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I’m always impressed by the countless men and women who quietly work behind the scenes to protect this nation from the threat of terrorism. It’s not often that you get even a small glimpse into the vital role many of them play, yet for every investigation and every plot that is thwarted there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, who played a crucial role. One such group, Biowatch, is featured in a USA today article.
Behind the scenes, system sniffs for biological attacks
A ringing telephone startled Tom Slezak from a sound sleep. It was 1 a.m. on Oct. 6, 2001. The caller gave Slezak three hours to pack for a chilling, top-secret mission: to protect Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities from a major bioterror attack.
For all Slezak knew, an attack had begun. Hours earlier, a Florida photo editor named Bob Stevens had died after inhaling anthrax powder sent by mail, jolting a nation that was still reeling from the 9/11 hijackings. At the time, the scope of the anthrax attacks that eventually killed five people and sickened 17 others wasn’t clear.
Slezak got the call because he helped pioneer the genetic analysis of biological agents at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Today, eight years after the anthrax attacks, the system Slezak’s research team started, known as BioWatch, is quietly operating in more than 30 cities.
A federally funded, locally run program with an $80 million annual budget, it depends on a network of vacuum pumps that draw surrounding air through filters, sniffing for signs of biological agents.
[...]
The scenarios envisioned by Hooks and other Homeland Security officials are enough to keep anyone awake at night: A terrorist in a pickup in Charlotte, spewing a biological agent through an agricultural sprayer. A small plane releasing microbes into night skies upwind of Washington, D.C. Someone spraying anthrax from a briefcase in Pennsylvania Station in New York, the busiest transit hub in the USA, with 600,000 people streaming through each day.
“How many people would be infected? How far would it spread? They’d go right through there, jump on a train and be gone,” Hooks says. “Those are the kinds of things I worry about.”
The only way to know the detection system is capable of picking up such threats is to test it, says Omberg of Los Alamos. BioWatch analysts have released benign microbes upwind of likely terrorist targets and population centers. BioWatch sensors in the Washington, D.C., area have reliably picked up bacteria released near the Pentagon and Tysons Corner, a close-in office and retail hub in Virginia.
Real-world alerts, such as the tularemia incident in Washington, D.C., also have helped some cities gear up for a biological incident. Houston, even more than Washington, is home to the bacteria that cause tularemia, Francisella tularensis, which regularly triggers BioWatch alerts.
If only terrorists would be so accommodating as not to change cell phones, the new curbs on the Patriot Act being pushed by Democrats in Congress would not be so dangerous. ....
A new global Islamic charity fund set to launch in early 2010 may become the vehicle to support something entirely different, according to Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who warned that the new charity must be watched carefully. sharia
In an exclusive interview Monday with Israel National News, Jasser expressed deep concern that the World Zakat Fund, established in part by the Malaysian government, may be "nothing more than a ruse to give transnational Islamist movements and their controlling Muslim theocrats an economic power base."
The new fund will collect donations from the 2.5 percent "zakat" set aside under Shar'iah law by observant Muslims who have the wherewithal to save money. According to a statement released to the media, it is the first Islamic charity fund ever to be established.
The fund is hoping to raise nearly a billion dollars by the end of its first year. Humayon Dar, CEO of BMB Islamic, the Shar'iah adviser to the fund, said last week that donors have made soft commitments of approximately $50 million thus far.
That could grow to as much as $10 billion within the first decade, however: Dar estimated there are some 40,000 high-net-worth Muslims in the Middle East alone, including 400 billionaires. He added that between $20 billion to $30 billion in zakat is distributed in the Muslim world each year. 'Giving the Fox the Keys to the Henhouse'
Jasser told INN that he believes the fund would simply serve to consolidate financial power "in vast orders of magnitude" and then hand it over to the member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
These are countries that have refused to abide by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, he pointed out, "and do not adhere to the same standards of human rights as Western nations."
Moreover, he said, "As far as I know, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Mahathir, has never retracted his comment from 2002 where he stated, 'A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West].'"
Giving OIC nations the collective ability to determine the distribution of "Muslim charity," he said, is "the epitome of giving the 'fox the keys to the henhouse.'"
'Benign Distribution of Funds by Radical Islamists?'
It is not yet clear where and how the funds from the new charity will be distributed, Jasser noted. "At this point, the effort is in its infancy, and the important details of where their monies will go is unknown."
However, he said, the controlling members of the fund's Shar'iah finance board merit some concern:
Dr. Ali al-Quradaghi is a member of the European Council of Fatwa Research, and a colleague of the global spiritual guide of the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Yusuf Qaradawi, who has sanctioned terrorist activity in Israel and Iraq. Qaradawi has also called for the murder of Muslim apostates, and has expressed the intention of replacing Western capitalism with "integrated Islamic philosophy."
Syria's Abdul Sattar Abu Guddah, is closely affiliated with Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who has been removed from numerous boards of Western banks, according to Jasser. Abu Guddah was on the board of the al-Baraka Bank, which was implicated in the financing of the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States. The allegations against the bank were later dismissed.
