Iran's nuclear programs are spread all over the country, some are underground and, as all "peaceful" research facilities of questionable activities in such regimes, protected by antiaircraft batteries.

Few in America follow Iran and fewer still appreciate their central role in global terrorism. Yet Iran has an unmatched history of terrorism and murder against the US. Here is a regime that is the sponsor of Imad Mugniyeh, Hezbollah's chief of terror operations, the foremost terrorist in the world and widely assumed to be the operational mastermind behind 9-11. Iran has armed Hezbollah to the teeth and uses it as Iran’s proxy to sponsor terror attacks all over the world. Iran is one of only two countries (the other was Syrian dominated Lebanon in early 1990's) to sponsor a world wide summit for terrorist organizations. Iran is terror central; they have murdered thousands of people all over the world; in recent months, most US casualties in Iraq have been caused by I.E.D's of Iranian or Hezbollah origin. Al Qaeda terrorists find safe haven and support in Iran; Sa'ad bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri are alleged to have spent much time there since 9-11.

But 9-11 was just one of many operations against their favorite targets: the US, Jews and Israel. Starting with the 1979 Embassy takeover to the 1982 Embassy and Marine barracks bombings in Beruit, Iran has been viciously hitting their chosen targets pausing only to murder regime opponents. The Lebanese hostage crisis was manufactured in Iran, the Flight 847 hijacking was a Mugniyeh operation, as was the kidnap-murder of Col. William Higgins. Iran was behind the devastating Argentina truck bomb attacks on the Israeli embassy and the Jewish AMIA Community center. They allegedly paid former Argentine President Menem $10 million to spike the investigation. Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death, a million dollar bounty was put on his head. Later, the bounty was later raised, Rushdie’s crime was writing a book. The Khobar Tower bombing killed 19 American servicemen and injured hundreds of others? According to the FBI director at the time, Iran did it. Then there have been countless smaller acts of terror from suicide bombings to rocket and shooting attacks against civilians. For 26 years the only word Iran has had for Jews and Israel is "die." Iran has conducted at least a dozen different acts of war against the United States. Each and every one of these acts should have resulted in the US retaliation, with the exception of the US preventing Iran from closing the Persian Gulf during the tanker re-flagging operation, there has never been direct confrontation between the US and Iran; the US has NEVER paid Iran back. In the current war in Iraq, Iran is responsible for much of the difficulties in getting Iraq back on its feet. They have hired, trained and sent in spies and terrorists to tamper and undermine every US effort in Iraq causing hundreds of killed and wounded.

All of these crimes were Iran's before the election of 2005. The 2005 election took most Iranian observers by surprise. Rafsanjani, a radical terrorist in his own right, was the moderate on the ticket; the winner was of a different stripe altogether.

Iranian politics in the past 26 years have all been within the confines of the structure of the Khomeini's vision for the Islamic Republic. The Supreme religious leader is the true power of the government but there is a Parliament and President that in practice did allow some discussion of ideas and policies with in the very circumscribed limits the regime was willing to permit. There was some freedom of expression, politically acceptable political parties, a press and elections for local offices. In practice, power remained in the Supreme Leader and his radical followers, the Revolutionary Guards prevented any real popular expression of will or meaningful changes of government policies. Torture and repression have been used since the regime came to power to repress, students, women or people who believed in the democratic rule of law.

The Revolutionary Guards are the storm troopers of the regime, murdering opponents, crushing opposition and enforcing Ayatollah Khomeini's strict form of Shi'a Islam. While Hezbollah is nominally independent, the Lebanese based Iranian Revolutionary Guards train and issue orders to Hezbollah. In the Iran-Iraq war, the Revolutionary Guards were the ones who sent hundreds of thousands of children into minefields, clouds of poison gas and concentrated hail of machine gun fire. They gave children said to be the keys heaven; they were promised they would see the Prophet Mohammed when they got to the other side. Iran killed tens of thousands of their own children this way.

The 2005 Iranian election concentrated Iran's political power and organs of state into the hands of these fanatics and made them lords and masters over the entire country. Ahmadinajed is the most extreme of these extremists. What has recently been reported is his membership in a radical sect dedicated to creating chaos in the world that will precipitate the return of the holy 12th Imam of Shi'a Islam. He confided to some clerics that he felt a halo around himself at a UN speech and he has also promised the 12^th Imam of Shi’a Islam will be returning in two years! While there is evidence he was involved, some do not believe the reports that Ahmadinejad was involved in the US Embassy takeover of 1979, but he was a central leader of the group that did, he was in Tehran at the time; there is a strong probability he was involved. He certainly didn’t denounce the unprecedented takeover as an unconscionable violation of Treaty of Westphalia. He has been a Revolutionary Guard leader for many years.

