88 Comments

1. Mrs. Davis:

I should not be surprised if your conception of “wrong about it” is different than Lord Obama’s

Oct 25, 2009 - 6:57 am 2. Lifeofthemind:

only a temporary fix, though a symbolically important one
Children playing with shadows while the Beast comes closer.

the principal difficulty in predicting the future is that it hasn’t happened yet
Here I disagree with wretchard. There is an element that is attracted to the Intelligence business precisely because you can predict anything about the future. Valerie Plame and her Walter Mitty husband thrived in a situation where their opinions are not subject to verification. Link this thread and the prior one together and consider how can we both retain secure control over information that should be classified and attract and supervise reliable people?

Iran has only recently admitted to the Qom plant but may have others. If the Army had taken a left turn in 2004 and removed the Syrian regime we may have found the missing WMD, freed Lebanon from the the yoke of Hezbollah and deflated Hamas. If the Army had turned right then the Iranian regime may well have collapsed.

Oct 25, 2009 - 6:59 am 3. JFSanders031:

As with just about everything the Obama administration touches, this to will go to the dogs. Personally I believe he is doing it on purpose. Follows with his Marxist upbringing. First you must destroy so that you can rewrite history and control the meme. You are correct that he comes off as a mark crying to the collection agents with regard to Iran. But then again whining is what he is good at.

The spectre of WMD is a red herring to me. It is my firm belief that if you want peace then give every two bit tin horn dictator, tyrant and oligarch a couple. Now everybody at the table has the same cards to play with. We could make some pretty good cash in the Maintenance and training sectors. But the hard part would be enforcement of a minimum level of behaviour. If Hamas were to nuke Israel then eye for an eye plus one should be the unwavering and nearly instantaneous response from the world police. Besides, I know that once you called the bully’s bluff. The world would get pretty quiet really quick.

Once that growth cycle was over then perhaps the world could get back to the important stuff like developing the small scale reactors and such that would allow distributed power generation. This would allow the electrification and development of the third world which in turn would allow them to pull themselves out of the eternal cesspool they find themselves in. Also with such developments we could put nuke power on the moon which would allow us access to outer space and possible colonization of other suitable planets and possibly unsuitable ones.

Sometimes I think that the aliens are here just to retard our development so that they don’t have to compete with us in the universal sector. Wow! that is a pretty light?! Wonder where that is coming fr

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:11 am 4. JFSanders031:

LotM, Yes, the Left is all about the future because you can just make it up and no one can question or rebut you. Wonderfully Pollyanna and yet disturbingly insane. I think it is because they are scared and like little immature minds they regress and cover their eyes to make it go away.

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:14 am 5. Kinuachdrach:

We need to be careful about accepting the Left’s memes. How much harm has been done in the world by the Left’s constant repetition of the lie that the US “lost” militarily in Vietnam — where the historical record clearly shows that the North Vietnamese had been militarily defeated but achieved eventual victory courtesy of Congressional Democrats cutting off support to the South Vietnamese?

WMD in Iraq were only the cherry on top of the cake, as President Bush’s speeches made clear at the time. The real “WMD” was Saddam himself, who had caused millions of deaths by invading Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia and had been waging a low-level conflict against the UN for a decade. And Saddam was successfully dealt with.

Further, the issue of WMDs in Iraq is still a cloudy topic, even after the fact. Certainly, yellow cake and equipment were found in Iraq. Were weapons shipped out to Syria before the Liberation? Historians will be arguing about this for a hundred years.

Wretchard — we are forever in your debt. The linkage of the Precautionary Principle to the Doctrive of Pre-emption is one that deserves to be spread far & wide!

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:18 am 6. RWE:

I believe it was LifeoftheMind that called the 2007 assessment and its unauthorized public release and act of treason that should be dealt with very harshly.

It strains credibility to think that Iran had really shut down their program only to start a new one a year later. And we know that they have a new facility now. This smacks of a motorist telling a traffic cop that while he was speeding just before the cop pulled him over that he was not doing so back where the radar clocked him. If Iran “shut down” one nuke program only to start another one, it is more like a driver changing gears than one shutting off his engine and coasting to the side of the road.

To paraphrase Doc Brown, nuclear scientists are not available in every corner drugstore, and even less so in Iran. If Iran “shut down” their program it was only to devote its limited resources to a new and superior one, probably one better hidden.

We now know that Valarie Plame and Joe Wilson represent the typical intellectual capacity and attitudes of U.S. Intelligence Community. That is a problem that needs to be fixed even more desperately than does Iran’s nuke capabilities.

And by the way, the Germans tried to build nuclear weapons but they failed. Dr. Heisenberg did a critical calculation wrong and that led to the assumption that the mass of U-235 required to build a bomb was far too large to be practical. We know now that Heisenberg simply screwed up; he did not try to sabotage Hitler’s bomb. One must assume a degree of competence when it comes to one’s enemies; to do otherwise is to make predictions impossible.

And also by the way, the Japanese did not make the same error that Heisenberg did and essentially duplicated the Manhatten Project in concept. That they were not more successful was due in no small part to a bad case of B-29itis.

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:21 am 7. Barry Meislin:

“The worse it gets the better gets.”…may well be this government’s M.O.

(Progressive government, that is….. or should that be, revolutionary government?)

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:22 am 8. E. Nigma:

Touching on what Life of the Mind started, I think what they strive for is Determinism.

In my limited perception, the Totalitarian states of the 20th century strove for determinism. 5-year plans, the Great Leap Forward, The Final Solution, etc.
Part of the reason the Russkis have always been so good at spying is they shared a joint enthusiasm for “controlling” the future.

“Controlling the future” is actually pretty easy when you “control” information, such as political and military intelligence (not the IQ kind of intelligence, of course). Making ponderous predictions predicated on political positions precludes (whew! p’s!) THINKING for yourself.

It’s the game the Totalitarians, the Greens, and TV programmers try to play. Don’t think about this! We know best about Global Warming/Foreign Intelligence/what TV Show to watch!
It’s also a clue as to the concern about having a HEALTH CARE SYSTEM to take care of everybody, Instead of a free market of health care services people can choose from. Those free markets are dangerous to government employees, because they might just do anything tomorrow and break the rice bowls of the mandarins in the FedGov.

So yes, the reality of our “intelligence” about what those rascally Iranians are really up to will mutate based on how our Fearless Leaders wish to control the future. We will continue to have ‘meaningful’ dialogues with the Iranians about this ‘problem’ for years to come, until one day a bright flash over Haifa or Tel Aviv reduces parts of those cities to ash and hundreds of thousands are dead.

Then the problem for our Dear Leaders (which plagued the Soviets) will be controlling the past, which is so darn tricky when you constantly have to re-invent the truth. Of course, they can always Blame Bush. That works.

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:30 am 9. E. Nigma:

And trying not to hijack this thread and comment too much, but at “Sense of Events”, Donald Sensing’s blog, there is an interesting essay (with links and embedded video too!) which is applicable to the idea of controlling the past and future. Tricky business.
Donald recounts how Hillary! and Ed Rendell noted that “Fox News” was fair and balanced during the Democratic Party political campaign. In comparison to the other networks that were heavily in the the (drunk) tank for our now President Obama. And maybe still are?

It would be interesting to confront these Democratic Party worthies with their past statements and see how they reconcile those words with the present “new reality” of our New Model Presidential Administration. This could be one of those moments when we see just how Orwellian this whole business really is.

Heh, as they say in Knoxville, TN.

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:53 am 10. E. Nigma:

And trying not to hijack this thread and comment too much, but at “Sense of Events”, Donald Sensing’s blog, there is an interesting essay (with links and embedded video too!) which is applicable to the idea of controlling the past and future. Tricky business.
Donald recounts how Hillary! and Ed Rendell noted that “Fox News” was fair and balanced during the Democratic Party political campaign. In comparison to the other networks that were heavily in the the (drunk) tank for our now President Obama. And maybe still are?

It would be interesting to confront these Democratic Party worthies with their past statements and see how they reconcile those words with the present “new reality” of our New Model Presidential Administration. This could be one of those moments when we see just how Orwellian this whole business really is.

Heh, as they say in Knoxville, TN.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!

Oct 25, 2009 - 8:07 am 11. Lifeofthemind:

RWE,
Did I say that? I’m such a nice guy.

Oct 25, 2009 - 8:57 am 12. Josh:

But it’s interesting to consider whether he’s thought out the consequences of being wrong about it.

The difference between greatest generation and boomers, and the later generations X, Y, and whatever, are that the former are results-oriented and the later are process-oriented. Obama seems to fit the Gen-X model, he doesn’t worry so much about results, or like in health care, whether the numbers actually work or not. And, he doesn’t listen. He just – does.

