1. CLUELESS. Useless. Unforgivable. Beyond ignorant. Hubris. Loathsome.

   We’re quite possibly F**ked.

2. This is just more of the same. Obama extolls his virtue as a peaceful person. He wants to talk even if you do not want to talk. And, if you won’t come to the table, he’ll just invite you again and again until, in shear desperation, you hint at perhaps, maybe, wanting to talk next year.

   The loss of ambiguity makes all much less safe, as it invites rogue regimes to move more aggressively without fear of reprisal from the U.S.A. Our allies (if any countries still view us in that regard) no longer have reason to ally themselves with us. We no longer share common interests, like self defense. New alliances will be made, and soon.

   Speaking of which, isn’t it strange that Hamid Kharzai is moving quickly and dramatically to ally Afghanistan with Iran. He even stated that if pushed by the Obami to create a more legitimate government he might join the Taliban. In that part of the world the only thing that is respected is strength. If Kharzai is perceived as weak because he continues to ally himself with the what is a weak U.S.A. he is as good as dead, and he knows it.

   The only thing I can truly say about Obama is that he still continues to amaze with his fecklessness. How many more rabbits is he going to pull out of his bag of sick tricks?

3. One accomplishment of Obama’s if not perhaps worthy of respect should be acknowledged for it’s difficulty to accomplish is as Neo pointed out making Jimmy Carter project an image of strength in comparison Was it Churchill who opined there is a lot of ruin in a nation? A pity we’re having to find out.

4. Obama’s shrewd negotiation on Nuclear disarmament, and what has given up and what he has gained in the process reminded me of this poem by Shel Silverstein:

   My dad gave me one dollar bill
   ‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
   And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
   ‘Cause two is more than one!

   And then I took the quarters
   And traded them to Lou
   For three dimes-I guess he don’t know
   that three is more than two!

   Just then, along came old blind Bates
   And just ’cause he can’t see
   He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
   And four is more than three!

   And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
   Down at the seed-feed store,
   and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
   And five is more than four!

   And then I went and showed my dad,
   and he got red in the cheeks
   And closed his eyes and shook his head-
   Too proud of me to speak!

   I think we will all sleep a little more peacefully at night. We’ll never even know what hit us!

5. oops
   first attempt at using advanced (for me) extml techniques

   operator error

6. With this move, explaining Obama will have to shift from the Nixon era injunction, “Follow the money,” to “Follow the mommy.”

7. People who have lived in a shelter, always – and without ever knowing anything else – soon take it for granted. They assume that it will always be there; that it is, in fact, the natural order of things. It becomes invisible, because it has become so familiar. And because it is invisible, and familiar, and no one has any idea of what conditions are like without that shelter – well, then, can people be forgiven for assuming that shelter can’t be very important, can it?

8. Oh I know, it’s like he’s on a Fulbright. “Be President for A Year – Apply now, get credit for Grad School!”

9. There is theory and then there is reality.

   If the theory Obama and crew are working from is that by becoming more like our Socialist European neighbors will strengthen our country and make it more secure I think one possible reality is that, like our Socialist European neighbors who placated evil in the name of pursuing peace we will end up with a war on our home soil. A distraction here and there, some political sleight of hand on the world stage, and the weakening of the United States ability to deter enemies (internally and externally)and we may see more than random suicide bombings starting up in our cities.

   Fatalistically? It may take some smoldering ruins for the entitlement generation(s) to wake up (again) outraged because their sense of safety and security had been so inconveniently disrupted.

   Cynicism aside, I think there are enough people in the right places, having a firm enough grasp on reality, that can minimize significant danger to this country (thinking of casualties in the thousands rather than the millions). However, that may not be true two years from now.

   An interesting side question…what are the acceptable casualties the US would sustain, from any attack, before Obama would retaliate with nuclear weapons? Hundreds of thousands, millions? Where does his compass point in that horrific scenario? Immediate and deliberate mitigation of future threat or capitulation?

   Theories run rampant in my mind…I’m not ready to learn the reality of that scenario.

10. SteddieH, I think that Obama would not use nukes, ever, if he could avoid doing so. It isn’t a factor of American lives, it is a factor of political utility.

11. Another confusing mess by this President. Overintellectualizing a simple issue to where it confuses our allies and encourages our enemies.

12. The American electorate reached a state of surreal dumbness with the election of OB.

13. I know a lot of otherwise intelligent people who ascribe to the Obama point of view with respect to what, until now, was our nuclear deterrent. There seems to be one common denominator among them. Not the sole factor, but certainly a prerequisite – and that is, a virtually total ignorance of history along with a delusional disregard as to the true nature of man.

14. Highlander: that’s a great combo.

15. First, universal health care, then a world without war! Obama follows Lenin with Lennon. Imagine…

16. Details of supposed treaty are not published yet, but I do not expect anything sensational. The theory of nuclear strategy is known for decades; projects of future cuts were prepared for years. The only thing which has been debated is timing and schedule, which were largely bargaining chips in political show.Using ICBM as political weapon is not a rocket science: MAD is still in force, and will be in forceable future, since there is no alternative to it. Nobody is mad enough to dismantle it.

17. 
    President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.
    

    If it were Ronald Reagan or either President Bush, or even an old time Dem like Truman or JFK, who put forth such a change in policy, I would feel less troubled. I would assume that it was some tactical decision which was well throught out, and for which all possible benefits and detriments were analyzed. Like when Reagan negotiated the START agreement with Gorbachev.