Now Ahmadinejad is the new President of Iran; he has assembled around him a cabinet of like minded extremists that makes every previous Iranian cabinet seem moderate in comparison; given the catalogue of crime and mayhem catalogued above, this is an extraordinary thing to be able to say about this group. Their first political action was to purge the government of anyone who might be moderate or otherwise oppose their plans. The 2005 election had already banished most Iranian parties from the ballot even before the election and there were a tiny few voices of dissent in the Iranian Majlis, they are gone now. This government has also begun a ruthless crackdown on religious observance, public morals and general repression.

Why this article is called “The Ominous Parallels”

The regime in history that most resembles the Ahmadinejad’s is Nazi Germany under Hitler; the similarities are startling and case for making the comparison is overwhelming, the regimes share common traits, behaviors and ideology.

Eliminationalist Anti-Semitism- this phrase, coined by Prof. Daniel Goldhagen, describes a form of anti-Semitism that is not satisfied by mere animosity against Jews, rather, this is anti-Semitism that will settle for nothing less than the annihilation of the Jewish people. As first expounded in Goldhagen's “Hitler's Willing Executioners” this type of hatred becomes the modus vivendi of the regime; the main focus of the regime is to commit genocide. Iran's calls for destroying Israel, attacking Jews, Jewish institutions and supporters deviate from the Nazis only to the extent that Iran is driven by radical Islam and Germany by National Socialism and the proximity of Jews to attack. The stated desire, dehumanizing language, public calls for Jewish destruction and use of propaganda, military and paramilitary terror against Jews are distinguishable from Hitler’s only by the methods chosen for killing. Iranian television’s depiction of Jews and Israel is frighteningly comparable to the Nazi propaganda.

Ahmadinejad has both justified the holocaust and denied it ever happened, he suggests Jews return to Germany and Austria where they came from. It has been a long time since any world leader has voiced such outrageous anti-Semetism and ignorance of history; even the UN’s Secretary General, Kofi Annan, not exactly a philo-semite himself, denounced Ahmadinejad’s statements as outrageous.

Regime Totalitarianism- Nazi Germany could not have done what it did without its National Socialist ideology and eliminating the rule of law. Totalitarian regimes use a propagandized extremist ideology to justify delivering the organs of state to the complete and sole control of their party. Invariably such regimes have a demonized enemy, be they Trotskyites, the Gang or Four, Enemies of the Revolution, etc. Such enemies are marked for destruction. If the declared enemies are another people, the regime calls for genocide. Iran was no bastion of freedom prior to 2005 but the recent campaign to crack down on free expression and resistance of any kind is a radical turn backwards from a greater leniency after Khomeini’s death. Hitler burned books and destroyed “degenerate art,” this Iranian government burns “unislamic” or “western” CDs and blocks satellite and internet access, both regimes torture and murder opponents, sponsor wars in other countries while partnering with other outlaw regimes as part of a goal of seeking global domination. Human rights abuse, torture, murder and repression are common in Iran. Iranian rule of law was weak before the 2005 election, it is completely non-existent now. The only thing one can say favorable about Iran's version of the police state is it does not torture and murder as many of its citizens as Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The SS and the Revolutionary Guards are remarkable in their shared fanaticism, brutality and usage by their respective regimes.

Determined to Go to War- Just as Hitler became bolder and more outrageous in his demands leading up to the war, Iran has continued to up the ante at every confrontation with the western powers over its nuclear programs. Iran’s propaganda machine is filled with daily exhortations for the destruction of Israel and the US. Conferences and rallies in support of violence against Jews and Americans are sponsored by the government while the targeted foe is presented in dehumanizing terms designed to make war and violence more acceptable to the populace. Iran has made many bellicose threats against it neighbors and enemies. Their little Mussolinis in Hezbollah and Hamas have openly declared they will violently respond to any attack on Iran. These groups’ behavior is probably more violent than Hitler’s stooges and allies. The Iranian cabinet is a war cabinet composed mostly of men with military or paramilitary background. Instead of technocrats or social governance experts, Ahmadinejad has surrounded himself with a group of people whose expertise is war. It is alleged they all signed a pledge to the 12^th Imam, their action seems to be a group steeling itself for battle that or they are very hard core about economic reform. Most of the cabinet are members of the 12^th Imam’s millenialist sect, most have been active in the worst of Iran’s rogue behavior. When it comes time to vote on war, these are not people who will say no. They may already have voted yes.