Abdul-aziz Fawzan Saleh Al-Fawzan is a Saudi Arabia-based Wahabi Islamist whom Jasser calls "a self-proclaimed hater of Christians."
In addition, the management board of BMB Islamic includes three members who hail from the International Islamic University in Pakistan. Jasser noted that in a seminar held recently by the university on Israel and Gaza, "The speaker provided an interpretation of the Koran, Chapter 5, which is anti-Semitic and incites violence."
University president Anwar Siddiqui led a discussion at the same conference with a panel of radical Islamists, Jasser said, "who called for the Islamic state in Gaza and the West Bank and for a boycott of America and Israel," among others.
"I cannot imagine how individuals as radical as this are going to distribute billions in funds in a 'benign' method globally," he said pointedly.
The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal's comments on strategy for the war.
Petraeus underwent two months of radiation treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and the treatment was successful, a spokesman says.
At a White House dinner with a group of historians at the beginning of the summer, Robert Dallek, a shrewd student of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, offered a chilling comment to President Obama.
"In my judgment," he recalls saying, "war kills off great reform movements." The American record is pretty clear: World War I brought the Progressive Era to a close. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was waging World War II, he was candid in saying that "Dr. New Deal" had given way to "Dr. Win the War." Korea ended Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Vietnam brought Lyndon Johnson's Great Society to an abrupt halt.
Dallek is not a pacifist, and he does not pretend that his observation settles the question against war in every case. Of the four he mentioned, I think World War II and Korea were certainly necessary fights.
But Dallek's point helps explain why Obama is right to have grave qualms about an extended commitment of many more American troops to Afghanistan. Obama was elected not to escalate a war but to end one. The change and hope he promised did not involve a vast new campaign to transform Afghanistan. ....
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India.
(Analyst's note: Absolutely must read announcement. The impact will be stunning.)
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading
By Robert Fisk
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."
This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.
The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.
Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.
China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.
Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.
Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.
The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."
Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.
The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.
"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."
Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.
(Analyst's note: Absolutely must read and consider this interview summary. Don't miss the recommended reading list following this article.)
by Cyrus Sanati
The fallout from the credit crisis has put the financial system of the United States under a microscope. Banker pay, lending practices and regulatory oversight are now topics of mainstream interest for the first time since the Great Depression.
As Congress debates whether or not to give more power to the Federal Reserve to watch over the financial system, Ron Paul, the Republican congressman from Texas, is arguing, as he has for years, for the government to go in the opposite direction and actually cut the Fed’s powers.
In an interview with DealBook on Thursday, Mr. Paul discussed his new book, “End the Fed,” as well as his views on Wall Street.
The outspoken lawmaker contends that the government is essentially controlled by the Fed and in collusion with Wall Street, and has created an unsustainable economic system through the excess printing of money. He predicts that the system will eventually break down and the dollar will collapse, creating economic chaos.
Here are edited and condensed excerpts from DealBook’s talk with Mr. Paul.
Q.What would Wall Street look like without the Fed? Do you believe that Wall Street banks — which you’ve described as a “secretive cartel of powerful money managers” — would be able to manipulate interest rates if the Fed didn’t exist?
A.No, the interest rate would be set by savers. Capital would come from savings, which is what happens in a free market. So if there were a lot of savings then interest rates would go down. This would give information to the marketplace, which is the most important thing that has to be corrected without a central bank: sending the right information out to borrowers, investors and savers.
Right now we don’t have a free market in interest rates, so it is basically price controls.
Q.In your book, you argue that ending the Fed would put the American banking system on solid financial footing. With the banks still far from clearing their toxic assets, how is that possible?
A.Well, to get rid of the toxic assets, the Fed said we need to step in because the assets were illiquid. Illiquid means that they are worthless, and if they are worthless, we should take care of that problem like we did in 1921 and eliminate them and get it over with and get back to work again.
But to take these illiquid, worthless assets and dump them on the American taxpayers and not really get rid of them just prolongs the agony.
Q.It’s widely believed that the Fed is independent, made up mostly of academics, not politicians or business leaders. What specific powers do you believe the Wall Street banks have over the Fed that would allow them to influence it?
A.Well, we don’t have a full answer on that, but that’s obviously the reason the Fed doesn’t want a full audit. What we do know is that they do have influence over the Fed; I mean Wall Street was bailed out, and it wasn’t the first time.
We know that Lehman Brothers was allowed to go bankrupt, but Goldman Sachs came out very well outside of this mess. We want to know why this happened, what they did, who got these loans and why. Someone has always been in our Treasury or our Federal Reserve who is closely connected to Wall Street — Goldman Sachs more than anybody else.
Q.So do you think Goldman Sachs has the most influence at the Fed?
A.I think they have been in the news the most, but we might find out a lot of new things once we audit the Fed. We might find out that there are some international banks with influence.
