State Dept. Tap Dance Over the Legitimacy of Ahmadinejad

The following State Dept briefing is the Obama Testament, aka The POTUS Game Plan, that American, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is no longer the leader of the free world and anyone yearning to be free and likewise under the illusion that support for hope and change is possible from This POTUS can go suck oxygen somewhere else because "it ain't gonna happen on Obama's Watch. Forgetaboutit."


Ian Kelly

Department Spokesman
Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

June 30, 2009

INDEX:

DEPARTMENT
	Secretary Clinton Working from Home, Recovering
	Ambassador Philip Goldberg Leads Interagency Delegation to Beijing / Delegation to Meet with Representatives of Ministries Involved in Implementation of UNSCR 1874
HONDURAS
	U.S. Making Legal Assessment of Facts and Applicability of Funds Cut-Off Provision / U.S. Looking at Various Aspects of Cooperation / Constitutional Order in Honduras Overturned
	President Zelaya in New York to Address General Assembly / Intends to Participate in OAS Special General Assembly in Washington / State Department Officials to Meet with Him
	U.S. Believes President Zelaya is Democratically Elected, Constitutional President of Honduras / President Zelaya Should be Allowed to Serve Remainder of His Term / Events Inconsistent with Principles of Inter-American Charter / U.S Working Through OAS and Multilaterally
	U.S. Ambassador Llorens Remains in Place / Embassy Issued Warden Message and Travel Alert / Embassy Open for Emergency Services Only / Evaluating Situation Daily
ISRAEL/PALESTINIANS
	Special Envoy Mitchell - Defense Minister Barak Meeting Ongoing / Part of Mitchell's Efforts to Enable Both Sides to Resume Negotiations
	All Parties Have to Meet Obligations Under Roadmap / U.S. Will Not Set Time Limits
BELARUS
	President Lukashenko Signed Decree Pardoning Emanuel Zeltser / U.S. Welcomes News of Imminent Release / U.S. Happy to Have This Obstacle in Bilateral Relations Removed
CHINA
	U.S. Seeking Dialogue with Chinese Authorities Regarding Software Concerns / Embassy Seeking Confirmation of Implementation Delay with Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
RUSSIA
	Department Preparing for Meetings Between Presidents Obama and Medvedev / Respective Governments Working on Framework or Roadmap for Successor Arrangement to START
IRAN
	U.S. Concerned About Credibility Gap / Process Still to Play Out / Iranian Government Has to Take Seriously Concerns of Huge Part of Their Population / U.S. Has Concerns About Lack of Consensus in Iran / Iranian Government Not Respecting Will of Its People / Concerns About Political Process in Iran
	Iran Has Not Addressed Concerns of International Community about Nuclear Program
	U.S. To Make Decisions Based on National Interests of United States
	U.S. Laid Out Expectations in P-5+1 / Actions Have Not Taken Place
	Iran Could Address Concerns By Allowing International Coverage of Events / Allow Free Flow of Information Via Internet / Start Political Process That Involves All Parties

