President Bush Addresses Members of the Knesset
There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you.

Source

Limestone Roof Translation
Liberals don't believe in absolutes, ergo evil is a value judgment which was invented by man (like fantasy or sci-fi). This fantasy extends to foreign policy- from Carter to Kennedy (Teddy) to Clinton to Pelosi to Barack Hussein Obama.

Additionally, the liberal mind, short on historical perspective (history was also invented by man) and poisoned by subjectivism, concludes that the U.S. would leave the Middle East if we didn't need oil and that we would look the other way while Ahmadinejad lobbed nuclear missiles at Israel. It's OKAY if Jerusalem is vaporized, as long as we can have domestic partnerships, universal health care and consumption taxes.

The other fantasy involves us becoming unstuck from our religion and substituting it for the State (but that's the subject of another post).

**UPDATE**

Seattle Times Editor: 'Hitler's Demands Were Not Unreasonable' (Hat Tip: Ace)

Labels: democrats, end times, iran

President Bush on Hugo Chávez

"These agreements also promote America's strategic interests. The first agreement that will come before you is with Colombia, a friend of America that is confronting violence and terror and fighting drug traffickers. If we fail to pass this agreement, we will embolden the purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere.

So we must come together, pass this agreement, and show our neighbors in the region that democracy leads to a better life."

Source

Related
This quote is from Admiral James Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command:

I fear greatly that the connectivity between narcoterrorism and Islamic radical terrorism could be disastrous in this region. What I worry about in this region with outside actors coming into it is the potential for those streams to cross, if you will, for the fuel of narcoterrorism to become engaged in Islamic radicalism here in the Americas, here in our home."

"This gentleman is Mahmud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, a state that sponsors terrorism. He is a very dangerous man and he is in this area of the world," he said, adding that, "President Ahmadinejad says he wants to have an embassy in every country in this region." He already has ten.

President Bush also discussed immigration reform (again) but ALSO recognized the need to secure our borders. The above quote from Admiral Stavridis (as well as the photograph) highlights the danger of an open border policy.

"The other pressing challenge is immigration. America needs to secure our borders. And, with your help, my administration is taking steps to do so. We're increasing work site enforcement, deploying fences and advanced technologies to stop illegal crossings.

We've effectively ended the policy of "catch and release" at the border. And by the end of this year, we will have doubled the number of border patrol agents.

Yet we also need to acknowledge that we will never fully secure our border until we create a lawful way for foreign workers to come here and support our economy.

This will take pressure off the border and allow law enforcement to concentrate on those who mean us harm.

We must also find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally. Illegal immigration is complicated, but it can be resolved, and it must be resolved in a way that upholds both our laws and our highest ideals."

Source

President Bush on Iran
Iran's rulers oppress a good and talented people. And wherever freedom advances in the Middle East, it seems the Iranian regime is there to oppose it.

"Iran is funding and training militia groups in Iraq, supporting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and backing Hamas' efforts to undermine peace in the Holy Land.

Tehran is also developing ballistic missiles of increasing range and continues to develop its capability to enrich uranium, which could be used to create a nuclear weapon.

Our message to the people of Iran is clear. We have no quarrel with you. We have respect your traditions and your history. We look forward to the day when you have your freedom.

Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear. Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment so negotiations can begin. And to rejoin the community of nations, come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions. Stop your oppression at home. Cease your support for terror abroad.

But above all, know this: America will confront those who threaten our troops; we will stand by our allies; and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf."

Source

Labels: iran, terrorism in us

This is from the New Yorker via Media Blog on National Review Online. The lefty rags always float these articles to whip the DEM base into a frenzy.

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the "execute order" that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, "The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.")

"They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk," one recently retired C.I.A. official said. "They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002"—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, "The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through."

Here's another...this one is from the Times Online (UK).

Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike

THE United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with "fighting the next war" as tensions rise with Iran.

Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War's air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.

It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Source

My favorite reader comment (give this man a cigar):

To suggest Bush didn't have Iran on his mind when he made the case to invade Iraq is a bit self-deceiving, I'd say. Iran has been THE rogue element in the Mid East for years. In my opinion Iraq and Afghanistan have simply been side shows, pretexts for establishing beachheads and precursors to the main event.

Labels: iran

This is from the Media Blog on National Review Online:

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly yesterday in a speech again televised live by major news networks the world over (as was his speech at Columbia on Monday), Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the "the people of America and Europe will be free of the pressures exerted by Zionists."

The "era of darkness will end," he announced, and the world would soon have a "bright future" ushered in by the "return" of the 12th imam, a messianic figure in Shia Islam.

"Without any doubt, the Promised One who is the ultimate Savior will come. The pleasing aroma of justice will permeate the world," he said.

On many times in the past when speaking in Farsi in Iran, Ahmadinejad has said he needs to "hasten the imam’s return" through a "great thunder."

Part 2. A visual guide to the pleasing aroma of justice

This poor fellow was impaled, speared and clubbed (and I suppose eventually lit on fire for good measure).