The one thing the Fed is really fighting is to keep us from auditing any of the international agreements they have with other central banks and the international financial institutions — who knows who’s involved. The key issue is transparency, and I don’t think you will know the full extent until we have a true audit.
Q.Which brings us to your bill to audit the Federal Reserve. What would an audit show, and why do you think that information is important?
A.It is going to show what kind of promises the Fed made, what kind of loans they made, which companies benefited, which companies did not. We want to know about these international arrangements. You know if they can enter into arrangements with other countries and other central banks and issue new money and credit — they are literally a government unto itself.
The Fed is making appropriations that are off the books and didn’t go through Congress. That should be unconstitutional. They are making agreements with other governments. That’s treaty-making and we don’t even know about it. They always say it is to maintain an orderly financial system, but there is nothing orderly about it. They created problems, and it is something we deserve to know about.
Q.Congress is considering various ways to increase regulatory oversight of Wall Street. Do you believe that could help alleviate the severity of the financial boom and bust cycles?
A.No, it wouldn’t do a thing because it is a distraction. The real problem is the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed — you have to deal with the problem in order to correct it. I mean Congress is talking about more and more regulations, but that just won’t work.
In a market economy with a gold standard you do have market regulations. Bad businesses and bad banks – they go out of business. They would never be all at one time. F.D.I.C. kind of insurance would be private, banks would be rated by a private company and when they made bad loans, it would be known.
The better they ran their affairs, the lower their insurance rates would be and people would know every single day how a bank is doing, rather than allowing every bank to hide behind government guarantees.
Q.You mention in the book that your ultimate goal is to “repel legal tender laws and letting everyone get into the business of the production of money.” Can you explain what you mean by that? It sounds kind of chaotic.
A.This is kind of a theoretical argument, because I follow what [Austrian economist Friedrich] Hayek said in that you should have competing currencies in one economy. The market would decide if you use gold or silver or some other things – anything to restrain the printing press.
If we follow the Constitution, only gold and silver could be legal tender, but today that is not allowed and the only thing you can use is Federal Reserve notes (dollars). That means you get locked into the system.
Q.Some argue that your view on returning the United States to the gold standard is simplistic and not applicable to today’s sophisticated and interconnected financial system. How do you respond to that?
A.I think the system we have is not a very good system and it is in the process of causing us a lot of trouble. We had the biggest financial bubble in the world just burst and the dollar reserve standard has literally come to an end, so I would say everything we’ve had, especially since 1971, has been very, very impractical and has not worked anyway.
Q.So how close are you in convincing members of Congress to “end the Fed”?
A.They are not ready. They are only going to study it when they see the collapse of the dollar. Although the dollar is collapsing, it’s not happening fast enough for them to think about currency reform. They are talking about financial system reform with all these regulations that will make it worse, but they aren’t anywhere close to dealing with the currency issue. If they think they can double the money supply in a year, they aren’t close to talking about sound money.
That being said, I am excited that now at least people are beginning to take a look at the Federal Reserve. I am very positive about how the college kids have taken to reading Austrian economics. To me it is remarkable that 75 percent of the country said that we should limit the Fed, when a couple years ago they didn’t even think about it.
We now have every Republican on the audit bill and 119 Democrats, so it is very positive that attention is directed toward the Fed.
CBO warning on page14 - possible financial insolvency of our gov't - demand for higher interest rates - foreign & domestic lenders may not provide enough funds for the gov't to meet obligations.
Problem magnitude cannot be underestimated on page 15
What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on US soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the US, had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?
Most Americans would not stand for it. Yet the above hypothetical events are similar to what our government is doing in Pakistan. ....
Criticisms of Obama are increasingly met by cries of “Racist!” Are his critics racists?
By Victor Davis Hanson
The charge of racism has been leveled against critics of President Obama’s health-care reform by everyone from New York Times columnists, racial activists, and Democratic legislators to senior statesmen like Jimmy Carter (“It’s a racist attitude”), Bill Clinton (“some . . . are racially prejudiced”), and Walter Mondale (“I don’t want to pick a person [and] say, ‘He’s a racist,’ but I do think the way they’re piling on Obama . . . I think I see an edge in them that’s a little bit different”).
But are Obama’s critics really racists?
It is a serious charge. If true, it means the hope of a color-blind society is essentially over after a half-century of civil-rights progress. If false, it means that we have institutionalized vicious smears as legitimate political tactics — and, in the process, discredited the entire dialogue that surrounds racial prejudice.
How do we determine the accuracy of the “racism” charges? ....
The rocket-propelled grenade and rifle fire was so intense that most of the soldiers spent the opening minutes of the battle lying on their stomachs, praying that the enemy would run out of ammunition. ....
Report says then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials were wrong to contend that all nine banks receiving the first round of bailout support -- $125 billion -- were sound.
Panoply of weirdness in the health care bills working their way through Congress.