TRANSCRIPT:12:37 p.m. EDT
MR. KELLY: Well, welcome to the briefing. Welcome to part two of the briefing, and I do appreciate Ambassador Verveer coming down and talking to you guys about her recent trip to Afghanistan and giving you all a chance to get an idea of the important work that she’s doing.
Secretary of State Clinton is working from home today. She’s receiving the normal kinds of briefings and paper that she would receive if she were in the office, and also, of course, staying in contact via telephone.
I want to make a formal announcement, something that you already know: Ambassador Philip Goldberg, Coordinator for Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874, today leads an interagency delegation, including representatives of the National Security Council and Departments of Treasury and Defense to Beijing.
His delegation will have meetings July 2^nd and 3^rd in Beijing with representatives of foreign affairs and other ministries involved in the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874. The purpose of the trip is to consult with our partners in the region on the implementation of this Security Council Resolution 1874. Ambassador Goldberg plans to remain in Beijing. We don’t have the details on the rest of his itinerary. We expect to very soon, and as soon as we have that itinerary, we’ll release the rest of his schedule.
And with that, I’ll go to your questions.
QUESTION: I have one about that trip. Is he going to be meeting with members of the private sector, with banks, with people that – you mentioned the White House briefing on --
MR. KELLY: The focus of his trip is to talk to the – is talk about the implementation of the resolution. So I expect that his meetings will be primarily official meetings, but I don’t have the full schedule in front of me.
QUESTION: And I guess you don’t have details of what Danny Glaser – the Treasury folks are going to --
MR. KELLY: No, I don’t. I’d refer you to those other agencies for details.
QUESTION: Honduras.
MR. KELLY: Elise. Yes.
QUESTION: Can you talk about the review of U.S. aid to Honduras in the wake of the coup –President Zelaya?
MR. KELLY: Yeah. As we talked about yesterday, there is a provision in section – I think it’s 7008 of the foreign operation act that obliges us to make a legal assessment of the facts on the ground and whether or not the funds cut-off provision applies to these circumstances. And so there is this process that’s going on right now in our Office of the Legal Adviser.
QUESTION: Well, but there are also things that you don’t need to go through these kind of complicated provisions, like the Millennium Challenge Account or other – I mean, aren’t you also reviewing kind of what you can do, kind of quickly, without the kind of complicated foreign service --
MR. KELLY: Well, I think – because of the situation and the very dramatic nature of the events there and our profound concern about what’s going on there, I think we’re looking at a number of aspects of our cooperation. But what I was referring to is this very, very specific legal provision that applies.
QUESTION: Just --
MR. KELLY: Yeah, Charlie.
QUESTION: -- without being simplistic, and I understand there are legalities, but if you’ve got a president who’s been ousted, and you’ve got troops in charge, not constitutionally elected, I’m --
MR. KELLY: Well, yeah.
QUESTION: -- not quite sure what the complication is.
MR. KELLY: Well, okay. You heard what the Secretary said yesterday. She said that there is a coup.
QUESTION: Well --
MR. KELLY: The President said there’s a coup.
QUESTION: Right.
MR. KELLY: We do have some facts, of course, and the facts are that the constitutional order in Honduras has been overturned. But there’s also a – there’s a process that we need to follow, and that we are following now. And it’s a legal matter. And as you all know, when you – when a legal issue is involved, it’s good to consult your lawyers, so that’s what we’re doing.
Yeah, Sylvie.
QUESTION: President Zelaya was supposed to come here later today and to meet with a U.S. official. Is it somebody from this building, and who?
MR. KELLY: Well, as you know, President Zelaya has gone to New York. We understand that he’s gone to the UN. He’s been invited by the president of the UN General Assembly to address the General Assembly. I think that’s – I don’t know if that has started yet, but that was the plan.
In addition, we understand that he wants to come down to Washington and participate in the special General Assembly of the Organization of American States. If he does come down to Washington, and we expect he will, State Department officials plan to meet with him.
QUESTION: Who?
MR. KELLY: I’m sorry?
QUESTION: Who?
MR. KELLY: I can’t tell you right now who he’s going to meet with. But we’ll be able to tell you later.
QUESTION: Well, if he’s the president, that you’re legally recognizing him as the president of Honduras, and he was just thrown out on a coup, and you’re raising --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- all this support for him, why doesn’t President Obama or Secretary Clinton meet with him?
MR. KELLY: Well, for one thing, Secretary Clinton is not in the office. For another, I think you’ll have to address that to the White House. This is just something that came up today, and I understand that people from the State Department will meet with him today.
QUESTION: Can you tell us, I mean, what your message to him would be when you meet him? He’s expressed some desire to return to Honduras on Thursday.
MR. KELLY: Well, I think our message is going to be the same message that we’ve said publicly, that Secretary Clinton said yesterday and President Obama has said – that we think that President Zelaya is the democratically elected constitutional president of Honduras and should be allowed to serve out the rest of his term. And we’re working very closely through the mechanism of the Organization of American States, and we think that what happened in Honduras was inconsistent with the principles of the Inter-American charter, and that we need to work this multilaterally.
At the same time, there are fast-moving events up at the UN, too.
And so I think this is an opportunity to show our support for the presidentially – I mean, democratically elected president of Honduras, and also talk to him about how we’ve been coordinating with our allies, and part of that is in the OAS.
QUESTION: Do you think it’s a good idea for him to return on Thursday like he wants to?
MR. KELLY: I’m not going to – I’m just – I think it’s a good idea for him to be reinstated as the president of Honduras.
QUESTION: Will the U.S. be willing to provide any security for him if he returns to Honduras on Thursday?
MR. KELLY: That’s just not a question I’m prepared to answer, actually.
Yeah, Jill.
QUESTION: Yeah, Ian, just getting back – I hate to be kind of asking another legal question.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: But just – you say constitutional – you do have the facts. The constitutional order has been overturned.
MR. KELLY: Right.
QUESTION: Okay. So is that the trigger? Is that enough to cut aid? Because then you said there’s a legal process to follow.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: In other words, have you defined – is that the trigger we have – you know, overthrow the constitutional order, therefore we have the right to cut the aid?
MR. KELLY: Well, we – like I say, there’s a process. We want to make sure that the newly confirmed Legal Adviser of the State Department Harold Koh and his team has a chance to make a determination on this.
QUESTION: Okay. So --
MR. KELLY: So that’s what’s happening right now.
QUESTION: Okay. So that’s not enough to stop the aid? The overturning of the constitutional order is not legally enough for you to stop that aid?
MR. KELLY: We need to have our legal experts look at the law, look at the facts on the ground, and make a determination.
QUESTION: And how long is that going to take?
MR. KELLY: Oh, it won’t take long. I can’t tell you exactly how long it’ll take, but I would expect it wouldn’t take very long.
QUESTION: Change of subject?
MR. KELLY: Change of subject? You have Honduras or --
QUESTION: No, change of subject.
MR. KELLY: Okay. Go ahead, Sylvie, and then we’ll get to you.
QUESTION: The meeting between Mitchell and Barak --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- this morning in New York. Do you have a readout?
MR. KELLY: As I understand it, the meeting is either still going on, or at least when I came down here, it was still going on. I was able to talk to one of his aides up in New York. He told me the discussions so far have been good and constructive, that this is part of our ongoing dialogue, Senator Mitchell’s ongoing efforts to get negotiations started, but that we don’t expect any dramatic agreement today.
QUESTION: And do you expect a statement or something at the end of this meeting?
MR. KELLY: That – I mean, that’ll be something for them to work out, whether they do a statement at all or they do a joint statement. I’m not sure. As I say, it’s still – as far as I know it’s still going on.
QUESTION: At least a readout from the American --
MR. KELLY: We’ll, see if we can get you a readout.
QUESTION: Yeah, okay.
MR. KELLY: Yeah, I think you had a question, so --
QUESTION: She covered it.
MR. KELLY: Covered it, good. Okay.
QUESTION: Just quickly on Afghanistan, if you could take this question? How much has the U.S. Government provided to the Criminal Justice Task Force and --
MR. KELLY: Under what auspices? Under the Afghan Government, you mean?
QUESTION: Yeah. There’s a Criminal Justice Task Force that goes after narcotics traffickers.
MR. KELLY: Okay. You’re looking for bilateral assistance?
QUESTION: Yeah. How much total are you --
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Okay. There may be some assistance we do through multilateral mechanisms, too. Okay, well, we’ll take that question.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) bilateral.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: And if I may get back to just one. Ehud Barak (inaudible), as you may have read, is reportedly offering a three-month settlement freeze while Secretary Clinton and President Obama have called for a full stop to all kind of settlement activity, full stop.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: How would you react to that proposal? It doesn’t sound like you’re really being heard in Israel.
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, what we’re doing right now, or what Senator Mitchell is doing, is working very hard to create the conditions that will enable both sides to resume negotiations. And you’ve heard me say many times from this podium that we believe that all parties have to meet their obligations under the Roadmap. And of course, you know for the Israelis, that means a stop to settlements, which means a freeze of all activity, including natural growth. The Palestinians have their own obligations under the Roadmap, and that’s stopping incitement and proving that they can improve security. We also have made it clear to Arab states in the region that they should take steps towards normalization.
As far as any kind of time limits, I think we’re not – we’re not interested in setting any kind of time limits before negotiations have even begun. And as you’ve also heard me say many times from this podium, we don’t really want to negotiate from the podium. We don’t want to negotiate via the media.
Jill.
QUESTION: Sorry. Can I clarify that?
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: What does that mean, “before negotiations have begun”? Does that mean before the Israelis and Palestinians talk about it they should be working on timelines, or before you and the --
MR. KELLY: Yeah, I just – what we want to do is get the parties to sit down, and I just don’t think it’s really fruitful for us to talk about any kind of time limit to those negotiations.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) there was a freeze of three months – the negotiations –
MR. KELLY: Well, like I say --
QUESTION: -- they have three months --
MR. KELLY: I just – I’m not going to get into the details --
QUESTION: Yeah, but that’s what you are relating to? That’s --
MR. KELLY: Well, no, I’m talking about the negotiations themselves – a time limit, a start point and an end point. I don’t think it’s useful for us to talk about.
QUESTION: It sounds like you’re getting out of this argument and for the longest time it’s between you – between the U.S. and Israel, and the criticism has been that it should be between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and it sounds like you’re trying to back out of that argument.
MR. KELLY: Well, I mean, this is what we want. We want the two sides to sit down. We want to get to a point where we have the kind of conditions where they can sit down and start talking.
QUESTION: A follow-up, please?
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: But if the Israelis agree to a three-month or a six-months freeze on settlement activity, all settlement activity, doesn't that give you a six-months window to try to get the peace process started? Would that be an acceptable compromise for you?
MR. KELLY: I’m not – as I say, I’m not going to negotiate from here, and I’m definitely not going to answer a question that begins “if.”
Yeah, Jill.
QUESTION: Ian, why is the Secretary working at home today?
MR. KELLY: I’m sorry?
QUESTION: Why is the Secretary working at home today?
MR. KELLY: Well, I think you can imagine why she’s working from home. She had a very serious break in her elbow, and she is – she’s recovering from that. I mean, you saw her yesterday. She’s energetic, she’s fully engaged, but we need to make sure that she heals and then can get back to a full schedule where she can come in every day.
QUESTION: Okay. We saw her yesterday and she did look good. That’s why I was just struck by the fact that she was back home today.
MR. KELLY: Yeah, well, she’s a little – she’s in some pain.
QUESTION: But we shouldn’t read anything into the fact that she is home and President Zelaya may be coming down here?
MR. KELLY: No, no, no, you shouldn’t read anything into that at all. I mean, that – I mean, we announced that – that part of her schedule was determined before we knew President Zelaya was coming down.
Sylvie, you’re getting a lot of questions.
QUESTION: Yes, I told you. Belarus.
MR. KELLY: Belarus.
QUESTION: Yes. The president, Belarus President Lukashenko today ordered the release of the U.S. citizen, the U.S. lawyer Emanuel Zeltser.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: Do you have any reaction?
MR. KELLY: I actually remember this case well because in a former life I – of course, I had some dealings in this case.
We understand that President Lukashenko has signed a presidential decree pardoning Mr. Zeltser. As you know, the Department and also our Embassy in Minsk have always advocated for Mr. Zeltser’s release on humanitarian grounds, and we welcome this news and are glad that his release appears imminent.
QUESTION: You are not a bit frustrated that his release after the visit of congressman – a U.S. congressman and not after the long work of your Embassy?
MR. KELLY: Yeah, I understand that the issue was raised during a meeting with my senator, Senator Cardin from Maryland. And I mean, I’ll just leave it to Belarusian authorities to discuss if there was any coincidence of timing. We’re just happy that this American citizen, who really has been quite ill, is now able to leave prison – apparently. Well, I shouldn’t announce it before it’s happened.
QUESTION: And also, Lukashenko appears to be willing to resume dialogue with U.S. Do you think it’s something U.S. will be ready to do?
MR. KELLY: Well, I do know from my previous job that this was a major obstacle in our bilateral relations. We still have other concerns, of course, with some of the actions of the Belarusian Government, and so I’m – we’re very happy that this one obstacle has been removed, and we’ll review our policy as necessary.
Yeah.
QUESTION: Thank you. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday he willing to send a special envoy to North Korea. Does the United States have made decisions yet to send a special envoy to North Korea?
MR. KELLY: I actually am not aware of that news. This is a special envoy for what purpose?
QUESTION: To get, you know, two American journalists.
MR. KELLY: Ah. Well, like I say, I am not aware of that, and we’ll look into it.
Yeah, Dave.
QUESTION: Ian, it appears that the Chinese Government has postponed the – this regulation that was going to require the Green Dam software.
MR. KELLY: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: Is this something that the United States worked out with China? Do you have a reaction to it?
MR. KELLY: Well, I don’t have an immediate reaction to that because, as I understand it, our Embassy is still seeking confirmation of it. They’ve gone into the Ministry of Communication, I believe. I’m looking for the exact title here. We had a lot of guidance today.
At any rate, we are seeking confirmation of it. As I’ve said before, we’re seeking a dialogue with the relevant Chinese authorities regarding our concerns and, of course, the concerns of others, including in the private sector, regarding this software. And so our Embassy has gone into the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to seek confirmation of this news if they’re going to delay the implementation of requiring this software.
QUESTION: You’re looking for information, or looking to set up a dialogue to --
