This Wacky Presidential Race

Iran: Nuclear News

The dance continues:

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made the following statement on Friday on behalf of the five permanent Security Council members and Germany after they met to discuss Iran's nuclear program.

"We've just had a positive and productive meeting of five foreign ministers and the vice-foreign minister from China to talk about the next steps in our approach to the grave problem that we see in respect of Iran's nuclear program.

"Firstly, we are united in our belief that the threat posed by this enrichment program to stability is very serious and it's one that we want to address directly.

Big words, must mean they have finally had it, right? Well, no.....

Same tactic, different day:

"Secondly, we are united in our determination to pursue a twin-track strategy. Last month, at our instigation the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1803 setting out a range of sanctions, the third set of sanctions against Iran.
[snip]
"And our meeting today has been dedicated towards taking the offer that we made in June 2006, reviewing it and updating it, and I'm glad to say that we've got agreement on an offer that will be made to the government of Iran.

In the meantime, Khamenei has stepped into the ring. You know, just to set the record straight:

Ali Khamenei, mullahs’ supreme leader in a speech on Sunday (5/4/08) vowed that Iranian regime would press ahead with its nuclear program, two days after major powers said they had prepared a new offer to convince Tehran's regime to halt its nuclear activities.

“We will continue on our own path with strength” and “no threats would deter” us to “back down”, the sate-run radio quoted Khamenei as saying on a visit to the southern Fars province.

Khamenei's remarks came after the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia -- and Germany agreed on Friday to offer a new package of incentives to the Iranian mullahs in return for ceasing uranium enrichment activities, a major component of building a nuclear bomb.

So, it seems the Security Council is still, singing in the wind. And, Rt. Hon. Lord David Waddinton, QC, agrees:

The Iranian Regime’s nuclear ambitions are a threat to world peace. In dealing with this threat and with the Regime’s unbridled meddling in Iraq and the Middle East, the West needs to make a strategic choice.

Iran’s mullahs have managed to remain several moves ahead of us thus far, and last August Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was able to say with conviction: “Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap.”

The chairman of the United States’ Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael G. Mullen acknowledged in April that Tehran was continuing to funnel weapons and other aid to extremists in Iraq for use against Coalition troops. He highlighted in particular the “increasingly lethal and malign influence” exercised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s extra-territorial Qods Force, which is bent on destabilizing not only Iraq but the rest of the Middle East.

Admiral Mullen’s words were then backed up by the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, who on Monday told the Security Council that the Revolutionary Guard Qods Force "continues to arm, train, and fund illegal armed groups in Iraq”. He then added, "This lethal aid poses a significant threat to Iraqi and multinational forces and to the stability and sovereignty of Iraq."

The Revolutionary Guard has also had a pivotal role in furthering the regime’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. The main opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), claims that the Revolutionary Guard is running a secret center to build a nuclear warhead at Mojdeh, southeast of Tehran. The Guard also supervises all uranium enrichment activity at the infamous Natanz complex.

Today, the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany meet in London to expand on an earlier offer of economic incentives to Tehran in return for a promise by the Regime to halt uranium enrichment.

The international community seems to be almost entirely unaware of the regime’s stated intention to pursue its atomic work at any cost, and yet Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been quite brazen about it.
In February he boasted that Iran had gradually managed to pacify the international community’s demands that Iran comply with UN resolutions.

“Those people who used to say Iran's nuclear activity must be dismantled are now saying they are ready to accept our advances, on condition that it will not continue indefinitely,” Khamenei said. “This is a great advance that would not have been realized except with perseverance."

Ahmadinejad is also on record as saying in February,

"If they [the Security Council] want to continue with that path [of sanctions], we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years. ... If they continue [with this pressure], we have designed reciprocal actions." I fear that the “reciprocal actions” would be felt on the streets of Baghdad, Beirut and the Gaza Strip in attacks masterminded by the Revolutionary Guard.

Surely if the West is really determined to address the threat from Tehran, it needs to show some muscle rather than offer more concessions to a regime with no intention of abandoning its unlawful activities.

So what is the answer? Could it be Israel, again?

Israel Has Specific Inelligence On An Iranian Nuke

From Real Clear Politics

Rounding Up Wright's Wreck

With his "speaking tour" over the last three days, Jeremiah Wright has managed to do the impossible this political season: unite pundits from the left and the right in agreement about how badly he's hurting Barack Obama's quest for the White House.

For a brief tour of the landscape, start with Bob Herbert, who asks the question that is on everyone's mind: why is Wright doing this?

All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come up with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.

This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why - if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks - does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

In the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg says with his performance yesterday Wright exploded the "I was taken out of context" excuse:

Wright is every bit as radical as his detractors claimed and explodes Obama's messianic rhetoric about standing foursquare against divisiveness. Which is why that chorus you hear rising up from the John McCain and Clinton campaigns sounds an awful lot like this: "God damn Jeremiah Wright? No, no, no: God bless Jeremiah Wright!"