Doctors who treat the oldest patients will be fined by the government: The government will create a "hit list" of doctors who are in the top 10% of Medicare costs per patient nationwide. Those doctors on the list automatically lose 5 percent of their total Medicare reimbursements, which are already abysmally low. Because the most aged patients are the most costly to treat, doctors will shy away from treating the oldest segment of the population for fear it will relegate them to the hit list.Put simply, this stricture will dramatically reduce access to health care for our most vulnerable seniors.
.... With millions of new electronics devices connecting to the Internet every day, hackers are increasingly focusing on a new type of target: mobile and embedded systems. Such systems include point-of-sale terminals, Wireless routers, smart phones, networked office machines such as printers, and the utility infrastructure. ....
The biggest threat to U.S. computer networks is terrorist organizations that will purchase software code from cybercriminals to penetrate sensitive systems, a possibility that could be just a few years away, information security and former intelligence officials said on Friday.
Although enemy states often are blamed for cyberattacks against the United States, it is not common because political and financial repercussions dissuade most countries from launching a widespread effort, James Woolsey, a former CIA director, said during a panel discussion at the International Spy Museum. The talk was part of the launch of a new gallery on cyber threats.
"We don't have the [degree] of strife [with] those that have these capabilities -- such as China and Russia," that would cause them to attack the United States, Woolsey said. "The ultimate problem we face is the possibility that we will have an enemy whose objective is total destruction."
Power plants are a prime target, he said, with the goal being to take down the electric grid. "Would anyone want to do that?" Woolsy asked. "Yes. We saw their faces on 9/11."
Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations are honest about what motivates them, he said. "They believe God wants to destroy the U.S.," Woolsey added. "That's a different kind of enemy." ....
(Analyst's note: Consider this an absolutely must read series of articles.)
by Peter Huessy
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany have now met with representatives of the Iranian government in Geneva, hopefully to determine the nature of the latter country’s nuclear facilities and technology development. Is this finally the end game, at which we find the answer to a 20-year-old puzzle – are the mullahs in Tehran developing nuclear weapons? And is it sufficient to find out the answers to only this one puzzle? Or is it something very different?
Before we can answer that question, and before we analyze the agreements that flowed from the meeting, it would be useful to, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, “review the bidding.” First, what do we know? Second, what are reasonable inferences from what we know? Third, when combined with the historical record, how should we see what we know? And fourth, with this in mind, what then are our realistic choices going forward especially in light of the “deal” reached in Geneva?
What Do We Know?
First, what do we know? The Iranians are accelerating their production and development of ballistic missiles. The USAF specifically in a report in April says this includes long range intercontinental ballistic missiles. An analyst at MIT concurs. Uzi Rubin, the former director of ballistic missile defenses at the Israeli Ministry of Defense
says the Iranian current rocket capability approaches 3,000 kilometers and can reasonably reach over 4,000 kilometers in the near future, which would put all of Europe under the shadow of Tehran’s missiles.The longer-range rockets are now of the solid-fuel and multi-stage variety, which means they can be launched quickly and without the fueling process that has previously allowed us to discover potential launches through satellite observation.
We also know something about international assistance to Iran for their rocket programs. Bill Gertz, writing in the Washington Times, reveals that documents, the content of which were provided to him by an analyst at MIT, which in turn apparently were spirited out from some Iranian state-run industries, show widespread cooperation between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran in BOTH the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Other recent reports detail the purchase of nuclear trigger technology by Iran. British intelligence says that Iran is building nuclear warheads and re-started such work in the past few years.
Now what about the state of our defenses?In 2006, the Bush administration and Congress agreed to emphasize the protection of Europe from Iranian short and medium range rockets as well as develop additional deployments to protect against what were seen as emerging longer-range rocket threats. Now, as of 2009, the current capability of U.S. ballistic missile defenses for the defense of Europe can intercept rockets with roughly a 2,000 kilometer range. Much beyond that and we have to develop a better system. We hope to have available by 2015 the capability to have a Navy-based Standard Missile with a speed of 4.5 kilometers per second, (k/sec) compared to its current capability just above 3 k/sec. The faster speed would enable ship-based interceptors based on Aegis cruisers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea to protect portions of Europe from Iranian missile threats.
Such a sea-based capability was being pursued by the previous administration and in fact has been a long supported development by very strong missile defense supporters, including working groups led by the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Security Policy, the Marshall Institute, High Frontier, the Claremont Institute and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and at least as far back as 1995. Other ground-based capabilities such as the PAC-3 and THAAD missile defense systems can protect smaller areas against shorter range rockets, and are currently being planned for deployment not only with U.S. military forces overseas but also hosted by Turkey, Germany, Poland and Denmark, to name but a few. As for long-range rockets from Iran, the U.S. is in part protected by our deployment of interceptors in California and Alaska, but more capability is urgently required.
Logical Inferences
Any reasonable person would conclude the Iranian are building an arsenal of ballistic missiles, some of which are designed to carry nuclear weapons, to further their murderous aims against Israel, NATO, the United States and our allies in the region. Why else build rockets that now reach at least to Warsaw and probably beyond? We also know that there is a consortium of criminal cartels – from the oligarchs in Russia, to the ruling families in China, to the criminal regimes in Syria, North Korea and elsewhere, helping Iran with these military capabilities.