But as to that NIE report that Iran had stopped working on a bomb, nobody here actually believed that, did they?

And as to the German bomb, it still seems rather likely that their lack of progress was due to Heisenberg sandbagging them.

Oct 25, 2009 - 9:12 am 13. HEPT:

The world will only know for sure when there is a smoking hole and a mushroom cloud above Israel or some city in Europe or America.
Then the Iranian’s will say it wasn’t their nukes but will dance in the streets with all of islam and hand out sweets.
The world will call for the Police to arrest the culprits and the survivors will bury their dead and aid the wounded.
President Obama (PBUH) will NOT strike back with or without nukes even if the Iranians are found to be holding the smoking gun.
More sanctions, more apologies maybe but Barack (PBUH) will not shoot back.
Whether the IDF/IAF retaliates is Moot at this point.
Whether NATO retaliates is also Moot.
The damage will have been done.
All I can say is Iran has no real reason not to continue to build a nuclear weapon nor fear using it should the iranian’s have one already.
this is going to happen and nothing on heaven and earth is going to stop it.

Oct 25, 2009 - 9:25 am 14. Tcobb:

It seems to me that a large number of statists, and not just those on the left, suffer from a mindset whereby they simply cannot even imagine, let alone acknowledge, that they could be wrong. But at the same time they realize that are those unenlightened folks out there who will claim they are wrong.

Systemic approaches to any issue are preferred to a multi-option approach not only because they have such confidence in themselves, but also because it has the side benefit of not giving their opponents or the great unwashed masses something to compare it to. After all, if their approach has flaws, all it will take is a few tweaks, or so they imagine.

“Pay no attention to that Ferrari in the showroom window comrades. Look at the new model Yugo that the Party is making. Its a much better car. I should know–I designed it myself.”

Oct 25, 2009 - 9:47 am 15. steveaz:

Kinuachdrach @#5

You are so right about the danger of repeating the Left’s tired memes (not that Wretchard’s post pimps their “Bush Lied” hype to make his point – he only mentions that Bush suffered “politically” from the Left’s obsessive focus on his delphic failings).

Still…a citizen needs to tread carefully here. And so I have developed a retort to the “Bush Lied” refrain that has worked extremely well with lefty academic acquaintances who, child-like, persist in mouthing the Democrat(ic) Party’s tired partisan pabulum from 2003.

The retort goes this way: First, Imagine you are talking with a partisan who holds down a regular job and has a family to feed and you’re talking politics with him/her on a Saturday night. When the lefty sputters (and you can be assured he/she will), “B, b, b, but…Bush lied! There were no WMD’s!!” You need only respond with:

“Friend, say I gave you a list of 24 reasons why you need to wake up on Monday and go to work…and it turns out that one of the reasons out of the 24 was kinda shaky. Would you use the existence of that one shaky reason to stay in bed all day, and to later argue to your boss that you didn’t need to go to work that day, despite the remaining, solid 23?”

So far, no-one has answered “Yes,” to this question: you’ve got the shiny insect specimen firmly impaled on the pin…now you can “set” it in the cotton-lined display box. So, follow up by pointing out that Bush, like Obama, works for the American people – we are his “boss” – and that, given Saddam’s gassings of Iraqi Kurds and the UN’s incompetent enforcement of the non-proliferation treaty, we, as his employer, should not accept this lousy excuse either.

I remain convinced that the “Iraq War,” for lack of a better name, was an electoral trap set by American nationalists for the Democrats’ anti-parliamentarian trans-nationalists, and that the Democrats took the bait, hook line and sinker! The likes of Pelosi, Schumer, Gore and Annan expected America to kneel before the UN’s various “Human Rights” councils, Blixian “enforcement” regimes and TotalElfina’s Saddamite deals, even after September 11th’s game-changing perturbation. The trap forced America’s two-faced Pelosi’s to go on the record in support of a muscular, “preemptive” American response to repeated UN security council resolutions, and then to expose their quisling ranks as they deliberately hid their pro-vote behind the DeVillepin-ian veto threat at the UN and their media’s obsessive pillorying of a “shaky,” 24th call to action.

As we study global media, the memes that certain organizations choose to repeat can serve as important tracers. It is no coincidence that, in a poll of most Americans few, if any, can name the other 23 uncontroversial reasons why Democrats voted to “Use Force” to depose Saddam Hussein. But, funnily, none can fail to name the Dems’ favorite “shaky” one. Which reveals that the industry-wide focus on one single “lie” was a Democrat(ic) Party strategic necessity: its establishment as “fact” was indispensable to the Pelosi-ans’ quisling cover, and to their hopes for “Global Tester,” John Kerry’s coronation in 2004.

And it remains so to this day. Remove the “Bush-Lied” cloak, and their patriotism comes under question – and they know it!

Oct 25, 2009 - 10:48 am 16. sf:

No question about it: Nothing will deter Iran from getting an atomic bomb. Obama has already shown that he’s willing to let the mullahs do anything without consequence, so why should they stop?

At that point, whether they use one depends on whether they believe there’s any credible threat of retaliation if they do so. And there’s no doubt that neither the U.S. nor NATO pose any credible threat of retaliation with Obama as president.

While the deaths of, say, 100,000 civilians will obviously be a great tragedy–especially because entirely preventable. But at the same time it’s gonna be at least darkly amusing to watch the Dem/Left/MSM try to blame these deaths on Bush and the GOP.

Oct 25, 2009 - 11:01 am 17. Paul Milenkovic:

Not sure whether to believe my “lying” ears or not, but I believe I just heard the Senior Senator from the State of Michigan just call the former Vice President of the United States a liar on Fox News Sunday (FNS).

The former Vice President had charged that the President of the United States is “dithering” on responding to the request of the Army General whom the President had put in place.

Now whether the President is “dithering” or “engaged in serious deliberation” is ultimately a judgement call and hence a matter of opinion rather than an assertion of fact.

Whether the former Vice President should be openly critical of a current President, however, or gracefully keep quiet in the mode of (most) past Presidents is also a matter of opinion. Although I would weigh in that a past President who had served two terms is effectively “through with politics” and perhaps should maintain a graceful and respectful silence, but a past Vice President is as much a presidential candidate as anyone else, regardless of how disqualifying one thinks that Vice President’s health, age, and current popularity happen to be. Medical technology is always improving, and public opinions can shift. And to the extent that the former Vice Presidents of the last two Administrations were candidates, although perhaps far enough down on the list their candidacy’s never came to be, former Vice Presidents should be free to engage in free-wheeling partisan politics.

But there is much more to Mr. Cheney charging that Mr. Obama is dithering. The current drill these days is if Mr. Obama or anyone else in the governing coalition is accused of “dithering”, the retort is not only is he not “dithering” but giving due, dilligent, deliberation to the matter at hand, if the subject of dithering comes up, the previous Administration “had eight years” to “deal with this” and “talk about dithering!”

Well, Mr. Cheney called Mr. Obama “out” on this, stating that the Bush Administration was engaged in the most serious of policy review, made results known to Candidate Obama or President-Elect Obama as the case was, kept the results private at the request of Team Obama and in deference to an incoming President who would have to make his own decisions, that the March position of Mr. Obama was Mr. Obama’s customization of the policy that Mr. Cheney had endorsed, and that lately Mr. Obama was backing away from that position.

So all Mr. Carl Levin could say about this was that it was “inappropriate” for Mr. Cheney to make his remarks, but Mr. Cheney’s “credibility was practically non-existent before this and is now even lower yet.” So Senator Levin, what did Mr. Cheney that defies “credibility”, i.e. was untruthful? That he expressed an opinion that Mr. Obama should show more alacrity making a decision? That he stated a fact that Team Bush had conducted a policy review that Team Obama had respectfully requested to be kept under wraps to give Team Obama the dignity of putting “their own stamp” on a policy for which Team Obama would ultimately be accountable? Is the Senator from the State of Michigan suggesting that Mr. Cheney is “not credible”, that is not to be believed on matters of fact, and that the sharing of an Afghan report never happened?

And as far as I can tell, Mr. Levin is one of the “adults’ and not one of the 60’s radicals turned office holder. It’s a sad day when the “defense” he offers of the President is to fall back on partisan talking points and cliches about the Presidents’ predecessors.

Oct 25, 2009 - 11:24 am 18. blert:

Heisenberg did not sandbag the Nazis.

35 years ago I got the big lecture from our point man on the Nazi bomb project — it was his standard talk.

The German project was undone because to a remarkable degree the highbrow physicists would not work in harness with their own engineering community.

Their first attempt at a nuclear reactor with rhomboids chained down into a moderator ( heavy water ) deserves ridicule. If ever attempted, power-up would have flashed and killed the experimenters.

In short, his peers started laughing at Heisenberg!