MR. KELLY: Well, both. We’re looking for confirmation that they’ve actually decided to delay it, and we’re also looking to have a dialogue about these issues.
QUESTION: How’s that going? Do you have some sort of sign that that’s going to --
MR. KELLY: Well, I think we’ll have more information when the Embassy reports back --
QUESTION: Did the Embassy protest that one time, or did they go multiple times? Do you know?
MR. KELLY: I’m not sure of the frequency of their going in, Kirit.
QUESTION: I’m just curious whether they went in prior to the announcement that – you know, more recently.
MR. KELLY: Yeah. I don’t know if there’s a connection, but I do know the Chinese Government is very well aware of our concerns about this software.
Yeah, Arshad.
QUESTION: Ian, just to go back to something that you spoke about earlier. You said that the Legal Adviser’s Office is now formally looking at the question of whether there should be a legal determination on whether a military coup has occurred in Honduras.
MR. KELLY: Right.
QUESTION: One, yesterday, Secretary Clinton told us that you were withholding that determination for now and not --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: You know, she didn’t say that you had --
MR. KELLY: (Inaudible) withholding.
QUESTION: -- (inaudible) the process, but you know, holding on --
MR. KELLY: She was – okay. Finish your question?
QUESTION: I think it was withholding. Yeah. And –
QUESTION: She said --
QUESTION: Yeah, and so my question is does the fact that you’ve begun the process mean that you are no longer withholding that, that you may actually come to a quick decision on this? As you suggested – you were just now – you said you didn’t think it would take very long.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: So – because it – my understanding from yesterday was you were holding off on that determination, partly to give time for diplomacy to work.
MR. KELLY: Mm-hmm, yeah.
QUESTION: I’m trying to understand if the fact that L is now reviewing this --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- implies that you’re not withholding --
MR. KELLY: Right. Yesterday, we weren’t prepared to make a public determination that the – that this clause in the law applied. And as I said earlier, I spoke to our Office of Legal Adviser, and they’ve said we’ve got our analysis ongoing of this. So I would imagine that once we’ve made that determination, we’ll make the announcement.
QUESTION: But you’re already reviewing other areas that don’t fall into this specific clause on aid.
MR. KELLY: Yeah. We’re reviewing all of our assistance.
Jill.
QUESTION: Other subject?
MR. KELLY: Sure.
QUESTION: Russia. Do you have any update, since we’re getting close to the summit, on Rose Gottemoeller and her group working on START, et cetera?
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, I know that my erstwhile colleagues on team Russia is working extremely hard on preparing for the meetings between President Obama and President Medvedev. On – in early April when they met, of course, they instructed their respective governments to work on a number of issues, including coming up with some kind of – and I’m going to call it the wrong thing, but some kind of framework, some kind of roadmap for a successor arrangement to the START agreement, which, of course, runs out in early December. So that’s kind of a long way of answering that I’ll get back to you on what exactly Rose is doing. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Okay, thanks.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: On Iran, now that the Guardian Council has announced its decision and announced Ahmadinejad as the final winner with even more votes than before, is that enough for the U.S. Government, or are you still going to wait and see what happens on the street and by the opposition?
MR. KELLY: You know, as the Secretary said yesterday, we’re very concerned about what’s happening in Iran. We’re very concerned about this – what she called a credibility gap, or I think she even said a huge credibility gap. And so I think that the real question here is: Is this issue of the Iranian Government addressing these very real concerns of the Iranian people? And I think this process still has to play out.
QUESTION: Well, what are you waiting – what are you waiting to play out? I mean, are you waiting to see if the protests gain steam again and they – or they’re forced to make a decision? Are you waiting to see if Ahmadinejad gets sworn in again before you make a --
MR. KELLY: I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean by what are we waiting for.
QUESTION: Well, you say you’re waiting for it to play out. I mean, I’m just unclear what specifically you’re waiting for. I mean, are you waiting to see if the regime actually goes ahead and swears him in again as president to determine your next steps? I mean, you haven’t said whether you’re going to recognize the new government. I’m just not clear what you’re waiting to play out.
QUESTION: What is it that hasn’t played out?
MR. KELLY: Yeah, I – yeah. I think that there are – that the Iranian Government still has to take some action. It’s not just a matter of pronouncements. I think that they have to take very seriously these concerns of a huge part of their population.
QUESTION: Well, I know, but --
MR. KELLY: We don’t see that.
QUESTION: Right.
MR. KELLY: In addition, we don’t see that they’ve addressed the concerns of the international community about their nuclear program. So we’re still waiting for some actions.
QUESTION: Well, but – I know. I mean, you could wait indefinitely for some actions, but just kind of --
MR. KELLY: Well, maybe we – I hope we don’t.
QUESTION: But – okay, but, I mean, at what point do you say there will be consequences if you don’t see some actions? I mean, I just don’t understand what you – at what point you say, okay, this is played out, we’re going to make a determination of what to do.
MR. KELLY: Well, you know what the Secretary said yesterday. I mean, we’re going to – we are going to make decisions and base our actions on the national interests of the United States. We have two sets of concerns. We have the concerns about the lack of consensus in Iran, and we don’t think that the Iranian Government is respecting the will of its people. So that’s one set of concerns.
The other is the concerns of the international community about Iran’s nuclear program, and we’re going to just continue to raise these concerns until we see that action is taken.
QUESTION: Well, I understand. But that’s – waiting to see if – how it plays out, don’t you think that’s inconsistent with “we’re going to do what’s in the best interests of our national security interests regardless?”
MR. KELLY: I just – you’re asking us to take actions. I don’t think --
QUESTION: I’m asking you if you’re going to recognize the president or not. I’m asking if you’re going to recognize President Ahmadinejad as the legitimate government that you will be – that you say you want to deal with in – on your other national security interests.
MR. KELLY: All right. Well, I’ll make a few comments. One is that legitimacy of any government derives from the consent of the governed. I think that we’ve always had concerns about the political process in Iran. We also want to make sure that we have – that the concerns – that our concerns that affect our national security and those of our allies are also addressed. And we will make decisions on that based on our dealings with Iran, based on our national interests. We think, right now, that this internal situation needs to play out.
QUESTION: Sorry, can I follow up? But it has played out. The Guardian Council has said --
MR. KELLY: I don’t think it’s played out.
QUESTION: -- Ahmadinejad has – so what are you waiting for? You’re waiting for him to be sworn in?
MR. KELLY: Okay. I’ll say it again. We’re waiting for Iran to take some action.
QUESTION: What kind of action?
MR. KELLY: Well, they need to address the concerns of the international community.
QUESTION: But that’s separate from the election.
MR. KELLY: I know it’s separate from the election. We --
QUESTION: The nuclear file is separate from the election.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: And when it comes to that region, a lot of leaders have a legitimacy problem and a credibility gap with their people.
MR. KELLY: Yes.
QUESTION: And you still deal with them, like President Mubarak --
MR. KELLY: That’s right. We do.
QUESTION: -- or President Asad of Syria.
MR. KELLY: We do.
QUESTION: So at what point do you decide that you’re going to deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
MR. KELLY: Well, we haven’t reached that point yet. We will reach that point when – I mean, we’ve laid out exactly what we think needs to happen in the P-5+1. Javier Solana has invited Iran to participate. We have said that we will participate. Those actions haven’t taken place. That meeting hasn’t materialized.
QUESTION: So --
QUESTION: But that’s – sorry, that’s --
MR. KELLY: We will make decisions when we – when this situation materializes.
QUESTION: Okay. This is a theoretical question, but if tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says “I’m the president of Iran, I’m willing to sit down with you to talk about the nuclear file -- ”
MR. KELLY: You know I’m not going to answer that.
QUESTION: -- would you recognize him as the president, or who would you talk to?
MR. KELLY: I just – I’m not going to answer that.
QUESTION: So what are you saying --
MR. KELLY: This is a moot question. We’ll deal with it when it happens.
QUESTION: They said he’s – won the election, and that they’ve scheduled his swearing-in. And so the question is: Once he is sweared in, are you --
MR. KELLY: I’m not going to answer that.
QUESTION: But it could --
MR. KELLY: We’ll deal with it when it happens, Elise. It hasn’t happened.
QUESTION: Okay, okay. We’ll ask you when it happens.
QUESTION: Okay. But you are saying --
QUESTION: It’s a bit confusing.
QUESTION: It’s a bit confusing. You are saying that you are going to recognize Ahmadinejad when they decide --
MR. KELLY: Did I say that?
QUESTION: -- when they decide they will attend this P-5+1 meeting. I don’t see the relationship.
MR. KELLY: Look, as the Secretary said yesterday, this – it’s a – the situation is still evolving in Iran. We have real concerns. The Iranian people have concerns. When and if the Iranians respond to the concerns of the international community and decide to abide by their responsibilities under their agreements --
QUESTION: Then --
MR. KELLY: -- we will make our decisions based on our national interests.
QUESTION: How does that address the credibility gap?
QUESTION: So just for clarification, though, because it’s a bit confusing. The questions were based on the election.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: When will you justify the election. And then you said the Iranian Government needs to take some actions.
MR. KELLY: Right.
QUESTION: But you seem to be basing the actions on the nuclear issue.
QUESTION: Exactly.
QUESTION: So do they need to take actions on the nuclear --
MR. KELLY: No, no, no. I said they’re two separate issues.
QUESTION: Right, exactly, but --
MR. KELLY: There’s two separate issues.
QUESTION: -- people were asking about the elections and you said they need to take actions in your response.
MR. KELLY: Right.
QUESTION: But then you started – the actions you started saying they needed to take were on the nuclear issue. So I’m a little confused --
MR. KELLY: Well, okay.
QUESTION: -- what actions they need to take --
MR. KELLY: I’ll repeat.
QUESTION: -- in order to have the election recognized.
MR. KELLY: We don’t think that they’ve addressed the concerns of the people, and they need to do that. They have – they’ve taken actions against their own people, that they need to address these issues. That’s one set of issues. The other set of issues is the international set of issues, and they haven’t taken actions in that regard either.
QUESTION: A quick question, Ian, just about the linkage between the two sets of issues. Are we – I may be mistaken, but are we to understand that the United States will confer legitimacy on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and turn a blind eye on the crackdown if they do what you want --
MR. KELLY: Have we turned a blind eye? We have not turned a blind eye to what’s happened. (Inaudible.)
QUESTION: (Inaudible.) If they come to the table about the nuclear issue, then are you going to recognize --
MR. KELLY: We’ll deal with that when the situation arrives.
QUESTION: Can I move you to Honduras a minute?
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: To Latin America?
MR. KELLY: Okay.
QUESTION: Brazil has decided to remove the ambassador in Honduras. I want to know what information do you have from the U.S. Embassy in Honduras at this moment. Is there any plan of any ambassador removal if the situation deepens or there is any bad news there continuing?
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: And also, today, there is a special extraordinary session in the American Organization States.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: And I spoke with some of the ambassadors, and all the foreign ministers of Latin America are coming. I want to know who is representing the U.S. in the meeting.
MR. KELLY: Yeah. That’s correct. There is going to be a – as I said before, a special session of the General Assembly of the OAS. It’s going to be later on this afternoon. We’ll get you information on who will represent us at this meeting.
As far as the Embassy’s involvement, we – our ambassador there, Ambassador Llorens, remains in place. We’re concerned about the situation on the ground there, so we’ve issued a Warden Message and Travel Alert – I believe that was yesterday – advising American citizens to defer nonessential travel to Honduras until further notice.
The Embassy is open today only for emergency services, and so there are no visa services available. But as far as decisions on Ambassador Llorens, he remains in place.
QUESTION: What about nonessential personnel?
MR. KELLY: There – I don’t believe that there’s any plans now to remove nonessential personnel.
QUESTION: But the Secretary --
MR. KELLY: Of course, we’re evaluating the situation daily.
QUESTION: The Secretary’s not going to attend the OAS?
MR. KELLY: I don’t believe so.
QUESTION: Back to Iran, one last one. You say we don’t think they have addressed the concerns of the people.
MR. KELLY: Yes.
QUESTION: Okay. So what do they have to do to address the concerns of the people?
MR. KELLY: Well, there’s a number of things they could do. One, they could allow foreign journalists back in to allow international coverage of what’s going on. They can allow the free flow of information via the internet. They can start some kind of political process that involves all of the parties involved in the political process. There’s a number of things that they could do.
QUESTION: Sorry. Again, are you just saying those are things they need to do before you will recognize –
MR. KELLY: No, I’m just saying --
QUESTION: -- or is it just examples?
MR. KELLY: -- these are things that any government should do to --
QUESTION: Another --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- last question?
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: On North Korea, Treasury Department just announced that United States will freeze assets of Iranian companies that helps North Korean weapons program. Do you --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- have any comment?
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, we’re going to have an announcement on that. In fact, it may have already come out, but --
QUESTION: Treasury already put out the --
MR. KELLY: Treasury put it out, yeah. I’ll refer you to Treasury for the details of the implementation. But this just happened literally a few moments ago, so we’ll --
QUESTION: Do you think it’s going to have any effect, any impact on North Koreans?
MR. KELLY: Well, I certainly hope so. But for details, I’ll refer you to Treasury, but we’ll also have a Media Note that will --
QUESTION: Can you kind of explain to us what this effect is, I mean, specifically which companies --
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, Kirit, like I say, this literally just happened this morning. So we’ll put out a Media Note, and if you have further questions, you can let us know.
QUESTION: Was this coordinated with the trip of Ambassador Goldberg? Was this – the timing coordinated?
MR. KELLY: I don’t believe it was timed with the trip. I think it was – the decision was made on its own merits.
QUESTION: Do you have anything on the political situation in Niger?
MR. KELLY: I don’t think so. No, I don’t. What’s going on in --
QUESTION: There’s a political crisis. The president has dissolved the constitutional court and he is trying to stay in power --
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- instead of getting reelected in September.
MR. KELLY: Well, that doesn’t sound good.
QUESTION: No.
MR. KELLY: We’ll get you more information.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR. KELLY: Okay. Thanks.
QUESTION: One question.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: Diplomatic sources saying North Korea ship Kang Nam may be back in – heading back to North Korea, home. And you mentioned a number of times the U.S. is watching the vessel. So would you share with us what you have got so far about the situation?
MR. KELLY: No, I’m afraid I don’t have any further information on it.
(The briefing was concluded at 1:14 p.m.)
1DPB #09