Ahmadinejad's actions since election have focused on protecting Iran’s nuclear program while threatening almost the entire world community as though Iran already had the weapons. There is no legal opposition or political counter-balance to his policies; there is no law except his cadres. Just as Hitler purged and repressed any sane head that suggested a second global war might be a bad idea, Iran's government shuts out any discussion of changing its behavior.

Anti-Americanism- People forget that the US did not declare war on Hitler, Hitler declared war on the US- right after Pearl Harbor. Iran has been at war with the US since 1979, the regime has always avoided direct confrontation because the US was too powerful. Hitler always hated the US; Iran's government talks of destroying the US in the same breath as destroying Israel. Iran did not expect the US to respond as it did to 9-11 but nevertheless has always stated, just like Hitler, that its long term goal is to defeat the United States. Iran’s history with the US has always been troublesome. There is some bad blood between the nations; the US has mostly avoided confronting Iran while Iran’s government has never stopped using Khomeini’s catch phrase “the great Satan.” But history alone does not justify official Iran’s hatred for the US (even though most Iranians you meet love Americans). Ahmadinejad, like Khomeini and Hitler hated America for its democracy, its wealth, its power, success and egalitarian values. To the totalitarian mind, America stands in the way of their dominance; our values and system of government undermine their rule by being a living suggestion that freedom is a better alternative to the police state.

Iran’s still claims its nuclear program is peaceful despite its cost and abundant energy resources. One could sensibly wonder why they have a ballistic missile program designed to deliver nuclear warheads if they aren't also developing the warheads. One can only surmise why they want the bomb to put their words into effect. Their vitriolic language towards the US evinces a hostility befitting a wartime speech by Joseph Goebbles. This language mirror’s Hitler’s love for threatening to use weapons of terror and destruction; Hitler used every WMD he ever had.

It was mercy that Hitler never got the bomb, in the ensuing years, nuclear science has moved ahead, the bombs that shattered Nagasaki and Hiroshima are considered small by today’s standards. If one shudders to think what Hitler would have done with the bomb; the current Iranian nuclear program is the hands of people of a similar murderous ideology.

So let us now turn to the current situation and the inevitable conclusions that must be drawn by these facts.

The chief lesson of 9-11 and the Iraq war is that US intelligence is weak. We have some inkling of some of what the bad guys of this world are doing but if we can't see it or hear it, we are flying blind. US intelligence is awful at the kind of real spying that wins wars, human intelligence. The US never had a single agent of any value in Iraq during the 13 years from 1990 to Saddam's fall, it is a pretty safe assumption we have the same operational excellence in Iran. As Donald Rumsfeld put it so well, it is the “unknown unknowns” that we must worry about. Iran has been planning for the arrival of her nuclear bombs for at least ten years. They have the money and desire to develop delivery systems whose range far exceeds any military threat to their country.

For all we know, she has built and fielded a small batch of ships designed to launch a Pearl Harbor type strike on the US and Israel. Cruise launched missiles from international waters would leave no time to respond or react, such an attack could hit every major city in Israel and the biggest US coastal cities in under twenty minutes from launch to mushroom cloud. If I can think of it, so can they.

While the loss of Israel would not hurt the US losing six or seven major cities would effectively knock us out as a major power for many years and perhaps forever. Lest one think that the Iranian leadership is worried about US retaliation, they aren't. Unlike any other enemy we have ever faced, they would consider dying in a US retaliatory strike as their guarantee of paradise in the next world. They see no downside in provoking a nuclear war with the US! Mao's Communist China and the Soviet Union were rational humanitarians by comparison.

Recall earlier that Iran has two nuclear programs, the documented program has had some inspection and the Iranians were found to be lying on several key elements of what they are doing. But the undocumented program is a true "unknown unknown." Only the Iranians know how far along it is. While US scientists can give a ballpark estimate, Iran's delaying tactics against inspections and international sanctions must be assumed to mean they are further along than we think; and given the nature of the regime, we cannot afford to be wrong.

There is no political solution to the current situation. This regime is every bit as trustworthy as Hitler. You can’t trust them. They have lied about their intentions and they have dealt falsely in their nuclear discussions with the western powers. Despite repeatedly being denounced for calling for Israel's destruction and denying the holocaust, the regime's rhetoric has only intensified rather than abated. There can be no clearer statement of who they are and what they intend. They say what they do precisely because of who they are and what they really believe. Absent the regime agreeing to folding its tent in exchange for safe passage to a neutral country and establishing a new government under western supervised elections, there is only one course for dealing with Iran. War.