Oct 25, 2009 - 11:27 am 19. RWE:

Josh #11 and Blert #17:

After the Allies captured Heisenberg and the other German nuclear scientists, they kept them isolated in a remote location and let them get together and talk – and recorded it. Then at the start of one of these sessions they announced to them the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and left them alone.

The Germans then speculated wildly about the nature of the bomb, not getting close to its actual design, apparently because they had “proved” that Uranium would not work. At that point you would have assumed that they would have tried to make themselves as valuable as possible by saying “Well, of course they used U-235, because they were not led astray by the subterfuge that we pulled on the Nazis. We always really knew that would work.” But no, they were clueless.

With the Japanese it was different story; they got the theory right but were industrially incapable of making the same processes used by the USA work. And it did not help that the B-29 bombings were so disruptive that they moved their entire effort to Korea, out of range of US airpower, but easily to capture when the Soviets invaded.

Oct 25, 2009 - 11:56 am 20. programmer:

I am a simple man. In my simplistic view, I reduce the complex issues of Left versus Right to a simple dichotomy – Creators and the Crowd.

Creating something is hard. I don’t need to go into detail, for most BCers are well aware of this phenomena. Bringing order out of chaos requires energy, thought, luck, and the blessings of providence. There is usually an element of risk taking involved also. I have always believed that many entrenpeneurs are gamblers, at heart.

The Crowd stands around watching the Creators at work, criticizing, laughing, sharp shooting, subjecting the strivers to the death of thousand barbs. When the Creators are successful, the Crowd starts hollering for their rightful share, for after all, without their “support”, there could have been no success, right?

Eventually, the Crowd decides that now that the easy work of building a business, winning a war, creating a government the like of which has never been seen on this planet before is complete, they need to take over and run it the “smart way”.

However, the Crowd usually skips checking the oil for fear of getting their hands dirty.

Oct 25, 2009 - 11:59 am 21. Mark:

There is a crack in the crystal ball that cannot be repaired.

As long as the intelligence services seemed to operate in their own self-interest, the services existed as somewhat independent, albeit possibly pernicious actors. “Don’t mess with us” seemed to be their motto.

Plame and NIE and ongoing leaks revealed the willingness of many of the services to undermine the Bush/conservative administration. Goss could not survive as director and slinked/slunk away.

I expected that when Obama beat up on the services the result would be swift and possibly devastating push-back against Obama. I thought there was a deep self-interest at work within the services. But, lo, nary a peep. The dog has not barked.

What does this tell us about the crystal ball of the services, those who report on the pronouncements of the crystal ball holders, and the politicians who receive the pronouncements?

Oct 25, 2009 - 12:00 pm 22. Walt:

Some commenters evidently believe that the Left has committed treason by leaking secrets and causing harm to the country. Those commenters have it all wrong. When the Left does it it isn’t treason, it’s the highest form of patriotism.

Treason is as treason does
But when shove comes to push
It’s only treason when and if
You’re on the side of Bush
The New York Times can print it all
The CIA can leak
The Dems in Congress cheer them on
They cry to let them speak
We listen in on terror plots
The papers scream in rage
Iran will never get the bomb
Move on, just turn the page
The Left reports our every act
As murderous and vile
And undermine us every chance
While smiling all the while
If this be treason some would say
They’ve got it down so well
There’s got to be a special place
For them in Lefty hell

Oct 25, 2009 - 12:25 pm 23. sirius_sir:

We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a weapon is late 2009.

And that was supposed to reassure us, I guess. Especially since, well, you know, Iran had already halted its nuclear weapons program.

Idiots.

Oct 25, 2009 - 12:40 pm 24. steveaz:

Mark @20
I’d be very interested to learn more about the CIA’s “legacy” projects – projects to which the agency has devoted man-hours and material over extended, historic spans of time, like, for over 25 years or more.

Reason is, one of the agency’s redacted functions may be to preempt the downfall of the Republic, which, I presume, must include repelling foreign invasions and externally-sponsored putsches. If so, the agency’s urge to engineer political “pigeon-traps,” like the Iran-Nuke one that has just cinched the Obama administration, may spring more from its institutional mission than from any endemic partisanship or corruption.

Also, viewed outside the book-ends of the “sound-bite moment,” and from the longer-term Bush/Cheney point of view, the CIA’s “misunder-estimating” of Iran’s proliferation progress during Bush’s second term actually helps in two ways:

(1) as it amounts to the Bush CIA publicly disowning responsibility for enforcing global proliferation treaties in the Middle East, it also tosses the onus for enforcement firmly, again, back in the Chirac/Kerry/Engagement/’One-Worlders’ court. This could be deemed a conservative’s tactical “one-last-chance-given” message sent to a dithering, and openly anti-American, bureaucracy. The game is called Tennis, and the ball in 2007 is back in the UN’ers’ court.

(2) Now, on the domestic front, the CIA “appears” to be an equal opportunity offender by “lying” to both Democrats and Republicans alike. This supplies the agency with its best defense against charges of partisanship, should they arise.

Viewed this way, high from above and a little to the right, the Wilson-Plame Affair, “what-did-Novak-know?”, the “Italian Dossier,” the deliberate and early bombing of the UN’s Headquarters in Baghdad, “Bush’s Gulags,” “Hatched in Texas,” even Pelosi’s current defensive slander (“the CIA Briefers Lied”) all make some queer, down-stream sense…kinda like road-kill can indicate there’s a heavily-traveled road nearby.

Either way, my interest is only academic at this point. As it’s Obama they’ve got by the ankle this time, it could be the CIA’s just doin’ its job, and chillin’ might be more in order.

Oct 25, 2009 - 1:04 pm 25. wretchard:

It’s dangerous to assume that stereotypes are the correct ones. It turned out that mongrel America and “ah-so” Japan led the contest to build the A-bomb, not the race of German supermen. Who would have thought?

The British in Singapore were confident in their military, which had been at war with Nazi Germany since 1939 when they were menaced by the Japanese. They had Hurricanes and pilots which bested the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain to defend the island. They had the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse to secure the seas. The Royal Navy had held the ring against Germany. Surely they could do so against Japan. And on the ground, why wasn’t the British army hardened in war not only with Germany, but victorious in a hundred conflicts with brown and yellow men over the centuries? No wonder Governor Shenton could turn to Perceval and say, “I’m sure you’ll see the little men off.” They lasted two weeks. The Zeros made mincemeat of the Hurricanes. The POW and Repulse lasted half an hour. And the little men went through the British divisions as if they weren’t there. The British Empire never recovered.

The future is a dark space. Nobody knows what is there. No one ought ever to assume that Iran and the Arabs and Russians are somehow immutably losers. What galled Hitler most in his bunker was that it was the Russians who had him cornered. I think he would have felt better if it was the British or the French. But the Russians! No. Complacency kills. Maybe the reason why the US won the Second World War was they took no chances. The Japanese man in the foxhole was not defeated by any assumptions of superiority but by weeks of bombardment, strafing, napalm, prolonged hunger, infantry assault by trained Marines with superior infantry weapons, armor and finally the demolition charge and flame thrower to cook and bury him alive in his cave. And if he managed to crawl away from that there was waiting for him (on Luzon at least) the Filipino man with the razor sharp bolo. Japan was defeated by unrestricted submarine warfare, no quarter fighting on the ground, blockade and starvation, an aerial campaign unprecedented from the beginning of the world, shore bombardment by battleships, unlimited strafing of anything that moved by hundeds of fighters and finally the Atomic Bomb. And even there was the possibility that an invasion would still be necessary. Shenton didn’t have nearly enough to even get started.

I think it was Norman Schwartzkopf when asked whether he thought it was “fair” to use gee-whiz weapons against Saddam, said ‘Fair? My idea of fair in war is to sneak up on the enemy with me all armored up and armed and him in his shorts and hit him with all the suddenness of a baseball bat in the face.’ You do that when you know the enemy might actually kill you. It’s when you assume that victory is assured and things will always be the way they were that danger is closest to you. The temptation to adopt “imperial” habits of mind may be strongest in those who affect to disdain it; there is nothing so distasteful as to admit that one’s presence at a diplomatic cocktail party owes itself to the hulking, undiplomatic men outside. And after a while the men at the cocktail party may actually believe their position owes to the charm which they exude, their sympathetic manner and the learning which dazzles all before them. They may become captive to the worst of all illusions that an heir to a fortune may come to believe: that he is loved for himself. Maybe the desire to become “more European” and sophisticated is partly driven by a subconscious admiration of that old and long vanished “bwana” way of life with its cultured leisure and courtly manner. But sometimes vain men are taken to the cleaners by street smart urchins in foreign cities. It could happen. Nothing is written.

