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Iran’s dictator Ahmadinejad: Israel’s existence is an “insult to all humanity”

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Map of the Middle East
Map of the Middle East

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said confronting Israel is an effort to “protect the dignity of all human beings”.

“The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to all humanity,” Ahmadinejad said. He was addressing worshippers at Tehran University after nationwide pro-Palestinian rallies, an annual event marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.

Israel considers Iran an existential threat because of its nuclear and missile programs, support for radical anti-Israel groups on its borders and repeated references by Iranian leaders to Israel’s destruction. Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly made such calls, as has Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

[…]Ahmadinejad called Israel “a corrupt, anti-human organized minority group standing up to all divine values”.

“Today, confronting the existence of the fabricated Zionist regime is in fact protecting the rights and dignity of all human beings,” said Ahmadinejad, with a black and white scarf many Palestinians wear around his neck.

Demonstrators in Tehran set U.S. and Israeli flags on fire and chanted “Death to the US” and “Death to Israel” during their pro-Palestinian rally.

Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies for decades. Khamenei has called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that must be wiped out.

Tensions between Iran and Israel have intensified since 2005, when Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Israel will one day be “wiped off the map.” The Iranian president has also described the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, as a “myth”.

Do you think that Barack Obama is going to do anything about this? He has done nothing whatsoever to protect Israel in four years. And more, he’s actually acted to embolden Iran. When he had the chance to speak out in favor of pro-democracy movements in Iran, he chose the Iranian theocrats instead. Defense analysts have speculated that the Obama administration leaked Israel’s plan to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities.

Mark Levin interviewed a former Marine strike planner who had this to say about the leak:

I just want to comment on this revelation by the State Department regarding this Israel-Azerbaijan connection. A few years ago, I was writing an article and studying how Israel might go about attacking Iran with the assets we knew they had…

I’ve got experience as a Marine F-4 Phantom Radar Interceptor Officer. I’ve planned strike missions. I’ve got a thousand hours in the Phantom. So I’m familiar with the problems strike planners have in attacking a target or multiple targets like Iran. And as I looked at the map, I thought: ‘Boy, oh, boy, if the Israelis had an alliance with Azerbaijan, that would be the perfect place to launch a strike.

They’ve got this beautiful, 10,000-foot concrete runway in Baku. You take off, you come right out over the Caspian Sea. The pilots flip on their radar altimeters, drop down 25-feet off the deck, and they just race in a straight line.

They pop up over some hills, and they’re in Tehran before the Iranians even know what hit them. They could then go hit the other targets. It reduces the distance for this strike by, oh, six, seven hundred miles. It might alleviate the need for tankers. Or, if they do need tanker support, you could put them over the Caspian Sea…

…The beauty of Baku is that the Caspian Sea is right at the end of the runway. It’s a straight shot, maybe 300 miles, from that base to Tehran. A good radar altimeter will get an F-4, F-16, F-15 strike fighter maybe 25 feet off the water. Going in at that altitude, you’re not going to be picked up by radar.

But there’s something even more important here. The Iranians are not expecting an attack from the north. Now, with the revelation of this relationship, they are. And that has a lot of implications beyond the tactical.

Think of it this way. Prior to this revelation, the Iranians — although they noticed some connections between Israel and Azerbaijan — didn’t know how deep that connection was.

Now the Iranians can start bullying the Azerbaijanis. They can send a diplomat up to Baku and say, basically, ‘if any Israeli plane hits us from the north, when we get our nuke, we are going to test it on Baku. Of course that will all happen behind the scenes, but the threat will be made.

Now, I want you to consider this: there are many ways to attack Iran. You can go for the nuke sites. Or you can go for a decapitation strike. A decapitation strike is a much easier operation if you’re coming from Azerbaijan.

Think of it this way: every once in a while, the Iranians have a little get-together. They bring all of the Mullahs together in one place… Why not? They’d be doing us and the world a tremendous favor if they did that.

And it’s not going to happen now.

I can guarantee that all of those new Soviet anti-aircraft missiles that the Iranians bought are all going up north now, pointed and waiting for something there. In fact, they’ll probably put radars on the Caspian from the mountaintops there, just to see if there’s anything come up off the water.

Strategic, tactical surprise: gone.

You have to ask for the motivation behind the leak. I mean, if the Israelis can do this operation, it’s to our benefit! From a diplomatic standpoint, if you wanted to tell the Iranians that the Israelis did this, it’s without our permission. And then try to butter up the Iranians after the strike, so they don’t close the Strait of Hormuz, that’s one thing.

But giving away all of the secrets of an ally? When you’re doing that, you have to ask whether we still have Israel as an ally. We are not acting like an ally. In fact, if you ask me, based on the amount of time I expect the Israelis put in this relationship with Azerbaijan, I would start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel.