It is said that 90% or more of Iran's people oppose the regime. While they have exhibited spirit and courage in opposing the regime, they have not been able to make any headway to creating the massive "people power" demonstrations that might bring the regime down. The western powers and press have done a shameful job in supporting or covering the Iran situation. While there is “no time like the present” to start this revolution, America and Israeli dare not wait around while they try. Iran's nuclear facilities must be bombed immediately regardless of the price in lives, planes or cost. If this war is fought on our terms now, it can probably be won and won relatively cheaply; if it is fought later and on Iran's terms, we will regret it. The risk and potential price of the war go up every day we wait. If you take this regime for what it is, war is going to happen. We are already at war, the real question is who will strike first? In war, the overall weaker opponent is best off striking first to gain advantage over an otherwise stronger opponent; the corollary of this is that smaller and weaker powers are almost always unable to gain the upper hand after getting hit first.

Israel should be the lead off hitter. Israel can and should be part of the war and the bombing. It is Israel that is threatened with annihilation and Israel will bear the brunt of Hezbollah and Hamas retaliation, it is Israeli strikes that will most humiliate the Iranian leadership. Israel’s first strikes can do a lot but military reality cannot be ignored. The number of strikes needed to truly put the Iranian nuclear program permanently out of commission can only be sustained by the US. The sheer number of planes and sorties required and the nature and number of targets involved, mean that Israel can only do part of the job. The US has far greater ability to launch sustained multiple precision heavy bombing strikes. Nothing known to man is able to see, much less hit, a B-2 bomber. The US is the only nation equipped to see the job to completion. Israel's conventional aircraft will be operating at extreme range and vulnerable to ground fire. As losses mount, she will become unable to sustain long range strike operations. The IAF will also be quite busy interdicting Hezbollah and Syrian revenge attacks in support of Iran.

The Jewish state of Israel exists to protect the Jewish people; for her not to be on the front lines of a war for her own survival does Israel no favors. To deter future enemies, Israel must be seen to be unafraid to hit any enemy anywhere at the time of her choosing. The US is a mighty ally and, while it could frankly handle the job alone and has ample causus belli for doing so all by itself, for this fight, America must be seen to be standing in the fight side by side with Israel. The war with Iran must send a message that psychologically demolishes the enemy's ideology forever. If the US and Israel fight together and win, the entire worldwide radical terror movements will be seen to be discredited and have failed. In their world view, they should win and not be beaten by those for whom they have complete contempt. Hitler thought the Russians were beneath him too. By involving Israel directly, the US is repaid for its support of Israel over the years with the real currency of alliance- lives sacrificed for the common good against a common enemy.

Up until Hitler the Munich capitulation on Czechoslovakia, World War II was an avoidable war. For nearly seven years the western allies stood by and did nothing to stop him. They did not support the Weimar Republic, they did not ease the economic constraints of Versailles and they did not confront Hitler while he was still weak. At any of a number of critical junctures, Hitler could have been stopped. Today we have a regime openly sympathetic to Hitler and his worst deeds; and fully committed to matching his record. Like Hitler, this regime is arming for war, but unlike Hitler, this regime is close to acquiring the most dangerous weapons known to mankind, nuclear weapons. At least 40 million people perished in WWII; unless the western leaders act fast on Iran, we may well experience a war with many times more deaths. The actions and behaviors of the Ahmadinejad regime are not accidental, they are deliberate. There is nothing subtle about these brutes. They are counting on the western weakness that made WWII such a bloodbath: people in western democracies will do almost anything to avoid a war. This is the attitude that allowed Hitler to grow to become such a threat. The lesson of WWII is quite clear; there are certain regimes so belligerent that war with them is only a matter of time. When you have a regime dominated by a small group of totalitarian fanatics in thrall to a murder-minded ideology, unwaveringly seeking enormous military power, they will use their power in furtherance of their ideology, it is only a matter of time.

The ominous parallels between Ahmadinejad's Iran and Hitler's Germany support the idea that there is a species of leaders with a ruthless will to power that are a danger to humanity. When seen in conjunction with an ongoing nuclear weapons program and complete disregard for international norms, the danger these regimes present must be treated as imminent. They must never be trusted with nuclear weapons. If Iran has the Bomb, al Qaeda and Hezbollah also have the bomb. Invariably, this character type is self-identifying; the very personality that makes them so dangerous requires they openly display their true nature to the world.