Oct 25, 2009 - 1:17 pm 26. Josh:

RWE @ 18 – I haven’t read about this in years, was it in Albert Pais’ “Subtle is the Lord” bio of Einstein? There was much speculation for years about how and why the Germans got it wrong, centering on Heisenberg. IIRC, he was asked about it after the war, denied any explicit misleading of the Nazis, but it was never really resolved, and IIRC most authors writing about it even twenty years ago said, “… and probably never will be.”

Given what any smart high school student knows about it today, it’s hard to imagine how the Germans didn’t succeed, unless even more German scientists than Heisenberg did subtly sabotage the efforts.

And if so, what about Iran? Indeed.

Oct 25, 2009 - 1:20 pm 27. Walt:

Josh/25

Some 50 years ago a book called Brighter Than A Thousand Suns addressed this question and stated that Nils Bohr, in Denmark, at the time the world’s leading physicist, and while his country was under Nazi occupation, wrote to all leading physicists in Europe, including Heisenberg, urging them not to work with the Nazis on the atomic bomb project. The evidence of history is that Nils Bohr, with or without the assistance of Heisenberg, deep sixed the Nazi bomb. Two things are known: in 1942 Hitler boasted to Rommel that he would soon have a weapon that could knock a man off a horse from a mile away (The Rommel Papers, B. H. Liddell-Hart) and various sources for the meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg, though it is not known if Heisenberg was an active conspirator in the denial of the atomic bomb to the Nazis.

Walt Erickson

Oct 25, 2009 - 1:52 pm 28. Walt:

I should add that I have long since drawn my own conclusions about Heisenberg, which is that he followed Bohr’s lead and sabotaged the Nazi atomic bomb project. Of course, there is always uncertainty.

Oct 25, 2009 - 2:01 pm 29. Mark:

Walt,

I’ve never commented to say that a poem you’ve written is the best yet, because you’re always ready with another that is its equal or even better. That said, #21 above is really something fine!

Oct 25, 2009 - 2:22 pm 30. Paul Milenkovic:

Of course, with respect to what Heisenberg knew or didn’t know, we will never know . . .

Oct 25, 2009 - 2:53 pm 31. sirius_sir:

with respect to what Heisenberg knew or didn’t know, we will never know . . .

I think that’s why it’s called the Uncertainty Principle.

Oct 25, 2009 - 3:02 pm 32. RWE:

Josh #25:

There is a book that came out a few years ago on the subject of what we know now about what Heisenberg knew. Based on the transcripts of the tapes made in those conversations. An old friend of mine is interested in all things about the WWII nuclear projects and I keep my eyes open for new books on the subject and pick them up for him. I do not recall the name of the book, but I do not think it was “Hesienberg’s War,” another one that I bought. Richard Rhodes has covered some of this in his books but I don’t think the info on the secret tapes was available to him.

For the Japanese effort I have a book, “Japan’s Secret War” that describes it in detail.

As for Nils Bohr, when the Germans occupied Denmark, an effort was made to get Nils Bohr to go to Sweden. He refused to go until all of the country’s Jews had been rescued, and something over 90% of them were. He deserves to be honored for that, as well as for his contribution to music, Olivia Newton John.

Oct 25, 2009 - 3:34 pm 33. Schoedinger's Cat:

I think that’s why it’s called the Uncertainty Principle.

That was a different animal. But the boot fits.

Oct 25, 2009 - 3:34 pm 34. rook king:

We’re arguing process and consequences when they matter little these days to sophisticated worldly consumers and self-interested daily strugglers. Accountable “foreign” forecasting isn’t the game, anymore, to a decreasingly results-oriented ruling caste of politicos, bizmen, entertainers and journalists; it’s all about the narrative and issue framing for both niche and across-the-board appeal. We’re less about winning a deadly contest (note reactionary, prejudicial characterization) than spinning provincial perception of whatever may happen or has occurred, because that seems to be enough to get votes and audience share in this day of history weary and attention-deficit. Fewer of us are caring about the arc of history, when it’s arguably debatable, unknowable and malleable after the fact. Anyway, post event by-lines are sexier and more lucrative, sometimes even more accurate.

The Persians know chess and the long game. Unless we get our alpha male geekness on, again, in public policy and WANT to prevail and dominate as champions by employing clever feints, traps and bluster to trap foe Iranian pugilists, then we’ll be reduced one day to reading about the match in the Times as a plodding or brilliant win by the underdog. That is, if we’re around to catch the column.

Oct 25, 2009 - 4:14 pm 35. RWE:

Okay, the name of the book that revealed the contents of the classified tapes on Heisenberg and the other German nuclear scientists is:

Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall

Oct 25, 2009 - 4:43 pm 36. Unsk:

Mark @ 20 makes a very important point:

“I expected that when Obama beat up on the services the result would be swift and possibly devastating push-back against Obama. I thought there was a deep self-interest at work within the services. But, lo, nary a peep. The dog has not barked.”

Despite a near consensus on the Right, there has been no apparent CIA pushback on Obama even though the lives of some of the CIA’s own have /or will be put at risk by our Traitor President. Apparently, treason has become the highest form of patriotism for both the CIA and the Left.

Oct 25, 2009 - 4:58 pm 37. grrr:

any delay is good. At the very least for further progress on interceptors.

Oct 25, 2009 - 5:34 pm 38. Kenneth:

The 2007 NIE is widely misunderstood. The report looked at the 3 components of the Iranian nuclear weapons program: fissile material enrichment, ballistic missile development, and warhead weaponization. The estimate declared, with a high degree of confidence, that while the warhead weaponization component had been frozen since 2003, the other 2 components of the program proceeded ahead, especially uranium enrichment. The assessment also concluded that the confidence level that the warhead weaponization component remained suspended after 2006 dropped to “moderate”. During this period, North Korea built & tested a nuclear weapon, with Iranian technical observers present. Presumably, the Iranians had outsourced warhead design to their North Korean allies.

In summary: the 2007 NIE declared that only one of the three components of the Iranian nuclear weapons program was suspended, and only for a short time.

Oct 25, 2009 - 5:43 pm 39. WildernessCalling:

The flipped NIE report is just another example (Hard at that) that the Federal Government is controlled by a Leftist-Liberal shadow conglomerate, Elected Officials are only pawns to be manipulated into doing what is wanted, GWB showed just how far out into the light this shadow is willing to risk to get its way, the election of “Obama” is just further truth of the death grip they have on freedom and liberty! The current Healthcare”, “Cap and Trade”, “Unthinkable stimulus Package” are just the end battles this group is staging as they choke the last breath from liberty and forever murder freedom, America has been in a zombie state of growing fascism for decades and Fascism is ready to rear its ugly head into the light because it knows the sprit has left the corpse of America, there is no one with the power to stand against the conglomerate’s weapons (MSM, Education, Union, Hollywood, etc.) there is no stopping the Fascist Leftist liberals from their complete emergence, the few that see the danger are too few and overwhelmed, they go the way of Dave Crocket in the Alamo! There will be no Calvary…

Oct 25, 2009 - 5:45 pm 40. presbypoet:

The hardest part of doing anything is to know it is possible. When I write, it always amazes me to look back. It seems as though all i was doing was revealing something that already existed. It seems to have an independent existence, yet at the start, none of it existed, except in my head. If i lose a post, it is easier to reconstruct, since I know it is possible to write.

So to know it is possible, is the hardest part. If we were to get an alien starship, even if we didn’t get any technical information from it, would soon lead to our own FTL flight because we would know it was possible.

The converse is even stronger. The Nazis didn’t know it was possible. So what they didn’t know cost them the war.

Iran, knowing how “easy” it is to build a bomb, have already had the hard part done for them.

38 Wilderness,
Did you mean Calvary, or cavalry? It makes such a major difference.

Oct 25, 2009 - 6:37 pm 41. reg:

wretchard
“But it’s interesting to consider whether he’s thought out the consequences of being wrong about it.” are you kidding me? thought out the consequences? wrong??
that’s not the way the victory disease manifests itself.it took 6 months to bite the Japanese in the arse,how long will it take us?the rule is if you are dealing drugs you don’t do your own shit and if you are in politics don’t believe your own propaganda.Yamamoto knew reality when he saw it.Are we allowed to ?

Oct 25, 2009 - 6:48 pm 42. Lifeofthemind:

RWE,
Niels Bohr … as well as for his contribution to music, Olivia Newton John

According to the wiki the lovely Ms Newton-John’s grandfather was the 1954 Nobel laureate in Physics, Max Born.

Oct 25, 2009 - 7:56 pm 43. Batman:

In medicine a false positive is not as bad as a false negative. If a certain percentage of times you diagnose appendicitis you don’t take out a normal one, your threshold is too low.

Imagine if you are in doubt about whether a lesion is cancerous or benign. Do you operate or do you wait? What would you prefer if you were the patient?