Its Time to put the Kingdom of the Orcs into the Hurt Locker

The mullahs have successfully put down the rebellion, and the regime is secure for the time being. Obama still believes in engagement. Iran will not negotiate with him in good faith, and even if Obama then goes for sanctions, they'll be hopelessly inadequate to stopping Iran's nuke program. Beyond that, Obama has signaled that he's willing to live with Iranian nukes, rationally speaking an unacceptably dangerous gamble. Thus, the only option left is an Israeli attack on the nuke facilities--and the sooner the better, since the situation re. Iran's progress toward nukes is always getting worse. John R. Bolton

Its more than time...the great obama has outed himself as just another tin horn banana republic dictator lover and has cast the US of A in with the garbage lovers like castro and his ilk. Since when, in the 233 years of this great country do we side with dictators. Launch the fighters.

Looking over Our Shoulder for Obamabots We Celebrate 233 years of Liberty

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

War Pigs On the Prowl

Second Light Armored Reconnaissance war pigs aka LAV-25, are unleashed on an orc hunting operation in the Helmand river valley this week. The choppers on this war pig are armed with M242 Bushmaster chain gun and a 240 machine gun.

Happy Birthday, America!

Maj. Gina "Torch" Sabric, an F-16 fighter chick from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.,is the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing flight-safety officer.

Gov. Sarah Palin Will Resign July 26

Too True:"never explain--your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe it..."

USMC photo by CWO 3 Philippe E. Chasse
Two Eight Marines along with approximately 650 Afghan soldiers and police officers saddle up to board CH-53D Sea Stallion and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, Afghanistan, July 2, 2009. The Marines and ANSF are in a major operation in the Helmand Province to kick Taliban plans for global world domination in the ass.

The Pathetic Loser Slobbering Lap Dogs Finally Start to Wake Up...Too Late

Can you beat this for pathetic? Now the dynamic duo of Medusa Face and Chip Reid try to tap dance on Mr. Giggles about being played for suckers. Give me a break. Two mainstream media clowns wake up and we have NEWS everybody! Somebody give these two another doughnut a double the mickey in their coffee. Better yet, get Obama in there to give them the EVIL EYE.

Gratuitous AK. Gov. Sarah Palin Pix From Runners World

Runner's World has a great article on our favorite AK governor, Sarah Palin on running, of course. I am trying to talk the Divine Mrs. Burton into moving to Dead Moose, Ak.

Today Is Iraq's National Sovereignty Day

Today, Iraq will celebrate their government decreed National Sovereignty Day. Good on You. This day of freedom and democracy brought to you by the sacrifice of a lot of American blood and guts and taxpayer treasure. Maliki the Ingrate, ungrateful remarks "that Iraqis have won a "great victory" over the "foreign presence in Iraq." not with standing: You're welcome. I hope this day will stick in the craw of all the orc-head supporters in the area, such our good friends the money bags Saudi's, that will hurt until the ending of the world or until such time as all Arab people, Sunni or Shia or whatever, are free to vote for their own damn government and not one mandated by self appointed mullahs such as in Iran. The bottom line, you all know what this means now, this means that now you and your IA's and IP's will have to do ALL the killing of orcs in your own neighborhoods. Nothing says Freedom and Liberty and Democracy like killing brain sucking vampire orcs your own self. Congratulations, Iraq! Lets hope the sons of perdition you elected grow a decent set of balls to keep your country orc free and not let another "strongman" like Saddam carry them for you. If they don't:THROW THE BUMS OUT!

Of course, shoot it could be worse, cause, you know, having your own Whiskey and Democracy means never having to say you're sorry for having elected a left wing gutless weenie for POTUS who is a stout believer in Weenie Roast Diplomacy with Iranian Tyrant Mullahs and for sticking up with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega for the rights of deposed dictator Honduran President Mel Zelayaya.

Now, you all don't fret none, the force of 132,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and, of course, first and foremost ,U S Marines will be with you, just in case,just out of sight, just a bit beyond the Baghdad city limits. We'll keep the light on for you.

Eight Cap and Tax RINOs Who Voted W/Dems To Pass Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill

Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

(Phone numbers h/t commenter rightwingmom at Michelle Malkin)

These are the eight House Republicans who voted with the Democrats to send the Waxman-Markey bill to the Senate (left to right top) John MacHugh NY, Mary Bono Mack, CA., Leonard Lance NJ.,Chris Smith, NJ., Michael Castle, Del., Mark Kirk, Ill., Frank LoBiondo, NJ., Dave Reichert, WA. The bill passed 219-212 margin. Their votes were critical as 44 Democrats voted against the regulatory scam.

In the Dept of Money Talks, Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, was in the top 20 for PAC donations from the tree hugger in 2008 according to OpenSecrets.org. League of Conservation Voters $1000.00, Ocean Champions $4,000.00, Republicans for Environmental Voters $4,000.00.

Republicans for Environmental Protection also coughed up $4000.00 for Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington.

New Jersey Representatives also received donations from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. Rep. LoBiondo received $1, o20.00 the LCV and $2,010.00 from the Sierra Club in "06.
Rep.Leonard Lance NJ. received $250.00 from the League of Conservation Voters for his 2010 election.
Rep. Chris Smith NJ.,also received $250.00 from the League of Conservation Voters during the 2008 election cycle.

Columnist Clive Crook FT.com:

"The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself.

It proposes safety valves that will ease the cap if it threatens to have a noticeable effect on energy prices. It relies heavily on offsets – theoretical carbon reductions bought from other countries or other industries – so that big US emitters will not need to try so hard. It gives emission permits away, and tells utilities to rebate the windfall to consumers, so their electricity bills do not go up. It creates a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences – and the bottom line for all that is business as usual."