Most especially, the Jewish people but should take people like this at their word and destroy them first.

The current government of Iran will be in an open shooting war before 2006 is over. This confrontation has been coming for a long, time, let us hope that the US and Israel strike first and achieve a swift and decisive victory. But we should be most mindful mindful of the necessity of this war, the sobering thought of the price the world will pay if nothing is done. The west faces its greatest threat since August 1939; the nature of the threat is clear and the way to deal with the threat is also clear. What is not clear is whether the western nations have the resolve to see the threat for what it is and the will to act accordingly.

There is no joy in advocating a war that will certainly see many people die, the only consolation is knowing that far many more will die if Iran actually gets its hands on the bomb.

Supporting Links:

Ahmadinejad's Apocalyptic Religious Beliefs

More on Ahmadinejad's Apocalyptic Religious Beliefs

Policy of Detente Is Not Forceful Enough

A Whitehouse in Disarray

2005-10-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

The last two months has shown increasing evidence that the Bush Whitehouse staff is disorganized or at sea, with sequential blunders and mishandling of issues and crises, it is now very clear that the White House staff is not serving the President well.

From flying over Katrina on the way to a golf outing (the president should have been in waders passing out water bottles and meeting in the storm's command post- anyone who saw a satellite picture of the storm knew it was going to be BIG) to how the Meirs selection has come off, it is clear that the White House is not functioning very well.

With key staff members annoyed or worried about independent prosecutor Fitzgerald's investigation into the Valerie Plame affair, the needs of individual of staff is distracting efforts from the business of serving the nation. Not being able to fulfill one's duty to the president is a perfectly honorable reason to resign and a perfectly non-judgmental reason for dismissal.

Republicans should be increasingly worried of appearances, when the American public sees top Republican congressional leaders in legal difficulties that is a dangerous message to be carrying into the midterm elections. For the first time in years, the House chamber was rocking as Democrats suddenly found their voice on the new energy bill. Which policy would you like to carry into the next election: a comprehensive Manhattan program to wean America from foreign oil or tax credits for future exploration when oil prices and oil company profits are the highest ever recorded? Even if there are signs of an eventual wind-down in Iraq, Republicans can expect to hear ad nauseum about useless bridges in Alaska and tens of billions of highway bill pork.

But the Presidency is where Republicans will be judged first and Americans are seeing signs of an administration that has a tin ear. Part of the problem is second termitus: every single second term of the modern era has been fraught with problems and scandal. There are many reasons for this but it one thing is certain: Tthere has not been a successful second term in fifty years. If the Bush administration desires to break this pattern; they had better get down to business right away. For those Republicans who believe that Hillary Clinton is running in 2008, remember the first issue of her anticipated presidential run will be this administration's performance.

Katrina disaster clean up and repair is now well underway; the one thing we did not see in the New Orleans disaster was unity and leadership. Katrina was a watershed event of the Bush administration, pun intended. The Meirs nomination is already off to an inauspicious start, the second there is a problem or any sign of weakness, the wolves of politics and the press will descend to finish her off in a frenzy that will make the final reel of Jaws look like a pacifist's march.

It is their job of the White House staff to keep the president abreast of what is going on in the political and real worlds. This used to be part of Condi Rice's job; with her no longer there, the President is not getting the information he needs. It is also their job to protect the president's image and see that his in the right places at the right times. Rather than do a complete second term house cleaning, as most administrations do, something that is healthy and prevents the very ossification we are now seeing in 2005, the President has allowed himself to be walled up in the oval office and he is not seeing the problems ahead or hearing accurately what is going on around him.

The first duty to the nation is to have an effective administration; the time to reorganize for the remaining 3.3 years is right now.

Reagan brought in Howard Baker to get things back on track after Iran Contra. Clinton brought in Leon Panetta when it was clear that adult supervision was required.

The president will want someone of stature who knows how DC operates, the short list: Dick Armey, Zell Miller (best choice), Jack Welch, Warren Rudman, Fred Thomson or Alan Simpson all would be solid choices.

Mr. President, Andrew Card is not going to tell you to reorganize the White House and bring in a new Chief of Staff, you have to do it.

Opening Day

2005-09-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the NeoCon Madrassa, the online blog of Ayatollah Ghilmeini. It is hoped that this blog will be a center for thought provoking articles and ideas on the world we live and current events.

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