Some doctors are trappers and others are hunters. The trappers wait and watch and act only after the diagnosis is certain. Hunters do the extra test and the extra procedure so as not to miss subtle indications of disease. I prefer all my doctors to be hunters.

The other angle is this: if you get a phone call that there is a bomb in your building, do you evacuate and begin a search or do you wait? And if there turns out to be no bomb, have you lied if you ordered an investigation and search?

Yes, false positives are costly and inconvenient and often embarrassing. But false negatives are much more dangerous. Too bad the American public didn’t see it that way. You can be sure that if disaster ever follows a false negative they will, but it will be too late.

Oct 25, 2009 - 8:36 pm 44. whiskey:

Wretchard — you spin every possible motive for Obama to be a fool instead of actively working for the other side.

Obama is not stupid, he WANTS an Iranian nuclear weapon. First, so it may wipe out Israel, something near and dear to his Muslim upbringing and radical sensibilities, and second so that it may nuke America.

Indeed, Obama from jihad from the Justice Department against the CIA, to cutting and running in Afghanistan, to deep sixing missile defense, to betraying Polish and Czech allies, to his hug-a-thug antics with Iran (and the betrayal of democratic elements there) and Pakistan and Russia and Cuba and Venezuela, has done everything possible to create an attack on the US.

Obama WANTS the US NUKED. Of course he does (as do most of his Czars and other nutcases he runs policy through instead of the cabinet, he’s that radical). First, any nuclear attack would kill a LOT of Whites, and that is something that Obama, ever the “race man” finds appealing. “White man’s greed creates a world in need” he told us, quoting his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright.

But most importantly, it creates a crisis that he can use to suspend the Constitution and rule by decree, ala Zelaya and Chavez and Castro, his heroes and role models. So he can impose defeat and submission on America. Turning American into a submissive, beaten semi-Islamic republic, a satellite of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and so on.

Obama does not of course, realize how most Americans, the Military, Governors, State Militias, and police will react in the wake of a suspension of the Constitution and surrender. Because he himself was raised in Jakarta and Hawaii, along with Columbia University, Pakistan, and South Side Chicago. He overestimates his own power and charisma, and underestimates the desire to fight when attacked and retain independence.

But lets be serious. Obama WANTS Iran to have nukes. He could with minimal political fall-out order a pre-emptive attack on Iran, indeed doing so would probably get Health Care passed, as he would appear more trustworthy and centrist. The Press would still worship him, and the Left fawn all over him. Instead Obama wants an all out war … on Fox News.

Obama is not stupid or naive. He is instead a man who hates America, most of its people, and wants it defeated with himself as regent, Marshall Petain, or Vizier, whatever you prefer. In this he is joined by a significant number of elites who loathe their own nation and culture, and want “and end to Whiteness” as the Washington Post Harold Myerson put it. Or that lunatic in the Observer calling for a culling of Americans, Britons, and Australians “for Gaia” so that folks in Burkino Faso can have more children.

But let us at least be intellectually honest and not play games — Obama could easily stop Iran’s nuclear progress but chooses not to do so because he WANTS them to have nukes.

Oct 25, 2009 - 9:21 pm 45. EdGi:

One cannot deal with a threat by allowing the threat a first shot that kills you. As to FDR and the nazi bomb, Heisenberg’s errors will probably never be explained, but 2 centerfuge sites were in fact found, one in a monastary and the other in a high school gym. Also, heavy water did make it through Sweden, and in fact the amount found far exceeded that known from Norway, and there must have been another still undisclosed source.

Oct 25, 2009 - 10:55 pm 46. dan:

“To paraphrase Doc Brown, nuclear scientists are not available in every corner drugstore, and even less so in Iran.”

How interesting the Russian nuke tech relationship with Iran, then. Why would you give strategic weapons – including air defense systems and nuclear warhead designs and ballistic missile technology – to such a neighbor, unless you controlled them? I remember my Muscovite girlfriend, a college junior, emigrated to USA from Moscow in 1998. At the time, her father – a quite established Russian nuclear physicist – had offers from 2 other countries, Japan and Iraq. The USA effectively bought him out to ensure he would not go to Iraq (there were certain problems associated with Japan). I learned this in about 2004. One never hears about the association between Primakov and Saddam. Nor about even the existence of the SCO. Did the AP not publish the fact that Primakov handed Saddam our order of battle on the eve of the invasion? What kind of behavior is that?

Who provided Iraq’s WMDs in the first place? The same government who provided its tanks. The same government which invented and perfected active measures over the course of 70 years. Why were we told Atta was in Czechoslovakia meeting Iraqi intelligence? Czechoslovakia, the former prime training ground for Middle East terrorists in the Soviet Bloc (outside of Russia). Was it meant to encourage an invasion of Iraq among a certain type of imagination in the US government? The better to yank the WMD carpet out from under it once that country had put a colossal amount of political, economic, and military capital on the line?

Or is every intelligence agency in the world just f-ing stupid?

Let us presume that the 2007 NIE was published for a valid strategic reason. I believe they wrote it not in spite of Bush, but for Bush. I believe Bush had no intention of invading Iran, because he did not have the military resources sufficient to cover all contingencies in the event that Iraq/Afghanistan, so recently stabilized, should start to implode under the pressure of foreign intelligence services. This is to say nothing of the mood of the American public and the meme-momentum of the media.

Iraq and Afghanistan proved quite enough for the resources of the USA – especially the political resources. I do not believe NIE 2007 was an act of treason.

I also believe it is likely that the Anti-Afghan War Campaign is in full swing because the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has resolved to make it extraordinarily painful for us if we do not make a reasonably swift exit. All countries bordering Afghanistan to the north are run by former Red Army/GRU officers. Pakistan is Pakistan and a client of China. Iran is engaged in absurd brinksmanship well above its weight-class and is to Afghanistan’s West.

Under these circumstances, with tribal/fanatic foot soldiers at their disposal and the Western electorate so effeminate, so completely decadent – who has the balance of force in their favor? I’m afraid it is not us. And I think the NIE lent public plausibility to a certain shift in strategy which reflected recognition of who the basic players really are and what they intend in the region.

After all, actual policy is not genuinely influenced by such sentimentalisms as “but that’s OUR near abroad…”

Oct 26, 2009 - 7:28 am 47. dan:

2 ps’s

1. The cracked crystal ball metaphor works except to the extent that the public is (a) not informed in a timely or complete manner, if sometimes ever, on matters of national security; and

2. The apparent surprises sprung upon us in real time by foreign governments are strategic disinformation, carrying within them a concealed purpose which the surprise/shock generated by the overt meaning of the event is meant to facilitate (i.e. by distracting your attention).

Oct 26, 2009 - 7:36 am 48. Storm-Rider:

“In 2004 the Bush administration invaded Iraq partly on the argument that Saddam Hussein could not be allowed to develop WMDs. In fact, no stockpiles were found.”

“It’s a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad.”

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=462856&Ntt=saddam’s+nukes

“The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/

Oct 26, 2009 - 8:29 am 49. Storm-Rider:

“The real “WMD” was Saddam himself, who had caused millions of deaths by invading Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia…”

Yes – exactly right!

“Thus, there is abundant and undeniable evidence that Saddam Hussein provided money, diplomatic services, shelter, medical care, and training to terrorists of every stripe, including those complicit in the 1993 WTC bombing and — according to a Clinton-appointed federal judge — the September 11 attacks. The Iraqi dictator aided al-Qaeda and other global terrorists who murdered Americans, both at home and abroad.”

http://www.husseinandterror.com/

“The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp

Oct 26, 2009 - 8:42 am 50. Sertorius:

#33 rook king: “We’re less about winning a deadly contest (note reactionary, prejudicial characterization) than spinning provincial perception of whatever may happen or has occurred, because that seems to be enough to get votes and audience share in this day of history weary and attention-deficit.”

I always liked what William Pitt had to say as he was measuring the rope with which to hang Walpole: “The minister who neglects any just opportunity of promoting the power, or increasing the wealth of his country is to be considered as an enemy to his fellow subjects.”

Can you imagine how that statement would play out on the floor of the House these days?

Bush had to deal with a (perhaps) rogue intelligence service, but his biggest problem I think was that the sentimentalized political rhetoric of our day has made it impossible to practice responsible statescraft. There were half-a-dozen reasons to whack Saddam, but the decadence of the electorate Dan alludes to in #45 made WMD the only “legitimate” casus belli. You can blame Bush for using “WMD” as a kind of short-hand for other more subtle strategic issues, or absolve the MSM for its weakness for the CSI: Mesopotamia plotline, but the practical result has been a redefinition of our political vocabulary: one that has essentially given veto power of any military action to the CIA. Imagine, for instance, trying to drum up support for a Gulf War I-like scenario (like, say, repulsing an invasion of Taiwan)–would even a McCain/Palin administration be able to go to war?