Recall that there have been accusations that the Obama administration has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood – the same Muslim Brotherhood that is reported to be crucifying their political opponents following the Egyptian elections. The Muslim Brotherhood that took power after Obama helped them to overthrow the Egyptian government. The Muslim Brotherhood that got $1.5 billion dollars from Obama, who bypassed Congress in order to do it. The Muslim Brotherhood whose leader was invited to the White House by Obama. Not only that, but the Obama administration has done nothing about the sale of weapons to Iran from China – weapons that are then transferred to Hezbollah to be used to sink Israeli ships.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney has come out in favor of defending Israel.

News

Defense cuts to an already weakened military exposes us to aggression

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Mackenzie Eaglen is a defense policy analyst for the American Enterprise Institute.

Here’s a recent article that she wrote from the Wall Street Journal. (Full text also here on the AEI web site)

Excerpt:

Washington is battling these days over “sequestration,” the $500 billion additional cut to the defense budget looming in January.

[…]In April 2011—long before the near shutdown of the government and the last-minute debt-ceiling deal, which paved the way for sequestration—the president outlined $400 billion in defense cuts he had already approved. He also said that he wanted to “do that again” and find another $400 billion in military spending reductions. All this without any talk of threats, strategy or requirements—just arbitrary budget targets imposed on the military.

Even before sequestration and the possible loss of a half-trillion dollars, the U.S. military has seen three years of budget cuts. The consequences are already here. We have to look all the way back to 1916 to find a year when the Air Force purchased fewer aircraft than are included in Mr. Obama’s 2013 budget request.

Many of the Air Force’s aerial refueling tankers predate human space flight. Training aircraft are twice as old as the students flying them. The F-15 fighter first flew 40 years ago. A-10 ground-attack planes were developed in the Carter years. And all of our B-52 bombers predate the Cuban missile crisis.

Then there’s the Navy, which is the smallest it has been since 1916. At 286 combat and combat-support ships, the Navy today is less than half the size it reached during the Reagan administration. And what about those men and women who have been fighting America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001? They’re losing 100,000 in active duty personnel. Surely some will go from the front lines to unemployment lines as a result.

[…]Military leaders have suggested that taking on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Third World army would be an operation of “many, many months.” The so-called “pivot” to Asia is being mimed with fewer ships on longer deployments and a shrinking, aging air force. We’re ignoring a wholesale Chinese power grab in the South China Sea and watching the nuclearization of Iran.

In another article on AOL Defense, she focuses in on the cuts to the U.S. Air Force. (Full text also here on the AEI web site)

Excerpt:

Between the existing reduction of $487 billion and sequestration’s additional half-trillion dollar cut, the Pentagon faces a very profound strategic turning point — one entirely different than that articulated by Secretary Panetta. Instead of prudently posturing for future successes, America’s armed forces are headed for a crash.

These pressures are perhaps best illustrated within the Air Force. The service absorbed 90 percent of the cuts levied on the Department of Defense in the 2013 budget — $4.8 billion of $5.2 billion. The effects have been immediate and pronounced: nearly 10,000 airmen are being cut; 227 aircraft are being prematurely retired; and critical capability shortfalls are on the rise.

[…]These budget cuts would not present such dire effects if the Air Force had been able to use the past decade to recapitalize its fleet and overarching infrastructure. At the end of World War Two, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War, the service was able to weather post-war budget downturns precisely because it had reset the majority of its capabilities during wartime.

Circumstances were different this past decade. The Air Force, already stretched thin by the 1990s procurement holiday, actually saw its percentage of the defense budget decline by one-third during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The service canceled or delayed the vast majority of its modernization portfolio to sustain wartime operational demands.

So 20 years of underfunding has given us an Air Force on the brink. Its aircraft average a quarter of a century in age-with many dating back to the Eisenhower Administration. The wings of Carter-era A-10 ground attack airplanes are riddled with structural cracks. Airmen learning to fly are strapping into T-38s over twice their age. B-52s, all of which pre-date the Cuban missile crisis, are spending up to a year in depot-level maintenance. In light of the F-22 shortage, the Air Force is now extending the lifespan of its 28 year-old F-15s to 18,000 hours — more than three times their original design life.

The Air Force also spent the last decade retiring nearly a quarter of its bombers, fighters, and cargo aircraft in an attempt to free up money for immediate priorities. While helpful on a budget spreadsheet in the near-term, this has stretched the remaining tails even thinner. Shrinking the fleet makes little sense when the mission demand is constant. Aircraft availability rates and maintenance statistics clearly illustrate the rising costs associated with this decision.

Obama is also in favor of the complete disarmament of the United States with respect to nuclear weapons.

The Wall Street Journal explains:

The White House and Pentagon are considering several proposals that would deeply cut the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, potentially to as low as 300 warheads under one such plan, according to a U.S. official.