A Review of why Medal of Honor Awards are so scarce

Bout time:
"Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine combat veteran elected to Congress in November, the armed services committee has asked for a review of trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to determine if the low number of awards in the current wars is the result of “inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders.”

The committee also wants the Defense Department to survey officers and noncommissioned officers in leadership positions to look at attitudes about acts of valor. Hunter is looking for the reasons behind not just fewer nominations, but also a trend since the Vietnam War in which the only Medal of Honor awards have been for people who died during an act of valor."

Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin visiting AK troops in Kosovo

by Sgt. 1st Class Paul Wade
Soldiers from the 'Land of the Midnight Sun' got a huge morale boost when Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, and the state's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, trekked the approximately 5,000 miles to see their National Guard troops from the 49th state and to show their support for the service members of the Multi-National Task Force-East KFOR 11 mission.

"Our Soldiers are America's heroes and I want to do whatever I can do to show them support and take the time to do so, to travel and to see them," said Palin, who became Alaska's 11th governor in November 2006 and the first female to be elected.

The 130 troops, assigned to 1st Battalion, 207th Aviation Regiment, who wear the patch depicting the stars of the Big Dipper and the North Star, form the bulk of Task Force Arctic Eagle, who's main contribution to keeping the peace in the Kosovo region is commanding the skies with their UH-60 Black Hawks.

"I truly appreciate you from the bottom of my heart. I have such a sincere, great appreciation for all that you are doing to serve your state and your country," said Palin.

Camp Bondsteel Soldiers welcomed with smiles, flash bulbs and a whirlwind tour. That evening she met with senior leadership hosted by the commanding general of MNTF-E, Brig. Gen. Keith Jones, and was briefed on the current situation in the eastern sector. The next morning Palin was treated to a unique breakfast of pancakes and smoked salmon by her fellow Alaskans and to hear what the rank and file had on their minds.

"[The governor] is real down-to-earth and as a mother of a teenager, she is someone I can relate to," said 1st Lt. Sarah Payeur, Task Force Arctic Eagle, aviation liaison officer, 1-207th Avn. Regt. "With her son in the Army, serving in Iraq, she completely understands what we are going through and to me that is important when it comes to knowing what family support is all about," said the Eagle River, Alaska native.

Following a meet-and-greet opportunity, interested service members at the CBS theater, Gov. Palin and the Alaskan delegation were whisked away to visit a Task Force Artic Eagle adopt-a-school program in the nearby town of Ferizaj/Urosevac.

"I think it is great what our troops are doing in helping these students learn English," said Palin, who took a sidewalk tour of the town with one of the students, Albana Mani, who explained what the program is all about. The teenagers learned more about her during an exercise that involved reading and answering questions about her biography.

"We are very proud of our program and to show it off to the governor was an honor. It was important to let her see how we interact with the local community, to let her know the impact we are having with these students," said Spc. Robert Sapp, a chaplain's assistant with the 1-207th Avn. Regt., from Anchorage.

The tour of her short visit wound down when she returned to the flight line of CBS and took part in the pinning of newly promoted Soldiers and awarding achievements.

"The characteristics that you all embody; your self-determination and self-sufficiency, combined with teamwork that is needed in order to get the job done. You embody that. You have that discipline and tenacity and that patriotism that I pray our younger generation will adopt. Our country will be better off if we have more of you out there serving something greater than self," concluded Palin.

"It was an honor to host Gov. Palin for her visit to Camp Bondsteel. The Soldiers were elated to see her and appreciated that she made the long trip from Alaska to show her appreciation for their service," said Maj. Matthew Schell, the 1-207th's acting battalion commander.

Dancing in the Middle Ground with the Islamist Terrorists

To my limited reading, no one else has expressed the dilemma of fighting this war better than Ralph Peters. We have, he writes, an "increasingly effete (AKA effeminate, marked by self-indulgence, triviality, or decadence) view of warfare" vs. the Islamist Terrorist who is ready to"pay any price and bear any burden", ( once upon a time, the proud words of JFK,) to make sure America eats Moose Turd Humble Pie. Our POTUS disdains gunboat diplomacy preferring weenie roast diplomacy with tyrants during our July 4th celebration of freedom from tyranny: "They pray to their god for help in cutting our throats, and we want to chat." writes Peters and chillingly adds the reminder that we also have to watch out for our unarmed enemies: the mainstream media "journalists".

Ralph Peters on Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars
The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves.

Much has been made over the past two decades of the emergence of “asymmetric warfare,” in which the ill-equipped confront the superbly armed by changing the rules of the battlefield. Yet, such irregular warfare is not new—it is warfare’s oldest form, the stone against the bronze-tipped spear—and the crucial asymmetry does not lie in weaponry, but in moral courage. While our most resolute current enemies—Islamist extremists—may violate our conceptions of morality and ethics, they also are willing to sacrifice more, suffer more and kill more (even among their own kind) than we are. We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical holy warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win.

There are multiple reasons for this American amnesia about the cost of victory. First, we, the people, have lived in unprecedented safety for so long (despite the now-faded shock of September 11, 2001) that we simply do not feel endangered; rather, we sense that what nastiness there may be in the world will always occur elsewhere and need not disturb our lifestyles. We like the frisson of feeling a little guilt, but resent all calls to action that require sacrifice.

Second, collective memory has effectively erased the European-sponsored horrors of the last century; yesteryear’s “unthinkable” events have become, well, unthinkable. As someone born only seven years after the ovens of Auschwitz stopped smoking, I am stunned by the common notion, which prevails despite ample evidence to the contrary, that such horrors are impossible today.

Third, ending the draft resulted in a superb military, but an unknowing, detached population. The higher you go in our social caste system, the less grasp you find of the military’s complexity and the greater the expectation that, when employed, our armed forces should be able to fix things promptly and politely.

Fourth, an unholy alliance between the defense industry and academic theorists seduced decisionmakers with a false-messiah catechism of bloodless war. In pursuit of billions in profits, defense contractors made promises impossible to fulfill, while think tank scholars sought acclaim by designing warfare models that excited political leaders anxious to get off cheaply, but which left out factors such as the enemy, human psychology, and 5,000 years of precedents.

Fifth, we have become largely a white-collar, suburban society in which a child’s bloody nose is no longer a routine part of growing up, but grounds for a lawsuit; the privileged among us have lost the sense of grit in daily life. We grow up believing that safety from harm is a right that others are bound to respect as we do. Our rising generation of political leaders assumes that, if anyone wishes to do us harm, it must be the result of a misunderstanding that can be resolved by that lethal narcotic of the chattering classes, dialogue.

Last, but not least, history is no longer taught as a serious subject in America’s schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average person’s sense of warfare has been redefined by media entertainments in which misery, if introduced, is brief.

By 1965, we had already forgotten what it took to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the degeneration of our historical sense has continued to accelerate since then. More Americans died in one afternoon at Cold Harbor during our Civil War than died in six years in Iraq. Three times as many American troops fell during the morning of June 6, 1944, as have been lost in combat in over seven years in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, prize-hunting reporters insist that our losses in Iraq have been catastrophic, while those in Afghanistan are unreasonably high.

We have cheapened the idea of war. We have had wars on poverty, wars on drugs, wars on crime, economic warfare, ratings wars, campaign war chests, bride wars, and price wars in the retail sector. The problem, of course, is that none of these “wars” has anything to do with warfare as soldiers know it. Careless of language and anxious to dramatize our lives and careers, we have elevated policy initiatives, commercial spats and social rivalries to the level of humanity’s most complex, decisive and vital endeavor.

One of the many disheartening results of our willful ignorance has been well-intentioned, inane claims to the effect that “war doesn’t change anything” and that “war isn’t the answer,” that we all need to “give peace a chance.” Who among us would not love to live in such a splendid world? Unfortunately, the world in which we do live remains one in which war is the primary means of resolving humanity’s grandest disagreements, as well as supplying the answer to plenty of questions. As for giving peace a chance, the sentiment is nice, but it does not work when your self-appointed enemy wants to kill you. Gandhi’s campaign of non-violence (often quite violent in its reality) only worked because his opponent was willing to play along. Gandhi would not have survived very long in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s (or today’s) China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Effective non-violence is contractual. Where the contract does not exist, Gandhi dies.

Furthermore, our expectations of war’s results have become absurd. Even the best wars do not yield perfect aftermaths. World War II changed the planet for the better, yet left the eastern half of Europe under Stalin’s yoke and opened the door for the Maoist takeover in China. Should we then declare it a failure and not worth fighting? Our Civil War preserved the Union and abolished slavery—worthy results, surely. Still, it took over a century for equality of opportunity for minorities to gain a firm footing. Should Lincoln have let the Confederacy go with slavery untouched, rather than choosing to fight? Expecting Iraq, Afghanistan or the conflict of tomorrow to end quickly, cleanly and neatly belongs to the realm of childhood fantasy, not human reality. Even the most successful war yields imperfect results. An insistence on prompt, ideal outcomes as the measure of victory guarantees the perception of defeat.