Oct 26, 2009 - 8:55 am 51. lc:

Dan #45:
Interesting points. I vote that every intell organization (or at least one big and famous one) in the world is f-ing stupid. IIRC, one of the “proofs” that Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intell guy in Czechland is that there was a record of his cell phone being used in the states at the time he was supposed to be there…sounds conclusive to me (unless there is some further evidence that Atta himself used the phone at that time, and even that I would wonder about)….
There are some very interesting (and scary) bedfellows involved in all of this, and none of the relationships, to my knowledge are fully understood or have been adequately explained (or examined for that matter).
Storm-Rider #47 – yeah, the meme on Saddam’s nukes was set. As I remember things, the trip that that clown Wilson took to Niger, which he said proved that Saddam WAS NOT seeking material for making nukes, in fact, did just the opposite. As near as I can tell (and who knows the veracity of the information), he was debriefed on the trip in his living room (his f-king living room!) and part of his report mentioned somebody in the Niger government telling him that the Iraqis were looking for yellowcake. And, if Cheney sent him, did he even ever get a report about it? Strange, strange.

Oct 26, 2009 - 8:59 am 52. Marty:

RWE @ 18, and others

RWE is exactly correct, even to the point that the people the Japanese govt sent to Hiroshima the next day knew immediately that it was a uranium bomb. Unfortunately for Nagasaki, they knew enough about the engineering problem of uranium enrichment to think it impossible that the USA could have enough highly-enriched uranium for a SECOND bomb, so they advised that this may have been a one-off for at least a few months. They were correct insofar as uranium, but they didn’t anticipate that the Manhattan project followed 2 paths, U-235 at Oak Ridge and Pu-239 at Hanford, and 3 days later Nagasaki got hit by the plutonium bomb.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:01 am 53. Pajamas Media » As Intel Can Be Wrong (See Iran’s Nuke Program), Best To Assume the Worst:

[...] Read the entire article here. [...]

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:12 am 54. Marty:

My favorite of the many howlers in teh Sanger piece:

‘The Friday deadline for Iran to respond also poses a major test for its embattled leadership, one that is “intended to explore the proposition of whether Iran really wants to negotiate its way out of this problem,” in the words of one White House official.’

Wow!!! “whether Iran really wants to negotiate its way out of this problem”??? You can’t make up stuff that good!!!

Iran is probably just continuing to stall for time. The only reason I can think of why they might actually consider this is if their delivery system won’t be ready when their bomb is, so slipping a little on the bomb doesn’t really delay a usable military capability.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:13 am 55. Storm-Rider:

“The Japanese man in the foxhole was not defeated by any assumptions of superiority but by weeks of bombardment, strafing, napalm, prolonged hunger, infantry assault by trained Marines with superior infantry weapons, armor and finally the demolition charge and flame thrower to cook and bury him alive in his cave. And if he managed to crawl away from that there was waiting for him (on Luzon at least) the Filipino man with the razor sharp bolo. Japan was defeated by unrestricted submarine warfare, no quarter fighting on the ground, blockade and starvation, an aerial campaign unprecedented from the beginning of the world, shore bombardment by battleships, unlimited strafing of anything that moved by hundeds of fighters and finally the Atomic Bomb. And even there was the possibility that an invasion would still be necessary.”

My dad was there, God rest his soul. He survived the massive Saipan Banzai Charge (largest in history) by engaging in the most brutal forms of close quarter combat – Thompson submachine gun in-hand. Over 600 of his buddies died within the hour just before sunrise on July 7, 1944. Dad then moved on to the Island of Tinian where a large B-29 force was based – for the strategic bombing of Japan. The Enola Gay was also based there, and had the Atomic Bomb not been used dad and hundreds of thousands of his fellow American soldiers would likely have perished on the Japanese mainland – along with millions of Japanese – and I wouldn’t be here typing on this keyboard.

What sacrifice should we not be willing to make for the future of our children and grandchildren when we consider those brave Americans who established our nation of sacred individual life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; and those who have since defended her? What concerns me now is that for the first time since our War of Independence, we appear to be slipping under the heels of an elite class of Marxist (or Statist) oligarchs – but this time they are home-grown – and I believe they are more dangerous than our Islamist enemy. Our private property (part of our natural pursuit of happiness) is already being confiscated through excessive taxation; and our freedom of speech and press are now the target of “hate speech” laws and “fairness doctrines,” etc. etc. The time is now to amend our Constitution before struggles for life ensue. We need term limits for Congress and Supreme Court, and 2/3 Congressional override power for Supreme Court decisions – just as Congress has 2/3 override power for Presidential vetoes. In this way “We the People” (through our elected representatives) become the final arbiters of American law – not an oligarchy of judges. The States must also begin enforcement of the Tenth Amendment; upending the “New Deal” by transferring funding and governmental management of all social programs not enumerated in the Constitution; i.e.: Medicare, Social Security, etc., to the States. These social programs, in contrast to our military forces and post office, do not provide for “The General Welfare;” they provide for specific welfare of certain classes of Americans which has led us to un-Constitutional Marxist class struggle. The Tenth Amendment is an anti-Marxist amendment – it has already been written – so let it be done.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:32 am 56. Teresita:

Whiskey: Obama WANTS the US NUKED. Of course he does (as do most of his Czars and other nutcases he runs policy through instead of the cabinet, he’s that radical). First, any nuclear attack would kill a LOT of Whites, and that is something that Obama, ever the “race man” finds appealing.

The flaw in your theory is that most whites only spend 40 hours a week in the city, while most blacks spend 168 hours a week there. Whites have largely left the city for the burbs, and I don’t see Iran wasting their nuke on a piece of land platted for 5 acre McMansions. Hurricane Katrina passed through, wiped out the inner city, and now the congressman from there is Republican.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:39 am 57. Sherab Zangpo:

Obama IS assuming that Iran DOES HAVE the bomb.
That’s why he is doing nothing.
He is empowering all the enemies of America (in marxist language, translate “America” with “imperialist super-power”, in muslim language with “the great satan”).
Listen to the sermons of the pseudo-church where he sat for twenty years, review the list of his friends and mentors, check the biographies and the public speeches of his czars and cabinet members: the media have conned the American People into electing a neo-commie as president.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:47 am 58. Dave K.:

So does anyone have any actual proof that Iran is breaking the non-proliferation treaty?

Innocent until proven guilty, remember?

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:51 am 59. dan:

Obama does not want the US nuked. Come off it.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:52 am 60. Marty:

Wretchard @ 24

Quite a few times when I have bemoaned the mishandling of foreign affairs by the current administration, talking about truly life-or-death issues such as nuclear proliferation, Russian expansionism, and the like, people have responded not with discussion of the issues, let alone defending the administration if such was their leaning, but by rather dismissively opining that of course it might be bad but we’ll come out of it OK because we always do.

Which just makes me imagine being on a train to Auschwitz in early 1944, or coming home from work in Tokyo the afternoon of March 9, 1945, or going over the top on July 1, 1916, or a zillion other times and places where in fact “we” didn’t come out of it OK like we had in the past.

God, we need some adults in charge!!!

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:52 am 61. exhelodrvr:

dave k,
That is an individual right in our justice system – different area completely.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:57 am 62. Marty:

Dave K @ 57

“Innovent until proven guilty” is a principle of English common law in criminal cases.

Nothing whatsoever to do with statecraft.

Intentions and capabilities, to the extent we can know things that the subject is likely intentionally trying to hide or confuse, are what matter.

Oct 26, 2009 - 9:57 am 63. steeple:

Dan,

What is it that you think he wants then?

And would you care to make a case backed by logic as to how he proposes to achieve those goals?

Oct 26, 2009 - 10:32 am 64. CatoRenasci:

It seems to me that a bet on nuclear weapons in Iranian – and thence terrorist – hands is rather like making Pascal’s Bet on the existence of God:

1. If the Iranians are building nuclear weapons, and we believe they are and do something about it, the world averts nuclear disaster, though at some cost in a regional conventional war which the Iranians lose.

2. If the Iranians are building nuclear weapons, and we don’t believe that they are and do nothing, we have a nuclear holocaust in which some western (Israeli?) target is attacked with nuclear weapons and, in retaliation, Iran receives massive retaliation from the targeted power and/or the United States.

3. If the Iranians are not building nuclear weapons, but we believe they are and do something about it, there is some cost in a conventional regional war which the Iranians lose.

4. If the Iranians are not building nuclear weapons, and we don’t believe they are and do nothing, everything is ‘ok’.

The problem is that for the Israelis, and really, for us, the negative consequence of #2 far out weighs the negative consequences of either #1 or #3, but the negative consequences of either #1 or #3 are sufficiently great that no one wants to face them and, therefore, the powers (except Israel) are willing to risk #2 in hopes that #4 is true.