Michael Ledeen recently wrote of this organized opposition to the U.S. and its allies. This consists of a collective of regimes seeking monopoly control over resources, especially energy, free rein to build their empires, and the use of terror proxies combined with criminal cartels in pursuit of their aims. As part of this effort, they are using the tools of globalization to cross state lines, diminish the sovereignty of some governments, and escape both law and ethics. It is not altogether unreasonable to look at Iranian behavior in this light. So if Russia, China, North Korea and Syria are the very partners in Iranian “criminal” behavior, it would seem one very big stretch to see these same countries as seriously willing to “give us a hand” in reining in the terrorist ways of one of their “partner” states such as Iran.
Historical Lessons
How do these inferences stand up in light of the historical record? We know that the U.S. and its allies have been talking and negotiating with Iran for 30 years, the record of which was recently eloquently explained by Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street Journal. We also know that Iran has used these negotiations to hide their current nuclear technology facilities, design bureaus, and enrichment plants. We know the Mullahs have repeatedly lied and excel at the art of duplicity and concealment.
We also know Iran’s constitution calls on the country to export its brand of murderous Islam, and this consists in part of supplying weapons, sanctuary and financing to terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah who are in turn making war against Lebanon and Israel. And we know many of these weapons are supplied originally by Russia, as well as by China and North Korea.
We also know from U.S. military commanders and their testimony before the U.S. Congress that Iran is providing weapons, training and financing to terrorists killing Americans and their allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We further know Iran has a long track record of murder – from the Marine barracks in Beirut to our Embassy in Lebanon, to the Israeli facilities in Argentina, and to the destruction of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. We also know the Iranian regime has repeatedly attempted to conduct terrorist attacks against Morocco, Egypt and some of the Persian Gulf states. In this light, how realistic is that Iran will trade its revolutionary goals because it might be fearful of being “isolated?”
Now why is Iran terrorism’s #1 practitioner? The notion remains firmly fixed in some quarters that much of this is due to the U.S. acting as some kind of “hyper-power,” as once described by former French President Chirac, himself hip-deep in the Iraq food-for-palaces swindle and long time protector of Saddam Hussein. Some even go back to the 1950s and the U.S. support of a “coup” that stopped a communist stooge from taking power in Iran as justification for the continued “hostility” of the Iranian regime toward the U.S.
We have been told repeatedly: If the U.S. would simply stop acting “unilaterally,” things would change. The “international community,” upon seeing the “softer approach” of a new American administration, would finally conclude the U.S. “deserved” to be helped in its efforts to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program and subsequently with that of North Korea as well.
The central assumption that animated this world view comes straight out of the “blame America first” crowd first identified by the late Jean J. Kirkpatrick, our Ambassador to the UN. It comes down to seeing America as a “bad actor” in the world.It was quite simply that our allies would not help us deal with Iran because of the perceived political problem of being associated with our fighting in Iraq, enforcing the Patriot Act provisions, waterboarding terror subjects or maintaining the prison in Guantanamo Bay.
An additional complaint is that there has been “two decades” of neglect with respect to “arms control” and reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles. The Moscow Treaty of 2002 was viewed as “not real arms control” even though United States and Russian deployed weapons were actually reduced by over 60 percent, the largest percent reductions in strategic nuclear weapons ever. The treaty was submitted to the Senate and became the law of the land. The U.S. and Russia actually trusted each other to keep their declared number of deployed nuclear weapons within the boundaries of the treaty. The START I agreement verification measures, still in effect, could provide some of the “verify” in President Reagan’s famous dictum: “Trust, but verify.”
It is true the Moscow Treaty of 2002 didn’t contain the elaborate rules of the START or SALT treaties. It did not constrain the U.S., or the Russians for that matter, from deploying their respective nuclear forces consistent with their own view of their security and deterrent needs. It did, however, eliminate some 4,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons as well as incidentally thousands of stockpiled weapons as well.
This flexibility in the treaty and the associated assumption that the treaty wasn’t really the old fashioned “arms control” led to never-ending complaints that the U.S. lacked sufficient stature or moral credibility to insist that one NPT signatory – Iran – had to get rid of its nuclear weapons program or at the very least fully comply with the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty when it, the United States, was “neglecting” arms control.The U.S. failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during the Clinton administration also may have played a role in this view, but this was a common and pervasive complaint.
This was all viewed in the larger context of our bad polling numbers in Europe.President Bush was simply not liked.The U.S., in some polls, was viewed as a greater threat to world peace than either North Korea or Iran. This view was no doubt fueled by the cacophony of hatred and invective hurled at our 43rd President by his domestic political enemies. But it nonetheless gave many in Europe and elsewhere, we were told, a ready “excuse” not to help with our non-proliferation goals. And so while our European allies met repeatedly with Iran, little if any progress was achieved.