Consider the current bemoaning of a perceived “lack of progress” and “setbacks” in Afghanistan. A largely pre-medieval, ferociously xenophobic country that never enjoyed good government or a central power able to control all of its territory had become the hostage of a monstrous regime and a haven for terrorists. Today, Afghanistan has an elected government, feeble though it may be; for the first time in the region’s history, some of the local people welcome, and most tolerate, the presence of foreign troops; women are no longer stoned to death in sports stadiums for the edification of the masses; and the most inventive terrorists of our time have been driven into remote compounds and caves. We agonize (at least in the media) over the persistence of the Taliban, unwilling to recognize that the Taliban or a similar organization will always find a constituency in remote tribal valleys and among fanatics. If we set ourselves the goal of wiping out the Taliban, we will fail. Given a realistic mission of thrusting the Islamists to the extreme margins of society over decades, however, we can effect meaningful change (much as the Ku Klux Klan, whose following once numbered in the millions across our nation, has been reduced to a tiny club of grumps). Even now, we have already won in terms of the crucial question: Is Afghanistan a better place today for most Afghans, for the world and for us than it was on September 10, 2001? Why must we talk ourselves into defeat?

We have the power to win any war. Victory remains possible in every conflict we face today or that looms on the horizon. But, for now, we are unwilling to accept that war not only is, but must be, hell. Sadly, our enemies do not share our scruples.

The present foe

The willful ignorance within the American intelligentsia and in Washington, D.C., does not stop with the mechanics and costs of warfare, but extends to a denial of the essential qualities of our most-determined enemies. While narco-guerrillas, tribal rebels or pirates may vex us, Islamist terrorists are opponents of a far more frightening quality. These fanatics do not yet pose an existential threat to the United States, but we must recognize the profound difference between secular groups fighting for power or wealth and men whose galvanizing dream is to destroy the West. When forced to assess the latter, we take the easy way out and focus on their current capabilities, although the key to understanding them is to study their ultimate goals—no matter how absurd and unrealistic their ambitions may seem to us.

The problem is religion. Our Islamist enemies are inspired by it, while we are terrified even to talk about it. We are in the unique position of denying that our enemies know what they themselves are up to. They insist, publicly, that their goal is our destruction (or, in their mildest moods, our conversion) in their god’s name. We contort ourselves to insist that their religious rhetoric is all a sham, that they are merely cynics exploiting the superstitions of the masses. Setting aside the point that a devout believer can behave cynically in his mundane actions, our phony, one-dimensional analysis of al-Qaeda and its ilk has precious little to do with the nature of our enemies—which we are desperate to deny—and everything to do with us.

We have so oversold ourselves on the notion of respect for all religions (except, of course, Christianity and Judaism) that we insist that faith cannot be a cause of atrocious violence. The notion of killing to please a deity and further his perceived agenda is so unpleasant to us that we simply pretend it away. U.S. intelligence agencies and government departments go to absurd lengths, even in classified analyses, to avoid such basic terms as “Islamist terrorist.” Well, if your enemy is a terrorist and he professes to be an Islamist, it may be wise to take him at his word.

A paralyzing problem “inside the Beltway” is that our ruling class has been educated out of religious fervor. Even officials and bureaucrats who attend a church or synagogue each week no longer comprehend the life-shaking power of revelation, the transformative ecstasy of glimpsing the divine, or the exonerating communalism of living faith. Emotional displays of belief make the functional agnostic or social atheist nervous; he or she reacts with elitist disdain. Thus we insist, for our own comfort, that our enemies do not really mean what they profess, that they are as devoid of a transcendental sense of the universe as we are.

History parades no end of killers-for-god in front of us. The procession has lasted at least five thousand years. At various times, each major faith—especially our inherently violent monotheist faiths—has engaged in religious warfare and religious terrorism. When a struggling faith finds itself under the assault of a more powerful foreign belief system, it fights: Jews against Romans, Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Christians and Jews. When faiths feel threatened, externally or internally, they fight as long as they retain critical mass. Today the Judeo-Christian/post-belief world occupies the dominant strategic position, as it has, increasingly, for the last five centuries, its rise coinciding with Islam’s long descent into cultural darkness and civilizational impotence. Behind all its entertaining bravado, Islam is fighting for its life, for validation.

Islam, in other words, is on the ropes, despite no end of nonsense heralding “Eurabia” or other Muslim demographic conquests. If demography were all there was to it, China and India long since would have divided the world between them. Islam today is composed of over a billion essentially powerless human beings, many of them humiliated and furiously jealous. So Islam fights and will fight, within its meager-but-pesky capabilities. Operationally, it matters little that the failures of the Middle Eastern Islamic world are self-wrought, the disastrous results of the deterioration of a once-triumphant faith into a web of static cultures obsessed with behavior at the expense of achievement. The core world of Islam, stretching from Casablanca to the Hindu Kush, is not competitive in a single significant sphere of human endeavor (not even terrorism since, at present, we are terrorizing the terrorists). We are confronted with a historical anomaly, the public collapse of a once-great, still-proud civilization that, in the age of super-computers, cannot build a reliable automobile: enormous wealth has been squandered; human capital goes wasted; economies are dysfunctional; and the quality of life is barbaric. Those who once cowered at Islam’s greatness now rule the world. The roughly one-fifth of humanity that makes up the Muslim world lacks a single world-class university of its own. The resultant rage is immeasurable; jealousy may be the greatest unacknowledged strategic factor in the world today.

Embattled cultures dependably experience religious revivals: What does not work in this life will work in the next. All the deity in question asks is submission, sacrifice—and action to validate faith. Unlike the terrorists of yesteryear, who sought to change the world and hoped to live to see it changed, today’s terrorists focus on god’s kingdom and regard death as a promotion. We struggle to explain suicide bombers in sociological terms, deciding that they are malleable and unhappy young people, psychologically vulnerable. But plenty of individuals in our own society are malleable, unhappy and unstable. Where are the Western atheist suicide bombers?

To make enduring progress against Islamist terrorists, we must begin by accepting that the terrorists are Islamists. And the use of the term “Islamist,” rather than “Islamic,” is vital—not for reasons of political correctness, but because it connotes a severe deviation from what remains, for now, mainstream Islam. We face enemies who celebrate death and who revel in bloodshed. Islamist terrorists have a closer kinship with the blood cults of the pre-Islamic Middle East—or even with the Aztecs—than they do with the ghazis who exploded out of the Arabian desert, ablaze with a new faith. At a time when we should be asking painful questions about why the belief persists that gods want human blood, we insist on downplaying religion’s power and insisting that our new enemies are much the same as the old ones. It is as if we sought to analyze Hitler’s Germany without mentioning Nazis.

We will not even accept that the struggle between Islam and the West never ceased. Even after Islam’s superpower status collapsed, the European imperial era was bloodied by countless Muslim insurrections, and even the Cold War was punctuated with Islamist revivals and calls for jihad. The difference down the centuries was that, until recently, the West understood that this was a survival struggle and did what had to be done (the myth that insurgents of any kind usually win has no historical basis). Unfortunately for our delicate sensibilities, the age-old lesson of religion-fueled rebellions is that they must be put down with unsparing bloodshed—the fanatic’s god is not interested in compromise solutions. The leading rebels or terrorists must be killed. We, on the contrary, want to make them our friends.

The paradox is that our humane approach to warfare results in unnecessary bloodshed. Had we been ruthless in the use of our overwhelming power in the early days of conflict in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the ultimate human toll—on all sides—would have been far lower. In warfare of every kind, there is an immutable law: If you are unwilling to pay the butcher’s bill up front, you will pay it with compound interest in the end. Iraq was not hard; we made it so. Likewise, had we not tried to do Afghanistan on the cheap, Osama bin Laden would be dead and al-Qaeda even weaker than it is today.

When the United States is forced to go to war—or decides to go to war—it must intend to win. That means that rather than setting civilian apparatchiks to calculate minimum force levels, we need to bring every possible resource to bear from the outset—an approach that saves blood and treasure in the long run. And we must stop obsessing about our minor sins. Warfare will never be clean, soldiers will always make mistakes, and rounds will always go astray, despite our conscientious safeguards and best intentions. Instead of agonizing over a fatal mistake made by a young Marine at a roadblock, we must return to the fundamental recognition that the greatest “war crime” the United States can commit is to lose.

Other threats, new dimensions

Within the defense community, another danger looms: the risk of preparing to re-fight the last war, or, in other words, assuming that our present struggles are the prototypes of our future ones. As someone who spent much of the 1990s arguing that the U.S. armed forces needed to prepare for irregular warfare and urban combat, I now find myself required to remind my former peers in the military that we must remain reasonably prepared for traditional threats from states.

Yet another counter-historical assumption is that states have matured beyond fighting wars with each other, that everyone would have too much to lose, that the inter-connected nature of trade makes full-scale conventional wars impossible. That is precisely the view that educated Europeans held in the first decade of the twentieth century. Even the youngish Winston Churchill, a veteran of multiple colonial conflicts, believed that general war between civilized states had become unthinkable. It had not.

Bearing in mind that, while neither party desires war, we could find ourselves tumbling, à la 1914, into a conflict with China, we need to remember that the apparent threat of the moment is not necessarily the deadly menace of tomorrow. It may not be China that challenges us, after all, but the unexpected rise of a dormant power. The precedent is there: in 1929, Germany had a playground military limited to 100,000 men. Ten years later, a re-armed Germany had embarked on the most destructive campaign of aggression in history, its killing power and savagery exceeding that of the Mongols. Without militarizing our economy (or indulging our unscrupulous defense industry), we must carry out rational modernization efforts within our conventional forces—even as we march through a series of special-operations-intensive fights for which there is no end in sight. We do not need to bankrupt ourselves to do so, but must accept an era of hard choices, asking ourselves not which weapons we would like to have, but which are truly necessary.