This is similar to decision matrix that faced the British and the French in 1936 (remilitarization of the Rheinland) and 1938 (the Anschluss with Austria and Czechoslovakian crisis over the Sudetenland), where the fear of another general European War on the scale of the Great War (as WWI was then known) led Chamberlain and Daladier to hope Hitler could be appeased from starting just such a general European War. Of course, we know how well that turned out: what could have been virtually no war in 1936, or a relatively smaller war in 1938, ended up as a war even greater than the ‘Great War.’

Oct 26, 2009 - 10:37 am 65. alex:

Singapore fell because the Japanese were prepared to fight a war in the tropics, the British were not. That is the bottom line.
Preparation is the key to almost everything, from business to raising kids. Japan had been preparing and learning to fight in the tropics fighting China…it applied those lessons to Singapore and took out numerically superior British forces.

The US needs to prepare itself to fight a war without religious dogma, or allowing religious overtones to affect military decisions. This is something the Bush Administration failed to do, and we are now paying for.
Our approach to this war has given al Qaeda and other groups support from general populations…in addition Saudi financial support which is frankly stunning we continue to act as if the royal House of Saud were helping, when they are bankrolling worldwide terrorism through wahabbi schools. Saudi Arabia is the central point in the “axis of Evil”, and yet the Bush and Obama admins turn a blind eye.

If we cannot boil this down to its simplest common denominator we will win the battle but eventually lose the war.

Oct 26, 2009 - 10:53 am 66. dan:

i’m sorry, without further evidence i won’t believe obama devoutly wishes for the incineration of hundreds of thousands of americans in thermonuclear fire. even if he’s a Leninst, he’s not Lenin himself.

i think obama’s plan to is to delegate foreign policy and to act as symbol for the liberal/naive/optimistic interpretation of American strategic retreat. i think he intends to disarm us consistent with bare-minimum defense requirements and bare-minimum regard for our uk/jap/german alliances. you can read in hillary’s body language that she sincerely believes her – for example – russian counterparts’ goals and intentions are basically compatible with hers/obama’s. i think others in the administration – axelrod especially – are neo-Leninists for sure. unfortunately that has not as yet been publicly formulated, and leninism is actually a pretty protean thing, so it would be difficult to say exactly what it means.

obviously, however, anyone who got himself/was manuevered into the White House under the ideology of his mentors would not be there in order to outright destroy the USA but to force it into an American type of perestroika – restructuring. he is certainly here to fulfill the Fukayama interpretation of history – declare no enemies but to his right, remove troops, reduce our presence everywhere, accede to Shanghai Cooperation Organization strategic requirements under the guise of “fairness” because America has gotten too big for its britches. who do you think was behind the “blood for oil” crap? well – who had the most invested in oil for food, the iraqi partnership, saddam himself? obviously russia. obama was its wet dream. so here we are.

that’s the whole point of the re-interpretation of leninism after the Stalinist period: imagining the conversion socialism without killing 10-15% of the population, which understandably turned people off. well look around you – it succeeded, didn’t it?

Oct 26, 2009 - 11:18 am 67. exhelodrvr:

Dave,
Think “civil court.” Preponderance of evidence.

Oct 26, 2009 - 11:55 am 68. Storm-Rider:

Mushroom clouds over our cities (or an EMP event overhead) would be evidence. Is that the kind of evidence we are talking about, or are we speaking of the type of secret evidence that will never see the light of day?

Oct 26, 2009 - 12:38 pm 69. Lefty:

A couple of points…

1. Colin Powell has all but publicly recanted what he said about Iraqi WMD development. I think he has described it as a low point in his career. He’s also turned around and said that after Bush committed us to the war he resolved to serve to the best of his capacity. At any rate, I don’t think you’ll get too many Powell lovers here for various reasons.

2. FDR’s support of an advanced weapons system just can’t be compared to a pre-emptory strike against a sovereign nation that we are not at war with. I would liken it closer to Obama’s acceleration of the massive ordinance penetrator (mop) program that will be outfitting our B-2 bombers with ordinance capable of destroying Iranian weapons facilities. Anyway, for various reasons you don’t get a lot of FDR lovers here either.

3. Israel is a nuclear power in it’s own right and has some of the most advanced intelligence and munitions in the world. They have destroyed Iranian nuclear plants in the past and I’m sure will do so again if it comes to that.

Oct 26, 2009 - 12:58 pm 70. Bob from Virginia:

12. HEPT: I fear you are 100% right, except for the part we cannot do anything about it. We can stop it but of course Obama will not. We are all living in denial if we think anything other than violent force will stop Iran from getting and using nukes on the US. Unless they are stupid, which I doubt, or at least not as stupid as the American electorate and government, they will not attack Israel for fear Israel will strike back, a fear they do not have about the US. BTW there main objective is the destruction of the US not Israel.

Oct 26, 2009 - 1:24 pm 71. Storm-Rider:

Lefty: “FDR’s support of an advanced weapons system just can’t be compared to a pre-emptory strike against a sovereign nation that we are not at war with.”

FDR employed a pre-emptive strike against Morocco and Algeria during World War II. This was “Operation Torch;” the battle for North Africa.

http://www.internet-esq.com/ussaugusta/torch/index.htm

The error that you lefties keep making is the failure to recognize (or admit) that we are now engaged in World War IV (with the Cold War as World War III). There is an international alliance of Islamist Totalitarian Religious States, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the former Taliban Afghanistan; and Islamic Totalitarian Fascist States, such as Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and Libya; and International Islamist terror groups such as Al-Qaeda. The Islamist terror groups and nations are linked to the Islamic Fascist nations by the shared totalitarian nature of Islamic Sharia Law, which is practiced by the former openly, and by the latter in the background. This is the International Islamo-Fascist alliance, and we are engaged in World War IV. Wherever terror-sponsoring totalitarian Islamic Sharia Law rules, whether in an Islamist state or a Fascist state, we have the international enemy identified; and we are morally justified to wage war in defense of American life and liberty.

During World War II the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan, which was a member of the Axis Alliance. Since Nazi Germany was part of that same alliance we were free to attack Germany before Japan or Italy because the alliance as a whole was the enemy. We ended up attacking German military forces in our first major engagement of World War II in spite of the fact that Germany did not attack the United States at Pearl Harbor; and we did so by invading Morocco where the French army and navy engaged us in sustained combat – go figure – but this is the nature of warfare between alliances of nations or groups. The totalitarian laws of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II correspond to the Totalitarian Sharia law of the Islamo-Fascist Alliance of today. Now, since Iraq was a member of the Islamo-Fascist Alliance, the United States was free to attack there after first engaging the more immediate threat of Taliban Afghanistan.

September 11, 2001 was the main opening act between two alliances: the American-led Alliance of Liberty vs. the Islamo-Fascist Alliance of tyranny (with Marxists also in support). This war is far from over; and it has the potential for much greater evil and destruction than World War II. It is time to beat our plowshares into swords and our pruning hooks into spears; and to loose the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword – just war in defense of sacred human life and human liberty.

You can learn more about this analysis in: “World War IV, The Long Struggle Against Islamo-Fascism” by Norman Podhoretz

http://fora.tv/2007/11/30/Norman_Podhoretz

Oct 26, 2009 - 1:24 pm 72. myth buster:

Israel’s problem is that Iran is too far away for them to launch a sustained air raid, and the nuclear sites are too spread out to send enough planes after them to destroy with conventional weapons. That leaves Israel with only one option- a preemptive nuclear strike to destroy the Iranian nuclear capability.

Oct 26, 2009 - 1:30 pm 73. Lefty:

Storm Rider – I was picking on the author’s use of the Manhattan Project as ill-fitted to a comparison of pre-emptive engagements since one can create weapons of mass destruction within US borders.

Your example of the North Africa campaign is a better comparison, but in my recollection, Germany had already declared war on us. The French were “Vichy French” to be fair. Operation Torch was particularly important at the time because we were in no way or shape ready to take on a full fledged campaign against Germany. After WWI, we pretty much dismantled our military and FDR had to gin up as much support for war as possible. You could compare him to Bush, but us lefties would prefer you didn’t and the hard core conservatives wouldn’t like you much either.

I don’t much agree with the the neo-con saber rattling. It leaves me cold the way armchair generals urge on the troops into battle. Anyway, I’m less concerned with Iran than I am with an already nuclear capable Pakistan that’s falling apart at the seams.

Iran’s leaders are a bunch of asshats, but there is a chance for change for the better.