Part 3. The Narrative

"For those unacquainted with the more obscure tenets of Islamic theology, the 12th Imam is held by devout Shi'ite Muslims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed who went into "occlusion" in the ninth century at the age of five and hasn't been seen since.

The Hidden Imam, as he is also known by his followers, will only return after a period of cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed – what Christians call the Apocalypse – and then lead the world into an era of universal peace."

Source

Labels: end times, iran

I think Ahmadineijad at Columbia University pushed me over the edge. My barrel ride over the falls all started with the special pricing offered to MoveOn by the NY TIMES. The icing on the cake is being referred to as The Cackle that Killed 1,000 Ears. I need to be re-educated by GOOGLE.

On the other hand...

This morning, Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of the New York Times, acknowledged that the paper had violated its own advertising policies by giving MoveOn.org a discounted rate for the ad that accused General Petraeus of being a traitor. Hoyt also said that in his judgment, the ad should not have been approved under the paper's policy that states, "We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature."

I think it is a reasonable inference that someone in the Times' advertising department collaborated with MoveOn.org to get the ad into the paper on the critical morning when General Petraeus's testimony began, while charging the group the paper's discounted "standby" rate, because the Times employee shared MoveOn's desire to smear Petraeus. It is revealing, too, that the Times employee who is charged with enforcing the policy against "attacks of a personal nature" didn't see anything out of bounds about calling our commanding general in Iraq a traitor.

Source

Labels: clintons, democrats, iran

WARNING**WARNING**WARNING

This post was updated with a link to graphic footage here to demonstrate the depravity of these savages.

Article 1
LONDON (Reuters) - A Kurdish woman was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by members of her family and their friends in an "honor killing" carried out at her London home because she had fallen in love with the wrong man.

Article 2
Iran launches new crackdown on unIslamic fashion

Iran on Monday launched a new wave of a moral crackdown against women who "dress like models" and men whose hairstyles are deemed unIslamic, police said.

Tehran's police force dispatched dozens of police cars and minibuses into the early evening rush-hour to enforce the dress rules at major squares in the city centre, an AFP correspondent said.

The new "plan to increase security in society" -- which is limited to Tehran but will later extend nationwide -- comes after a pre-summer drive by the police resulted in thousands of warnings and hundreds of arrests.

Labels: democrats, iran, islamofascism

Iran Erupts In Flames After Petrol Rationing

Since the fuel restrictions came into force on Tuesday night, twelve petrol stations have been torched in Tehran and there are unconfirmed reports that supermarkets and banks have also come under attack.

With inflation now running at 20-30 per cent, the government is taking a stand.

The rationing is predicted to last four months, maybe as long as six. And the knock-on effects could be profound.


Source

Labels: economics, iran

Israel braces for July war with up to five enemies

JERUSALEM (SOURCE) — Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients.

Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007.

On Sunday, Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet that the Jewish state faces five adversaries in what could result in an imminent confrontation. Yadlin cited Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and Al Qaida.

I don't know if the World Tribune has ANY credibility, but this article in the WSJ is sobering.

Winds of War
Iran is making a mistake that may lead the East into a broader conflict.

Several conflicts of various intensities are raging in the Middle East. But a bigger war, involving more states--Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps the United States and others--is growing more likely every day, beckoned by the sense that America and Israel are in retreat and that radical Islam is ascending.

The radicals are becoming reckless, asserting themselves for little reason beyond the conviction that they can. They are very likely to overreach. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which a single match--say a terrible terror attack from Gaza--could ignite a chain reaction. Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out?

With the Bush administration's policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to constrain the president's freedom to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, the proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help extricate us from Iraq--all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of our imminent collapse. In the name of peace, they are hastening the advent of the next war.

Source

Labels: democrats, iran

Podhoretz makes the case for bombing Iran (it's almost go time):

Much of the world has greeted Ahmadinejad’s promise to wipe Israel off the map with something close to insouciance. In fact, it could almost be said of the Europeans that they have been more upset by Ahmadinejad’s denial that a Holocaust took place 60 years ago than by his determination to set off one of his own as soon as he acquires the means to do so. In a number of European countries, Holocaust denial is a crime, and the European Union only recently endorsed that position. Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around.

Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

Source

Labels: iran

ABC isn't content with an Iranian-led (internal revolt) against the Mullahs and would much rather see the U.S. carpet bomb Iran or commit ground forces. I know this is a bold statement, but what else is there to conclude from ABC(s) decision to broadcast classified information.

More here, here, and here.

Related

Crisis forces Teheran to ration petrol

The scale of Iran's economic crisis became clear yesterday when the regime increased petrol prices by 25 per cent overnight and prepared to introduce fuel rationing.

These measures may damage President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's popular standing still further. In a country with 70 million people - at least half of whom are under 25 - the economy is stagnant and failing.

High unemployment means that millions of students are unable to find jobs while prices of basic goods rise every month.

Source

Maybe ABC will get their wish.

Navy Stages Show of Force Off Iran Coast

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

The carrier strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes landing ships carrying members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Source

Labels: iran, left-wing media