Still, even should we make perfect acquisition decisions (an unlikely prospect, given the power of lobbyists and public relations firms serving the defense industry), that would not guarantee us victory or even a solid initial performance in a future conventional war. As with the struggle to drive terrorists into remote corners, we are limited less by our military capabilities than by our determination to pretend that war can be made innocently.

Whether faced with conventional or unconventional threats, the same deadly impulse is at work in our government and among the think tank astrologers who serve as its courtiers: An insistence on constantly narrowing the parameters of what is permissible in warfare. We are attempting to impose ever sterner restrictions on the conduct of war even as our enemies, immediate and potential, are exploring every possible means of expanding their conduct of conflicts into new realms of total war.

What is stunning about the United States is the fragility of our system. To strategically immobilize our military, you have only to successfully attack one link in the chain, our satellites. Our homeland’s complex infrastructure offers ever-increasing opportunities for disruption to enemies well aware that they cannot defeat our military head-on, but who hope to wage total war asymmetrically, leapfrogging over our ships and armored divisions to make daily life so miserable for Americans that we would quit the fight. No matter that even the gravest attacks upon our homeland might, instead, re-arouse the killer spirit among Americans—our enemies view the home front as our weak flank.

From what we know of emerging Chinese and Russian warfighting doctrine, both from their writings and their actions against third parties, their concept of the future battlefield is all-inclusive, even as we, for our part, long to isolate combatants in a post-modern version of a medieval joust. As just a few minor examples, consider Russia’s and China’s use of cyber-attacks to punish and even paralyze other states. We are afraid to post dummy websites for information-warfare purposes, since we have talked ourselves into warfare-by-lawyers. Meanwhile, the Chinese routinely seek to infiltrate or attack Pentagon computer networks, while Russia paralyzed Estonia through a massive cyber-blitzkrieg just a couple of years ago. Our potential enemies believe that anything that might lead to victory is permissible. We are afraid that we might get sued.

Yet, even the Chinese and Russians do not have an apocalyptic vision of warfare. They want to survive and they would be willing to let us survive, if only on their terms. But religion-driven terrorists care not for this world and its glories. If the right Islamist terrorists acquired a usable nuclear weapon, they would not hesitate to employ it (the most bewildering security analysts are those who minimize the danger should Iran acquire nuclear weapons). The most impassioned extremists among our enemies not only have no qualms about the mass extermination of unbelievers, but would be delighted to offer their god rivers of the blood of less-devout Muslims. Our fiercest enemies are in love with death.

For our part, we truly think that our enemies are kidding, that we can negotiate with them, after all, if only we could figure out which toys they really want. They pray to their god for help in cutting our throats, and we want to chat.

The killers without guns

While the essence of warfare never changes—it will always be about killing the enemy until he acquiesces in our desires or is exterminated—its topical manifestations evolve and its dimensions expand. Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media.

While this brief essay cannot undertake to analyze the psychological dysfunctions that lead many among the most privileged Westerners to attack their own civilization and those who defend it, we can acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that, to most media practitioners, our troops are always guilty (even if proven innocent), while our barbaric enemies are innocent (even if proven guilty). The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion—were any additional proof required—that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves. And, of course, there is a penalty for the intellectual’s dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Of course, the media have shaped the outcome of conflicts for centuries, from the European wars of religion through Vietnam. More recently, though, the media have determined the outcomes of conflicts. While journalists and editors ultimately failed to defeat the U.S. government in Iraq, video cameras and biased reporting guaranteed that Hezbollah would survive the 2006 war with Israel and, as of this writing, they appear to have saved Hamas from destruction in Gaza.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.

In closing, we must dispose of one last mantra that has been too broadly and uncritically accepted: the nonsense that, if we win by fighting as fiercely as our enemies, we will “become just like them.” To convince Imperial Japan of its defeat, we not only had to fire-bomb Japanese cities, but drop two atomic bombs. Did we then become like the Japanese of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Did we subsequently invade other lands with the goal of permanent conquest, enslaving their populations? Did our destruction of German cities—also necessary for victory—turn us into Nazis? Of course, you can find a few campus leftists who think so, but they have yet to reveal the location of our death camps.

We may wish reality to be otherwise, but we must deal with it as we find it. And the reality of warfare is that it is the organized endeavor at which human beings excel. Only our ability to develop and maintain cities approaches warfare in its complexity. There is simply nothing that human collectives do better (or with more enthusiasm) than fight each other. Whether we seek explanations for human bloodlust in Darwin, in our religious texts (do start with the Book of Joshua), or among the sociologists who have done irreparable damage to the poor, we finally must accept empirical reality: at least a small minority of humanity longs to harm others. The violent, like the poor, will always be with us, and we must be willing to kill those who would kill others. At present, the American view of warfare has degenerated from science to a superstition in which we try to propitiate the gods with chants and dances. We need to regain a sense of the world’s reality.

Of all the enemies we face today and may face tomorrow, the most dangerous is our own wishful thinking.

America-Home of the Gangster State and Gangster Economics brought to you by Goldman Sachs

Thanks to Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, I have spent the previous hour getting a super headache reading Matt Taibbi's latest in Rolling Stone magazine:The Great American Bubble Machine AKA how Goldman Sachs has continually screwed America for a profit since 1929. Unbelievable! If you have ever asked yourself the puzzling question "why are gas prices going UP when gas demand is going down?" you really need to read this article. If you owned a house during the housing bubble and, like moi, were coming home to a chock full answering machine to "please call asap, you don't want to miss this opportunity to refinance" and you asked yourself WTF is going on. Why are they bugging me? Brother, the answer is in this article. I once told the Divine Mrs. Burton that the reason the mortgage companies were after me was due to a Great Scam going on and she, paused for a moment, gave me one of those looks and reminded me that in college, I once thought Immanuel Velikovsky was a great scientist. Ouch. Never stay married to the girl you dated in college ....they have an endless supply of ammo. Read the article. You won't regret it. It's full of OMG info. How rampant greed trumps passive democracy. I swear, if you thought Putin's Russia was a gangster state you don't know anything yet.


Taibbi-Goldman-Sachs

In Remembrance: Lance Corporal Gregory Edward MacDonald 6/25/2003 Bravo Co. 4thLAR

From a 2003 News Release by Belmont University:

"Lance Cpl. Gregory E. MacDonald, a 1995 graduate of Belmont University, was killed in Iraq. The Lowell Sun newspaper in Lowell, Mass., has complete - and moving - coverage.

MacDonald earned a degree in philosophy and social policy in 1995 from Belmont and a graduate degree from American University in Washington, D.C., in 2001.

From the Lowell Sun:

BURLINGTON - "That I have died means that I have failed to achieve the one thing in life I truly longed to give the world, PEACE," reads the last statement of Lance Cpl. Gregory E. MacDonald.

More than 200 friends and family mourned MacDonald at a military burial yesterday in Pine Haven Cemetery in Burlington, after services at St. Margaret's Church.

A 21-gun salute was fired in honor of the U.S. Marine whose life's work was to help achieve peace in the Middle East. MacDonald died June 25 in Hilla, Iraq, when his light armored vehicle turned over on his way to rescue ambushed American soldiers. He was 29.

The Washington Post reports MacDonald, who lived in the Washington D.C. area, joined the Marines after earning his master's degree at American University because he saw military service as a way to gain credibility and experience in his intended career in Middle Eastern affairs:

"He wanted to do foreign policy work," [friend Jeni] Spevak said, "and he wanted to do it for the Middle East, and he wanted to create peace in the Middle East."

The Post says MacDonald was "a cerebral man with red hair and blue eyes who loved books and classical guitar and studied philosophy as an undergraduate (and) did not fit the classic profile of an enlisted Marine."
************************************************************************************
Robert Seo grew up in Potomac, Maryland and attended the University of Maryland.
In 2000, after his freshman year of college, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. After
completing basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina, he served with Bravo Company,4th Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion as a reservist:

Gregory MacDonald and I served together in Bravo Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion prior to and during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I considered Greg as part of my family because he was a fellow Marine
and especially because he was a member of Bravo Company. I talked to him on numerous occasions, mostly in passing, with the longest occurring just a couple days before his death. It was my shift to watch the vehicles outside on the ramp and I remember that the desert sun was especially hot that afternoon. I was surprised to see
Greg in his vehicle cleaning his 240E machine gun not only because the weapon itself was hot enough to burn his hand, but also because weapons maintenance was hardly on any other Marine's list of priorities at that time of day. I struck up a conversation with him and learned that he was actually older than he looked, had a Master's Degree
and had the desire to leverage his experience from the war to make a difference in the Middle East when he came back home. I don't remember how long the conversation lasted, but I came away from it thinking that in addition to being a stellar Marine, he was an intelligent, well-spoken and compassionate person. Like many others, I will never forget the day I heard the news of the accident. It was a Wednesday evening and the sun was on its way down. I had just gotten to the chow hall for dinner and a Marine rushed in and announced that Bravo Company was to report for formation immediately. We all forgot about trivial matters such as how hungry we were because at that
moment, we all knew without a doubt that bad news awaited us. We ran into formation, mostly quiet and somber and bracing for the news that was about to hit us. While 1st platoon was on its way to respond to an ambush, the dirt canal road
gave way and a Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) had Fipped over. Several Marines were injured, and Greg MacDonald was killed. In the meantime, the sun had gone down and in the dark, we digested the worst news possible. Bravo Company was not
going home together as we had come. There are certain things that will always stand out in my mind from his ceremony in Iraq. Not a day goes by that I
don't recall the sinking feeling I got when Greg's rifle, bayonet fixed, was abruptly stabbed into the ground. My first instinct as a Marine was to cringe because a rifle should always be treated with respect and thus should never touch the ground, especially with its muzzle down. Then I felt even more uneasy. The full extent of the loss of Greg started to sink in at that moment because of the fact that he was not near his rifle. The entire time we were deployed, we kept our rifles within at least a few feet of our bodies and a weapon that was unaccompanied by its Marine was somewhat incomprehensible. When his weapon was surrounded by his empty boots, dog tags and
helmet, the reality had fully sunken in. I would never care to see so many grown men cry again.
Greg had so much potential and so many dreams that would never come to fruition. I had frequently heard throughout my life that I had so much potential, but that it was disappointing how I never put in the effort to fulfill it. I concluded that if I were to continue in the trajectory I was headed in and waste my talents away, I would be
letting Mac down, something I could not ever let happen.
Since his death, Greg has inspired me to live my life to my fullest potential
by relentlessly pursuing my goals. I was inspired to change my
major from something I had no interest in to one that I was passionate
about and in one that I excelled in. I was inspired to obtain a challenging
position in finance upon graduation from college. And most recently,
along with the training I received in the Marine Corps, I was
inspired to be prepared to persevere through mental and physical hardships
while training for and running the Ironman Triathlon in a foreign
country. I am honored to have served with Greg and all the others who
have dutifully served our country. Helping other veterans by raising
funds for Jericho in Greg's name is my way of saying thank you.

Signs of a Fail Revolution.

Twittering class is isolated. Revolution has not spread to other classes.

"Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution. Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops — definitely not drawn from what we might call the “Twittering classes,” would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons." Stratfor

And adding insult to injury- this post from Five Thirty Eight:

Nevertheless, it does seem to underscore the point that so many other commentators have been making: the protests are being facilitated to a large degree by the Internet. We've heard very little about protests outside of Tehran, even though there are some other fairly large cities -- Tabriz, Zahedan, Ardabil, Yazd -- where Ahmadinejad (ostensibly) received 50 percent or less of the vote. But we're seeing hardly any visitors from those other cities, except for Yazd from which we've gotten quite a few. If our traffic is even a loose proxy for the Internet situation in Iran in general, these people aren't Tweeting, and they certainly aren't reading the New York Times or the BBC. And they also, apparently, aren't protesting in great numbers.

Compare and Contrast Obama vs Reagan Response to Freedom Hating Orcs

The Death of Neda Agha Soltan

Neda- 27 years old and a philosophy student.

Are those protesting true believers in democracy? We do not know, because they have never been given the chance. What we do know is that they reject the dishonesty of a repressive theocracy. For that reason alone, we should stand with them.Michael Totten

Let us weep for Iran. Let us cheer the Iranians.

Repost from Neo-Resistance:Naj translation of Mir Hossein Mousavi Statement

In Washington, on this particular day, when the ocrs in Tehran are killing women and children for the wearing of the green, POTUSS Barack Hussein Obama the II left the White House for ice cream. He also had some tepid words of,what might be misconstrued as, support for the Iranian people, who, at present, are under assault at every corner, in their enduring quest for truth, justice and freedom. In Tehran, surrounded by the dead, the dying and the wounded Iranian people,at once, readily visible on YouTube, Mir Hossein Mousavi also made a statement:

In the name of God, the kind and the merciful

Indeed god demands you to safe keep what people entrust in you, and to rule them with justice. [this a verse of Koran]

Respectable and intelligent people of Iran,

These nights and days, a pivotal moment in our history is taking place. People ask each other: “what should we do?, which way should we go?”. It is my duty to share with you what I believe, and to learn from you, may we never forget our historical task and not give up on the duty we are given by the destiny of times and generations.

30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less.

Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet. I had come to show that it was possible to live spiritually while living in a modern world. I had come to repeat Imam’s warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that evading the law leads to dictatorship; and to remind that paying attention to people’s dignity does not diminish the foundations of the regime, but strengthens it. I had come to say that people wish honesty and integrity from their servants, and that many of our perils have arisen from lies. I had come to say that poverty and backwardness, corruption and injustice were not our destiny. I had come to re-invite to the Islamic revolution, as it had to be, and Islamic republic as it has to be.

In this invitation, I was not charismatic [articulate], but the core message of revolution was so appealing that it surpassed my articulation and excited the young generation who had not seen those days to recreate scenes which we had not seen since the days of revolution[1979] and the sacred defense. The people’s movement chose green as its symbol. I confess that in this, I followed them. And a generation that was accused of being removed from religion, has now reached “God is Great”, “Victory’s of God and victory’s near”, “Ya hossein” in their chants to prove that when this tree fruits, they all resemble. No one taught hem these slogans, they reached them by the teachings of instinct. How unfair are those whose petty advantages make them call this a “velvet revolution” staged by foreigners! [refering to state TV and Khameneni, perhaps!]

But as you know, all of us were faced with deception and cheatings when we claimed to revitalize our nation and realize dreams that root in the hearts of young and old. And that which we had predicted will stem from evading law [dictatorship], realized soon in the worst manifestation.

The large voter turnout in recent election was the result of hard work to create hope and confidence in people, to create a deserving response to those whose broad dissatisfaction with the existing management crisis could have targeted the foundations of the regime. If this good will and trust of the poeple is not addressed via protecting their votes, or if they cannot react in a civil manner to claim their rights, the responsibility of the dangerous routs ahead will be on the shoulders of those who do not tolerate civil protests.

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these. Now, by confirming the results of election, by limiting the extent of investigation in a manner that the outcome will not be changed, even though in more than 170 branches the number of cast votes was more than 100% of eligible voters of the riding, the heads of the state have accepted the responsibility of what has happened during the election.

In these conditions, we are asked to follow our complaints via the Guardian council, while this council has proven its bias, not only before and during, but also after the election. The first principle of judgment is to be impartial.

I, continue to strongly believe that the request for annulling the vote and repeating the election is a definite right that has to be considered by impartial and nationally trusted delegation. Not to dismiss the results of this investigation a priori, or to prevent people from demonstration by threatening them to bloodshed. Nor to unleash the Intelligence ministry’s plain clothes forces on people’s lives to disperse crowds by intimidation and inflammation, instead of responding to people’s legitimate questions, and then blaming the bloodshed on others.

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners. Be sure that I will always stand with you. What this brother of yours recommends, especially to the dear youth, in terms of finding new solutions is to not allow liars and cheater steal your flag of defense of Islamic state, and foreigners rip the treasures of the Islamic republic which are your inheritance of the blood of your decent fathers. By trust in God, and hope for the future, and leaning on the strength of social movements, claim your rights in the frameworks of the existing constitution, based on principle of non-violence.

In this, we are not confronting the Basij. Basiji is our brother. In this we are not confronting the revolutionary guard. The guard is the keeper of our revolution. We are not confronting the army, the army is the keeper of our borders. These organs are the keepers of our independence, freedom and our Islamic republic. We are confronting deception and lies, we want to reform them, a reform by return to the pure principles of revolution.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say “takbeer” and don’t consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won’t be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won’t have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

Your brother and companion

Mir Hossein Mousavi

Just Because....

"And where is our (current) president? Afraid of “meddling.” Charles Krauthammer in Hope and Change-Not for Iran
trying to have his cake and eat it too- even at the expense of Iranians

Photos of Wed. Hafte Tir Square Teheran Protest are Up

Photos of yesterday's hugemongous protest by Hamed Saber are up at Picasa

Oh Chitlins! Letterman is in for it now..He's P'ed Oh'ed Cynthia Yockey

Looks like Letterman's days of cheap shots at Palin are over as he has incurred the wrath of Cynthia Yockey who has simple "objectives" and they are all about a millionaire clown who jokes about raping girls whose mother is the Governor of Alaska:

"Letterman has a five-year-old son with a long-time partner he married in March. He is 62 and has had a quintuple heart bypass. If it occurs to him that he needs to spend time with his family and focus on his health, and retires IMMEDIATELY, say, by Friday, June 19, 2009 — I’m a great believer in being specific about objectives — well, everybody’s a winner."

Cynthia Yockey site

Fire David Letterman web site

I think Letterman is about to catch a swarm of earth quakes, followed by a shower of poison arrows from the sky. Time to walk the plank, big guy, spend more quality time with your family.

They are on the Summit

AKGovSarahPalin"Just spoke w/Marc Hoffmeister & Operation Denali climbing team – they called from the mountain’s summit! So proud of their courage & spirit!11 minutes ago from web" Army Lt. Col. Marc Hoffmeister, top left; Army Spc. Dave Shebib, top right; retired Marine Capt. Jon Kuniholm, bottom left; and retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Nyman -- all wounded veterans -- on the summit of North America's highest peak, Courtesy photo

POTUS Barack Hussein Obama II inaugural address MSG...unless its inconvenient

President Obama "To all other peoples and governments who are watching today . . . know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more."

He added: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."