Oct 26, 2009 - 3:10 pm 74. Storm-Rider:

Lefty,
I’m not interested in saber-rattling as much as saber-using. I don’t really care about the metaphoric names that people use to describe other people – such as “neocon.” I only care whether or not you or anyone else believes in defending the sacred life, liberty and homeland of the American people. The modern American conservative (like the ones you find here at Belmont Club) is interested in conserving human liberty by conserving the moral principles in our Declaration of Independence and the government-limiting laws of our Constitution and Bill of Rights (as actually written and agreed to). By conserving human liberty the modern American conservative has become a classic liberal. By opposing these principles of human liberty, the modern American liberal has become a classic conservative, the type against whom our Founding Fathers rebelled; although now with a Marxist motif.

The Vichy French were both submissive to the Third Reich and deadly hostile to the United States and the Allied Alliance. The French Navy was Vichy, and having refused terms which would ensure it did not fall into the hands of Nazi Germany, the British Navy engaged them, destroying or disabling much of the Vichy Navy at the Battle of Mers-el-Kebir on July 3, 1940. Much of the remaining Vichy French Navy then engaged American Naval forces during Operation Torch in 1942. What does it matter if we call these political and military forces of France “Vichy?” Great numbers of French leaders, people and military forces cooperated with Nazi Germany, and they took up arms against the U.S. led Allied Alliance.

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=96

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:39 pm 75. Marie Claude:

Saddam was a WMD by himself !

woah, I just wanted to read that now, after all the conspirations upon renaming french frieds, how many palabres could have been avoided !

Oct 26, 2009 - 4:48 pm 76. Marie Claude:

Wiskey

Between 1938 and 1940, Daladier led France in dramatic moments. The territorial aspirations of Hitler over Czechoslovakia will be an opportunity for him to test the determination of France and the United Kingdom. On September 29, 1938, Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier meet to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. The UK and France had signed at Locarno in 1926, an assistance treaty with that country, by the Treaty of Versailles. First strongly opposed to any compromise with Hitler, Daladier was persuaded by Chamberlain to sign the Munich agreement. Legend has it that Edward was afraid of being booed on his arrival in France, he became, in the contrary, acclamed… He then dropped: “Ah, the idiots, if they knew”!

“Ah, les cons…”

Hmm , Daladier weak ? he was rather realist, if he hadn’t signed the agreement, that ment that he decleared war to Germany, and he couldn’t undertake this war without UK, that Chamberlain wasn’t ready to do

http://histoiregeolyceerombas.over-blog.com/article-35576414.html

Also about Vichy Petain, don’t repeat the same amalgam, Vichy was the result of the Armistice, that willingly and cleverly Hitler signed for once (and the first time)with a country that was at war with Germany ; this was the opportunity for him to cut the french colonial empire from the Brits, and , by extension, from the Alliees, where french soldiers could have fled to, and carried on the war, but instead of, Armistice ment demobilisation of the whole french (and colonial)troops, and that the economy from the colonial empire would not help the Alliees…

Oct 26, 2009 - 5:15 pm 77. sasquatch:

What I find remarkable is that no-one has conected the dots.
Saddam’s much publicised(even by him) nuclear WMDs were missing after the invasion and then— voila–Iran has a mature programme.
Think about it…during Gulf I Saddam’s Migs fled to Iran…not to Syria.
Now lefites conclude the WMD never existed—despite the yellow cake…..

Oct 26, 2009 - 10:03 pm 78. Moho:

What makes me laugh most about you deranged idiots–we can’t afford health care, but we can afford yet another war. We still haven’t even started paying off the last two, but never mind, we’ll gladly go in debt as long as its for a paranoid murdering adventure where we get to blow off our children’s legs and tear children and families to ribbons. Just don’t ask us to provide services for our own people. That’s communism!

Oct 26, 2009 - 11:19 pm 79. PhillipB:

Iran is a serious threat not only to Middle East peace, but a real risk in destabilizing the region. A nuclearized Iran poses a threat to Europe and the USA as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Totx7J1nf8U&feature=channel

Oct 27, 2009 - 3:03 am 80. Doug:

The Taliban-Al Qaeda merger.

Nearly every major jihadist plot against Western targets in the last two decades somehow leads back to Afghanistan or Pakistan.

— The first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, who had trained in an Al Qaeda camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

— Ahmed Ressam, who plotted to blow up LAX airport in 1999, was trained in Al Qaeda’s Khaldan camp in Afghanistan.

— Key operatives in the suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000 trained in Afghanistan;

— so did all 19 September 11 hijackers.

— The leader of the 2002 Bali attack that killed more than 200 people, mostly Western tourists, was a veteran of the Afghan camps.

— The ringleader of the 2005 London subway bombing was trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

— The British plotters who planned to blow up passenger planes leaving Heathrow in the summer of 2006 were taking direction from Pakistan; a July 25, 2006, e-mail from their Al Qaeda handler in that country, Rashid Rauf, urged them to “get a move on.” If that attack had succeeded, as many as 1,500 would have died.

— The three men who, in 2007, were planning to attack Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. facility in Germany, had trained in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

And yet, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington.
We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can therefore defeat the former while tolerating the latter; that flushing jihadists out of one failing state will merely cause them to pop up in another anarchic corner of the globe; that, in the age of the Internet, denying terrorists a physical safe haven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest.
But those who make this case could not be more mistaken.

Oct 27, 2009 - 5:08 am 81. Marie Claude:

sasquatch,

humm, Saddam migs were displayed in several countries, you quoted Iran, yes ! but Syria, Turkey, I think in european eastern countries too, and to some Yougoslavia provinces, (I believe, I read something about it a few months ago)

despite the yellow cake

this was from Osirak times, besides these stocks were known from the first Irak campain (desert storm) and were not dangerous as such (otherwise Bush’s father would have delt with them in the first place),
they need too many manipulations that saddam couldn’t afford and or to technically achieve.

the possible WMD that could have been pointed on would rather have been the poisonous gaz that killed Kurds (in Irak and in Iran, supplied by German and US enterprises, uh, Saddam was the best possible friend then

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:06 am 82. EnemyoftheState:

I served as an Air Force intelligence officer for 26 years. Most of my duty was with tactical fighter and special operations units, at the tip of the spear. I was not back in D.C. writing estimates and studies, I was planning and preparing and briefing combat missions, helping pilots get their job done and come back alive. I also had a stint with the rescue forces, pulling pilots out of jeopardy when they were shot down.

Way out there at the pointed end of the spear, there are fewer shades of gray, one does not think in terms of politics and grand strategy and nuclear weapons and WMD. Think of any cowboy movie you’ve ever seen. You’re the good guy, wearing the white hat. Down the street is the big ugly bad guy who doesn’t like you and has sworn to kill you. He’s got a big freaking gun on his hip, you don’t know if it’s loaded with nuclear warheads or blanks, but you can’t let him take the first shot or the whole town could be destroyed.

So you beat him to the draw and kill him. You save the town and ride off into the sunset to the sound of catcalls from the townspeople who call you a murderous bastard and a threat to world peace.

Did the bad guy’s gun have a WMD bullet in it? Politicians may be debating that for the next ten years. Meanwhile, they’ll be sending you and your faithful steed to rescue another ungrateful town real soon.

Oct 27, 2009 - 6:49 am 83. sirius_sir:

despite the yellow cake

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Would the ‘debate’–the argument for and against war–have gone differently had it been known at the time that, because he already possessed it in ample quantity, the question of Saddam’s attempted procurement of yellowcake was already entirely academic?

I say it should have, but sincerely doubt that it would have.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:27 am 84. sirius_sir:

…these stocks were known from the first Irak campain (desert storm) and were not dangerous as such (otherwise Bush’s father would have delt with them in the first place), they need too many manipulations that saddam couldn’t afford and or to technically achieve.

Then what was all the fuss about?

But if Saddam couldn’t afford a weapons regime, he sure had a strange way of proving it.

And I’m no more sanguine about his supposed inability to eventually achieve what he wanted.

Oct 27, 2009 - 9:41 am 85. Jeff Perren:

Interesting, isn’t it, that leftists are perfectly willing to push a “precautionary principle” when it comes to global warming, but would shudder at the thought in the case of de-fanging a known terrorist-supporting state.

Oct 27, 2009 - 10:32 am 86. Ruvy:

Max Born, not Neils Bohr, was the grandfather of Olivia Newton John.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:21 am 87. Ruvy:

Israel’s problem is that Iran is too far away for them to launch a sustained air raid, and the nuclear sites are too spread out to send enough planes after them to destroy with conventional weapons. That leaves Israel with only one option- a preemptive nuclear strike to destroy the Iranian nuclear capability.

Myth Buster: Thank you for making the case I have been pushing since May of this year.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:23 am 88. Lifeofthemind:

Ruvy,
Points up at #41.

Oct 27, 2009 - 11:58 am

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