Eugene Robinson says he's "had it" with Rev. Wright and his "egocentric" response, and deconstructs the false claim, made four times yesterday by Wright at the National Press Club, that this was not an attack on him but an assault on the black church. Robinson writes:

Historically and theologically, he [Wright] was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus.

Sadly, it's time for Obama to return the favor.

Read the rest here

Taliban attack Afghan president

Militants firing automatic weapons and rockets attacked the Afghan president at a ceremony in Kabul, missing their target but killing three other people and wounding eight.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault that sent President Hamid Karzai and foreign ambassadors scurrying for cover, underscoring the fragile grip of his US-backed government.

Gunmen opened fire as a 21-gun salute echoed over the capital at an anniversary event to mark the mujahedeen victory over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Hundreds of people, including army and police that had formed an honour guard inspected by Mr Karzai minutes earlier, fled in chaos as shots rang out. The president was hustled away, surrounded by bodyguards, and left in a convoy of four black SUVs.

The gunfire apparently came from a three-story guesthouse, popular with migrant labourers, about 300 yards from the stands where Mr Karzai was seated alongside cabinet ministers and senior diplomats who all escaped injury. A US Embassy official confirmed US Ambassador William Wood was also unharmed.

An Afghan MP, who was about 30 yards from the president, was among the dead.

Continued


AP reporter's account of the armed attack on Afghan president

KABUL, Afghanistan: The first shot sounded sharply. It was clear something was wrong.

I heard the second crack, and a third, fourth, fifth, and at that point all the journalists were on the ground, ducking from the whizzing bullets. The Taliban were attacking a ceremony led by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"Get down! Get down!" people yelled to each other.

Karzai and hundreds of Afghan and foreign dignitaries had been preparing to take to their seats across from Kabul's largest mosque. They were marking the 16th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet-backed communist regime in Afghanistan.

The gunfire broke out as a marching band was playing the national anthem.

Two American soldiers who had been saluting in the bleachers near the president pointed to some nearby houses, from where the gunfire appeared to have come. They still put their hands back up to their caps in salute as the anthem ended.

Continued

Shrinking penis panic & Phone Rape

You know, things tend to be more interesting in some parts of the world. And today, I found two uh, interesting stories at once, without even trying. And, they are both true. LOL

Shrinking penis panic causes chaos in Congo
Police arrest 13 suspected sorcerers

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Phone Rape

Sandmonkey say's:

A Tunisian family is suing a 30 year old man for "raping their 20 year old daughter through phone sex". It seems that while they were having phone sex, the girl kinda punctured her hymen. The argument is that the two of them had sexual relations, even through the phone, that led to the girl's loss of hymen. How that is rape, given that the girl did it to herself, I have no idea. But what do I know? But if it works and they convict the guy, await paternity suits for children conceived through cyber sex.

Iraqi Army continues their fight & Sadr threatens war

Artillery fire and bomb blasts shook a militia-held district in the southern city of Basra today as U.S. and British forces backed up Iraqi troops launching a new offensive in the area.

"JAM tried to prevent them from entering, but fierce air strikes enabled the Iraqi Army to take over control of the main streets and roads in Hayaniyah," one witness said.

Hyaniyah has been surrounded by Iraqi forces for several days, but today's actions marked the first time they had attempted to take over the neighborhood.

Meanwhile,


Muqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shia Muslim leader, has threatened to declare "open war" if a security crackdown by Iraqi and US forces against his loyalists is not called off.

He said in a statement on Saturday that he was giving a final warning to the Shia-led Iraqi government "to take the path of peace and stop violence against its own people".

"If it does not stop the militias that have infiltrated the government, then we will declare a war until liberation," he said.

Al-Sadr also accused the Iraqi government of being too close to the US military.


I say, "bring it on". Maybe then, Iraq will finally get rid of this parasite.

Obama's leaking balloon

Today at American Thinker, an excellent breakdown of Obama's surrealistic trip to reality, in:

The Obama Aesthetic

Barack Obama's campaign has been all about image. The well-dressed, impeccably groomed, and elegantly articulate speaker was able to speak of hope, change, and unity, and for awhile the public bought it. Capitalizing on the huge store of guilt, compassion, and hope for better racial relations among the vast majority of Americans of all races, Obama posed as the man who might heal the wounds of the past.

The bonhomie lasted for months, as the press corps, no strangers to tObama's haloheir own guilt and hope and leftist inclinations, averted its eyes from those elements of his politics and life story that were discordant with a unifier's mission, and portayed him as almost supernaturally virtuous. Obama long ago learned how to disarm strangers who might find him an unusual or perhaps threatening figure, and as long as the scrutiny didn't get too detailed, the game worked splendidly.

But that was before Hillary Clinton's campaign took him seriously. Before the Clinton war room wizards, past masters of planting stories and themes in friendly media hands, got to work on him.

Read the rest here.