Similarly, at similar meetings designed to push forward the goals of the NPT, third world countries sided with Iran and refused to put counter proliferation high on the agenda as opposed to the responsibility of the permanent five to “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and “eliminate weapons in space.”And in the absence of progress with Iran, many of our European allies, as well as China, Russia and Japan, expanded their trade and investment ties with the Tehran Mullahs, all the while preaching to the U.S. that we lacked sufficient morale stature to call down this element of the “evil empire.”
Albright is very pleased that our polling numbers are way up in Europe. She says “it is nice to be liked.”It apparently had little effect when the administration asked earlier this year for a greater military commitment to the Afghanistan Theater from our NATO allies where supposedly the U.S. is so much more admired. Some nations sent a few more troops but they were withdrawn immediately after the recent elections.
But now there apparently is the belief that our arguments with Iran will have such moral power that the Mullahs will be bewildered and cave in to our demands.Our allies will finally will take our side and make some hard choices. Russia and China will insist on Iranian compliance with UN resolutions and the terms of the NPT. And once we all threaten to implement “severe sanctions,” Iran will fold. Stay tuned.
In Part Two, we will examine the “deal” reached in Geneva and the way forward for the US and its allies.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
(Analyst's note: A letter received today from ACT for America is the source of these absolutely must read comments and article below -- both of which I agree.I would only add that the jihadist and their radical fluid network of clerics and intellecuals from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and Sudan are thinking that Allah is delivering to them the infidel known as the great Satan [USA] and little Satan [Israel] ... all ripe and ready for their defeat as they work to rebuilt the caliphate and sharia law. Their thinking goes back to the events of the previous thirteen centuries as they continue to work to obstruct any form of awakening within our United States.Such thinking is hard for the average American to understand, but understand this enemy who is in all out war with us, we must, if we are to beat them back once again. The jihadist ideologies have systematically penetrated the United States, as a prelude to the more lethal terror network which we now see working within our country. Arabian oil influence has made this type of penetration possible. And they have linked it all to our American domestic objectives as we "slept."
When media and political “talking heads” contended there was no “connection” between the recent spate of foiled terrorist plots on American soil, we were witnessing an absence of strategic thinking.
They simply weren’t analyzing the ideological force of jihadist Islam that IS the connection between the terrorist plots.
When media and political “talking heads,” in concert with the Obama administration, assert that Russia can be persuaded to support significantly tougher sanctions against Iran, we are again witnessing an absence of strategic thinking.
In both cases, it is the failure to see events and understand motivations through a lens other than our own.
The Iranian “mullocracy” is motivated by a messianic ambition to usher in the 12th imam through creating global chaos and by a desire to assert itself as the focal point of worldwide Islam.How does the “infidel” West hope to negotiate with that?
Ralph Peters makes a good case below for why Vladimir Putin does not see imposing tougher sanctions as in Russia’s self-interest, self-interest defined as Russia’s drive to exert greater control of oil and natural gas. In other words, a drive for greater power.
Putin could care less about Iran’s theo-political motivations, and deep down Iran despises “infidel” Russia. But, as the saying goes, “politics makes for strange bedfellows.” )
Iran's traditional emblem has been the Persian lion. Russia's should be a vulture: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intends to feed on the carcass left by any confrontation with Iran.
For Moscow, this crisis isn't about Tehran's acquisition of nukes. It's about Russia's acquisition of a stranglehold on global energy markets.
Putin's playing with fire -- but he's sure we'll be the ones burned.
As for the Obama administration's desperate (and stunningly naive) hope that economic sanctions can deter President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his fellow thugs-for-Allah from pursuing nuclear weapons, forget it.
Even were Putin to permit his front-man, President Dmitri Medvedev, to agree to half-baked sanctions, Moscow would violate them before Obama could step out of Air Force One with a piece of paper in his hand guaranteeing peace in our time.
The current crisis is a win-win-win for Putin. But before laying out his plan, let's run the numbers:
The Persian Gulf's littoral states hold over 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and 40 percent of the natural gas. Russia has "just" 10 percent of the oil reserves and 35 percent of the world's natural gas.
Do the math: Iran and its neighbors, along with Russia, own two-thirds of the world's oil reserves and 70 percent of the natural gas. And the global economy still runs on oil and gas, folks.
Despite the State Department's compartmentalization mentality, Russia and Iran don't exist in separate worlds. It's less than a day's drive from Russia's southern border through Azerbaijan to Iran's northwestern border. I've driven it.
This is one macro-region for energy, the zone of ultimate control. Putin gets it, even if we don't. Here's Czar Vladimir's strategic trifecta:
* For now, Russia profits wonderfully from its trade, both legal and illicit, with Iran, while the West talks itself to death. Life is good.
* But life could get even better: If Iran's nuclear quest isn't blocked, a nuclear arsenal will give Iran de facto control of all Persian Gulf oil. Putin envisions a Moscow-Tehran axis, an energy cartel that dramatically increases the value of his oil and gas -- the only economic props keeping the corpse of Russia upright.