The proposals haven’t been presented to President Barack Obama but are being debated by lower-level officials on the national-security staff and in the Pentagon.

The U.S. official said the government isn’t considering a unilateral cut to the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Instead, the different proposals represent arsenal levels that could be negotiated with Russia in a future round of arms-control talks.

Nonetheless, the prospect of nuclear-arsenal cuts during a hard-fought presidential campaign is certain to stoke political controversy.

Under current treaty obligations, the U.S. must reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,550 warheads by 2018 from just below 1,800 now. One of the new proposals would cut the arsenal to between 1,000 and 1,100; another proposes an arsenal of between 700 to 800; and the most drastic proposal would cut the arsenal to between 300 and 400, according to the official.

The fact of the matter is that there are hot spots and threats all over the world. If we want to work towards peace and protect the weak, then we need a large, capable military force. This is the doctrine of peace through strength. Talk is cheap, and disarmament only emboldens evildoers to be aggressive. If we want to stop war, we have to make it costly for aggressors and tyrants. They have to know that there is a cost.

News

Richard Miniter: Obama canceled Bin Laden kill mission THREE TIMES

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What kind of foreign policy do you get when you put radical leftists in charge?

This kind. (H/T Richard M.)

Excerpt:

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, PresidentBarack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears.

In ”Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,“ Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett persuaded him to hold off each time, according to the book.

Miniter, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, cites an unnamed source with Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.

Obama administration officials also said after the raid that the president had delayed giving the order to kill the arch-terrorist the day before the operation was carried out, in what turned out to be his fourth moment of indecision. At the time, the White House blamed the delay on unfavorable weather conditions near bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But when Miniter obtained that day’s weather reports from the U.S. Air Force Combat Meteorological Center, he said, they showed ideal conditions for the SEALs to carry out their orders.

“President Obama’s greatest success was actually his greatest failure,” Miniter told The Daily Caller Friday. ”Leading From Behind,“ he said, traces the arc of six key Obama administration decisions, and shows how the president made them — and, often, failed to make them.

Should we give Obama any credit for killing Bin Laden?

I’ve written before about how George W. Bush deserves credit for Bin Laden kill.

But there are a couple of other data points to add that recently emerged, as well.

First, the decision on the Bin Laden raid was made by the American Armed Forces, not by Barack Obama, as a newly released memo reveals.

Second, Obama had already drafted a memo to blame the military if the operation failed.

In fact, Obama has weakening our counter-terrorism and defense capabilities from the day he took office.

Excerpt:

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the president’s victory lap in Afghanistan on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the Navy SEALs “an attempt to shore up his national security credentials, because he has spent the past three years gutting our military.”

Indeed he has. “He cut the F-22, future combat system, C-17 and our ground-based interceptor in Poland, to name a few,” Inhofe noted.

[…]President Obama’s defense policies fulfill a campaign pledge he made to the far-left group Caucus for Priorities a month before the January 2008 Iowa caucuses. Caucus for Priorities is an offshoot of a bigger group, Priorities Action Fund, created by Ben Cohen, the peace activist and co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

In a video made for the group, Obama called for a further deterioration in our military strength.

“I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems,” he said.

So far, he has kept his word.

In the video, he also vowed, “I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons, I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”

He has kept that promise as well.

As the Heritage Foundation notes, since Obama took office, over 50 major weapons programs of more than $300 billion have been cut or delayed.

Obama, who betrayed Poland and Czechoslovakia on missile defense and shut down key weapon systems like the F-22 Raptor, has vowed to veto any changes to the mandated cuts, including $650 billion from defense as called for by the Budget Control Act over the next decade.

That comes on top of $460 billion in defense cuts already agreed to — a total of $1.1 trillion in defense cuts our commander in chief is OK with.

A 14-page analysis by the Republican majority staff of the House Armed Services Committee says the cumulative cuts will result in Army and Marine Corps losing 200,000 troops.

The Navy will shrink from 300 ships to 238 vessels and would lose two carrier battle groups needed to project American power and influence. Strategic bombers will fall from 153 to 101. Air Force fighters would drop by more than half, from 3,602 aircraft to 1,512 planes. These are real cuts, both in spending and in military capability.

In fact, the main priority of the Obama administration seems to be redirecting the U.S. military to fight global warming intervening in favor of South American socialist dictators, dismantling our nuclear arsenal, allowing Iranian Islamists to rig elections and shoot pro-democracy protesters, giving drone technology to the Iranians, setting up the the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Libya, and handing over the keys to our European missile defense system to the Russians.

This is not the full list of how this man has been a disaster for world peace and national security. And it is a list that is ignored by his supporters who think with their emotions and who have their hands out for more of their share of their neighbor’s earnings.