Mohammad: Excuse me, sir. I have a message for the international community. Would you please let me tell it?
Roberts: Yes, go ahead.
Mohammad: Americans, European Union, international community, this government is not definitely — is definitely not elected by the majority of Iranians. So it’s illegal. Do not recognize it. Stop trading with them. Impose much more sanctions against them. My message…to the international community, especially I’m addressing President Obama directly – how can a government that doesn’t recognize its people’s rights and represses them brutally and mercilessly have nuclear activities? This government is a huge threat to global peace. Will a wise man give a sharp dagger to an insane person? We need your help international community. Don’t leave us alone.
Chetry: Mohammad, what do you think the international community should do besides sanctions?
Mohammad: Actually, this regime is really dependent on importing gasoline. More than 85% of Iran’s gasoline is imported from foreign countries. I think international communities must sanction exporting gasoline to Iran and that might shut down the government.
Oy. Wake me up when the nightmare is over, Please. 🙄
They may exercise their right to peaceful nuclear power, have sanctions lifted and receive security guarantees, if they can prove they have no nuclear weapons program and will cease subverting through their Hezbollah-Hamas proxies the peace process Obama is pursuing between Israel and Palestine.
If Iran refuses Obama’s offer, she will start down a road at the end of which are severe sanctions, escalation and a war that Obama does not want and Iran cannot want — for the winner will not be Iran.
In the ongoing debate between President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney on torture, former CIA terrorism expert Michael Scheuer points out how both leaders’ refusal to address U.S. interventionism as the primary catalyst for terrorism makes us all “less safe.”
When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was attacked by Republican state leaders for not accepting federal stimulus dollars, it was worth pointing out the utter uselessness of GOP politicians who refuse to follow through on their conservative rhetoric.
This news broke last night, but I was not in any mood to write about it.
Video Report, showing NY’s Mayor Bloomberg:
Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.
The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, officials said. But the men did not know the bombs, obtained with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were fake.
The arrests capped what officials described as a “painstaking investigation” that began in June 2008 involving an F.B.I. agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America. As part of the plot, the men intended to fire Stinger missiles at military aircraft at the base, which is at Stewart International Airport, officials said.
“This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. The mayor was expected to appear at 6:45 a.m. Thursday at the Riverdale Jewish Center morning services, joined by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.
The charges against the four men represent some of the most significant allegations of domestic terrorism in some time, and come months into a new presidential administration, as President Obama grapples with the question of how to handle detainees at the Guantánamo Bay camp in Cuba.
Rabbi Jonathan I. Rosenblatt, the senior rabbi at the Riverdale Jewish Center, a modern Orthodox congregation, said the police informed him on Wednesday evening that his synagogue was a target of the plot, as well as the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue that is a short distance away, on Independence Avenue. The two buildings are about six blocks apart, each with a brick facade. Outside the synagogues on Wednesday night, the streets were eerily quiet.
Rabbi Rosenblatt said in a phone interview that he took the news with “shock, surprise — a sense of disbelief that something which is supposed to belong to the world of front pages and the evening news had invaded the quiet world of our synagogue.”
Of course, the Neo-Conservative Blogs are all over this one. A couple of things to point out:
There’s no proof at all, that these guys were connected to any sort of formal terrorist group
They never were able to obtain any sort of real weapons
So, what we have here is a group of wanna-be’s who got caught. This is what, the second time? The first was the much hyped Fort Dix plot; which turned out to be a great deal of nothing. I am sure that the Conservative media and blogs are going to hype this for all it is worth. The liberal-controlled media; hopefully, will take a more reasoned approach to the situation and report the facts, and shy away from the hype.
Do not misunderstand me here. I personally believe that the war on terrorism, as George W. Bush rightfully called it, is quite real. However, I have a hard time believing that this group of bumbling idiots were a part of it formally. If anything, these guys were a group of morons who could not even make a pipe bomb; much less a damn bomb capable of causing any sort of real damage.
As to why they did it. These guys were upset about our involvement in Afghanistan. We can expect to see this sort of a thing, as that War progresses. Now the idiots on the far liberal left will try and say that this is why we should leave Afghanistan. Which any sane, rational person knows is foolish. We should not leave until Osama and his henchmen are dead and Al-Qaeda is formally defeated. Some say this is impossible. I believe nothing is impossible, if it is done correctly. The far left likes to bring up that Russia tried to fight a war in this region and ended up pulling out. I say; apples and oranges. Different kind of a war, and the Russians did not have nearly the Military that we have and the technology that we have today.
The good thing about all this is, that this terrorist cell was broken up and these idiots are going to jail. Thanks to the fine work of our men at the F.B.I. Good show guys, keep up the good work.
Update: …and then there’s the Libertarian conspiracy theorist angle. No wonder the Republicans think that most libertarians are kooks.
How the news coverage of the swine flu isn’t so much indicative of any serious crisis, but the mainstream media’s corporate and government, PC sensibilities.
The way to tell an ideologue from a realist, and the reason realists are not simply ideologues posing as something else, is that the ideologue will persist in a course of action long after it has failed and long after everyone knows it has failed because he thinks that his “values” demand it. Instead of “let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” the ideologue says, “I am right, and the world can go to hell if it doesn’t agree.” The ideologue is terrified of having to make adjustments and adapt to the world as it really is, because these adjustments reveal to the ideologue just how far removed from that reality he has become. The ideologue keeps redefining the justification for the policy, he keeps rewriting history to suit his own purposes, and he never accepts responsibility for the failure of his ideas, because he believes they have never been faithfully followed. For the realist, cutting one’s losses and reassessing the merits of a policy are always supposed to be possibilities, but for the ideologue the former is equivalent to surrender and the latter is inconceivable. In his greatest confusion of all, Goldberg manages to mix up realists with their opposites.
Gosh is he ever right. I have never quite understood the whole “Defend Israel to the death!” mantra that emanates from those Neo-Conservative cesspools. Only thing further I can add to that, is what was described above is basically what the George W. Bush Administration was for the last 8 years. Ideology that was out of touch with the rest of the World. Believe me when I say this; I am no fan of Islam or the Islamification of America. But Iraq was a unneeded diversion from the REAL war on terror that was in Afghanistan; even now, there are signs that we might just have squandered that opportunity.
The thing that I detest so greatly about the Neo-Conservatives is the whole, “You’re either with us or your an Anti-American” bit that was put on those of us, who felt Iraq was just wrong; that and the whole playing of the race card towards anyone that spoke out against the Iraq war or the Neo-Conservatives foreign policy stance. A foreign policy; that while it may have kept us safe in the short term, in the long term, it makes more hated, and more vulnerable to attack, both here and abroad.
This is why I go out of my way to identify myself with the Paleo-Conservative right, and not your “Weekly Standard” Neo-Conservative right. Because I disagree with the Bush Doctrine, the Iraq War and the whole idea of Christians aligning themselves with unbelievers; otherwise known as Jews, to support a Country that Christians, that is if they’re even truly Saved will somehow occupy once Christ returns for his Church. Which is pretty funny, considering the Bible says he will create a New Heaven and New Earth.
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