* If Israel's driven to a forlorn-hope attack on Iran's nuke program, Iran will respond by striking Gulf Arab oil fields and facilities, while closing the Strait of Hormuz. The US military will be in it, like it or not. Oil and gas prices will soar unimaginably -- and the bear will have its paws on the golden tap.
So the worst outcome for Putin -- more of the same -- is still good. A bad outcome for everybody else is even better in Putin's strategy to renew Russia's superpower status.
Why on earth would this guy help us stop Iran? When he hates us, anyway? (It isn't you, Barack. It's just business.)
For all his viciousness, Putin's a serious strategist. We don't have any high-level strategists. Not one. On either side of the Potomac.
In his first decade on the throne, Czar Vladimir focused on addicting Europe to Russian gas, while moving successfully to exert control over as many pipelines as possible. That was the constructive decade.
The second decade in the reign of Vladimir I is the energy-cartel-building phase. This will be the confrontational phase.
Energy's the only real power Putin has, so he's maximizing it.
It's no accident that a strategic triangle has emerged between Moscow, Tehran and Caracas -- home of the great Latin mischief-lover, Hugo Chavez, who thrives on his own nation's petro-wealth.
For us, the Iran crisis is about peace. For Putin, it's about power.Yet the self-deluding Obama administration really believes that Moscow's going to support us. After our president gave away our only serious bargaining chip, the missile-defense system promised to our European allies.
Putin thinks in 10-year-plans. We can't think past the next congressional roll-call vote.
The Obama administration's primary legacy to the world is going to be a nuclear-armed Iran.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow. ....
(MEMRI) The Al-Falluja jihadist forum has posted a new threat message to Germany specifying that attacks will be carried out on one of the Sundays in October.It is titled "To the Infidel German Nation: We Bestow on You the Kindness, for the Third Time, of Specifying the Appointed Day!" The message, which is being heavily promoted by Al-Falluja, is the latest in a series of threats to appear on the forum [1] following the release of Al-Qaeda videos threatening attacks in Germany. ....
There’s not a lot of detail yet however CNN is reporting that several associates who traveled from New York to Pakistan last year with alleged terror suspect Najibullah Zazi, have since returned to the United States.
One would think that the arrests last week of Najibullah Zazi, charged with plotting to bomb New York City subways—and of two others charged with planning to blow up buildings in Dallas, Texas, and Springfield, Ill.—would generate support for the intelligence-gathering tools that protect this country from Muslim fanatics. In Mr. Zazi's case, the government has already confirmed the value of these tools: It has filed a notice of its intent to use information gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was specifically written to help combat terrorists and spies.
Nevertheless, there is a rear-guard action in Congress to make it more difficult to gather, use and protect intelligence—the only weapon that can prevent an attack rather than simply punish one after the fact. The USA Patriot Act, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, is a case in point. ....
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman said Thursday that she no longer had concerns with a proposed modification of the USA Patriot Act, the nation's primary counterintelligence law.
However, liberal Democrats still believe the bill fails to protect Americans' privacy and conservative Republicans want no major changes.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, considering changes to expiring portions of the act, was still too divided at its weekly meeting to send a compromise bill to the full Senate.
Three sections that expire Dec. 31 set the rules the government must follow when conducting electronic surveillance and obtaining documents and other tangible items in national security investigations.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the intelligence committee, told a Judiciary Committee meeting she had overcome concerns that the bill would hinder an ongoing investigation into a suspected train bomb plot in New York City.
She said modifications, added to the bill by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and others, "protect both our safety and civil liberties" and would not jeopardize "the biggest (anti-terrorism) investigation since 9/11."
The personal data of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers -- including those in the Special Forces -- continue to be downloaded by unauthorized computer users in countries such as China and Pakistan, despite Army assurances that it would try to fix the problem, according to a private firm that monitors cybersecurity.
Tiversa, which scours the Internet for sensitive data, discovered the data breaches while conducting research for private clients. The company found, as recently as this week, documents containing Social Security numbers, blood types, cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses, and the names of soldiers' spouses and children.
The availability of such data, security experts say, exacerbates the threat of identity theft and retaliation against troops on sensitive missions. In addition to using the information to drain financial accounts, hackers could pose as soldiers in an effort to ferret out sensitive data, including passwords to government systems.
Such disclosures represent a "major security risk" to the service members and the military, ....
(Analyst's note: When I read the reasoning given below by the White House, senior advisers, their ignorance of this jihadist enemy is absolutely stunning and breath taking.Gen. McChrystalis correct on all counts about his assessment that "...the Taliban and al-Qaedashare the same strategic interests and that the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda -- "we must show resolve" and (he) warned that "uncertainty disheartens our allies and emboldens our foes." .Mr. Biden not only has no experience backing his suggestions, he is speaking beyond his Constitutional authority as a VP "By Scott Wilson and Anne E. Kornblut
Senior White House officials have begun to make the case for a policy shift in Afghanistan that would send few, if any, new combat troops to the country and instead focus on faster military training of Afghan forces, continued assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders and support for the government of neighboring Pakistan in its fight against the Taliban.
In a three-hour meeting Wednesday at the White House, senior advisers challenged some of the key assumptions in Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's blunt assessment of the nearly eight-year-old war, which President Obama has said is being fought to destroy al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and the ungoverned border areas of Pakistan.
McChrystal, commander of the 100,000 NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has asked Obama to quickly endorse his call for a change in military strategy and approve the additional resources he needs to retake the initiative from the resurgent Taliban.
But White House officials are resisting McChrystal's call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London, and questioning important elements of his assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions -- were exposed to the light of day."
Among them, according to three senior administration officials who attended the meeting, is McChrystal's contention that the Taliban and al-Qaeda share the same strategic interests and that thereturn to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda.
.... Senior White House officials asked some of the sharpest questions, according to participants and others who have been briefed on the meeting, while the uniformed military, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, did not take issue with McChrystal's assessment.
According to White House officials involved in the meeting, Vice President Biden offered some of the more pointed challenges to McChrystal, who attended the session by video link from Kabul. One official said Biden played the role of "skeptic in chief," while other top officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, were muted in their comments. ....
.... Biden has argued against increasing the number of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan, currently scheduled to total 68,000 by the end of the year. He favors preserving the current force levels, stepping up Predator drone strikes on al-Qaeda leaders and increasing training for Afghan forces. Like many congressional Democrats, Biden is concerned that deploying more U.S. troops could be counterproductive, giving the Taliban more fodder to foment public opposition to the foreign occupation.
McChrystal, whom Obama sent to Afghanistan in May after firing his predecessor, is making his case for additional resources publicly. In a speech Thursday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, McChrystal said that "we must show resolve" and warned that "uncertainty disheartens our allies and emboldens our foes."
Asked whether a more limited counterterrorism effort would succeed in Afghanistan, he said, "The short answer is: no. You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy." ....
In an unprecedented intervention, the chief of the general staff described the conflict as "this generation's war" and added that failure by Nato would have an "intoxicating effect" on militant Islam. ....
The recession is probably over, which means states' financial troubles have only begun.
History suggests it could take six or more years for sales and income taxes — which make up roughly two-thirds of states' revenue — to return to pre-recession levels.That could lead to deeper cuts to state jobs and services in order to maintain funding for core programs such as public schools and Medicaid.
What's different from the three previous recessions, which took states three to five years to recover from, is that employment and consumer spending aren't expected to bounce back as quickly.
To balance their budgets in the meantime, states are likely to raise taxes on the money people earn and spend; increase college tuition; reduce funding for the arts and other cultural programs; and push costs into the future by delaying pay raises for employees and repairs of government buildings. Some states, including Massachusetts, Missouri and Arizona, already are making or considering fresh cuts just months after lawmakers agreed on new budgets.
Rising unemployment and a decline in consumer spending have put a big dent in states' tax revenues.Census figures show states' income taxes plunged almost 28 percent in the second quarter of 2009, falling even further in places such as Arizona and California that were among the hardest hit by the housing market collapse. States' quarterly sales taxes fell almost 10 percent compared to the previous year.
Unlike the federal government, states generally must balance their budgets. That's why one-third of states have raised taxes this year. They've hit the wealthy with income tax surcharges, hiked sales taxes that disproportionately affect the poor and targeted smokers, drinkers and motorists with higher taxes and fees.
Hundreds of thousands of state employees have been furloughed.....
Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong? ....
(Topeka Capitol-Journal) Topeka Correctional Facility inmates and officers say as many as one-third of the 250 employees have at one time been involved in contraband activities with prisoners, including those using sex as the currency of trade ....
.... Roger Werholtz, the state secretary of corrections, said such sweeping characterizations were reckless. Kansas isn't much different from other states when it comes to unethical behavior by staff and inmates, he said.
"It's an issue everywhere in the country," Werholtz said....
Who would plaster his Twitter page with police mug shot photos of convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur? Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill did. At least until David Horowitz and Accuracy in Media took notice and wrote about it. Now the page features photos of boxing great Muhammad Ali. Hill’s MySpace page is also gone.
There are other changes as well. The tributes to Shakur and black racist Khallid Muhammad, known as “America’s Black Hitler,” have disappeared from his web pages. The articles were saved, however, and can be found here. ....
.... (Khallid) Muhammad is quoted as declaring in1995, “This is the time of the black man’s rise and the white man’s demise.” This quote is rather mild, compared to what he said in his 1996 “Kill the White Man” speech to a black audience: .... (clickhere)
.... What’s more, why is Fox News silent about the entire controversy, other than issuing a one-sentence statement early on that it did not share Hill’s views on terrorist cop-killer Assata Shakur?
Liberals would deny U.S. citizens the right to “keep and bear arms,” but claim that everyone has the “right” to health care. I don’t recall reading anything about that in the Constitution. ....
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