    But with Obama, this new policy is frightening. Either as a knave or a fool, he is asserting a new policy that I have no confidence was properly analyzed. It does indeed have the possibility of being “an invitation to disaster, a telegraphing of weakness the likes of which even the notorious Jimmy Carter never attempted. I remember all too vividly those last years of the Carter era, and shudder at the thought of what might be ahead.

18. Sergey: this isn’t mainly about the treaty with Russia. This is about an announcement about how to use the weapons that remain, especially vis a vis non-nuclear countries who might attack in other ways.

19. Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete

    Nuclear weapons will be made obsolete only by the invention of something more destructive.

    a guy who’s used to getting really good grades

    Presupposes a fact not in evidence. If he’d done even reasonably well, I think Obama would overcome his natural modesty and release his transcripts.

    because his gift of gab helps to wow people in those bull sessions at midnight in the dorm

    They’ve got teleprompters in dorms now? Off his electronic binky he’s hopelessly inarticulate and incoherent.

    Of course, it’s possible that enemy nations won’t believe that Obama can be so stupid, and that they’ll assume he’s lying through his teeth;

    Yeah, but this is a bad kind of ambiguity. The good kind of ambiguity is in regard to how you will strike back; the bad kind is whether you’ll strike back. The first engages your enemies’ imagination to think of all the nasty things you might do, and thereby discourages them. The second engages your enemies’ imagination to think that maybe they’ll get away with it free and clear.

    The reaction of the regulars at the Times was to alternate between praise of Obama’s impressive moral stance, anger at the unwelcome influx of knuckle-dragging tea partying outsiders to their comments section, and ridiculing the newcomers as fraidy-cats lacking the resolute intestinal fortitude of the superior liberal temperament.

    Has the brains trust in NYC figured out yet where, if they’re wrong, such an attack is likely to take place? Hmmm? Any clues?

    The fact that Obama is stating that the most powerful nation in the world can react with strength and restraint, and not mindless rage like an injured animal, will reduce the impulse of other nations to act out of fear…

    …but increase their temptation to act out of temerity. Just thought I’d complete that sentence for him.
    Whom would you rather mess with: someone who acts with “strength and restraint” (I laugh as I type that), or someone who reacts with “mindless rage like an injured animal?” To get specific, would the author of that comment rather risk offending Christians or Muslims?

    One reason why so many nations are going for the nuclear options is powerful military countries like USA not making a clear and unequivocal declaration of no-first-use nuclear option in any war or warlike situations.

    This is weapons-grade stupid. Countries pursue nuclear weapons nowadays for regional advantage (and national prestige), not out of fear of the US. Nothing to do with us.
    Why did the UK and France develop nuclear weapons? National prestige. India-Pakistan? National prestige and regional tensions. China-Taiwan? Same thing. Israel? Regional tensions. Iran and Iraq’s programs? National prestige and regional tensions.
    National prestige and regional tensions largely explains even North Korea’s nuclear weapons, although there this idiot’s point also has some applicability. The USSR? National prestige and international tensions that it was planning on stirring up. We could have nuked the USSR before 1948, China before 1964, North Korea before ca. 1995, and could still nuke Iran or Iraq to this day, if we’d wanted to.

20. Occam’s Beard: not sure whether Obama actually got good grades or won those arguments. But he’s acting like someone who did—and I’d bet almost anything that Obama thinks he’s won every argument in which he’s ever engaged. That’s part of the narcissism.

    And according to Harvard, Obama graduated magna cum laude from the Law School.

21. Again, there are caveats in this announcement which make it quite ambiguous. As many other Obama’s foreign relation moves, symbolism to him is more important than substance. But I must concede that symbolism here is important, too: Reagan achieved a lot just by using symbolic jestures projecting resolve and intrasingence. Obama is projecting .. what? Weakness? Incompetence? This is repeat of Jimmy Carter foreign policy. Or juvenile behavior of Kennedy in meeting with Khruschev, which led to Carribean missle crisis.

22. Sergey: you have hit the nail on the head. Weakness, incompetence, confusion, naivete.

    Or worse.

23. Don – I have to agree with you and the thought is troubling.

    Years ago I read “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony” by Lewis Thomas (the essay by that name here: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Thomas/mahlers-ninth.html) which is a collection of essays he wrote.

    The imagery has remained with me to this day. The relevance of his observations have not diminished. That we have a president who thinks bloviating will conquer those who would do us harm brings that imagery uncomfortably to mind.

24. N-N..3:39pm…Magna from Harvard Law with Editorship of the Law Review with no Obama article published. Oh, well, that was before he’d lived a richly experienced life which warrented 2-Autobiographies.

25. I guess next we’ll do a gun buy back program on a global nuclear scale? If the North Koreans know liberals like we do, they can get Obama to take their nuclear waste and he’ll boastfully pay them billions for it.

26. A long post from Neo. Yippee !

    Neo wrote, “To deter effectively, the possibility of the strongest retaliation needs to remain on the table.”

    Exactly. I don’t know if these changes will signal that there is a small window of opportunity for enemies (until the next president reimposes the old rules).

    But if so… the blood is on Obama’s hands…

27. Neo responding to Occam’s Beard: “not sure whether Obama actually got good grades or won those arguments. But he’s acting like someone who did–and I’d bet almost anything that Obama thinks he’s won every argument in which he’s ever engaged. That’s part of the narcissism.”

    What arguments? He refused to associate with anyone who disagreed with his far left views.

    Which presupposes a White House full of yes men and women. You know, “Whatever you say Barry.” Except for Emanuel’s objections on how best to pass legislation, has there been any sign of any disagreement among the WH insiders on the substance of any of Obama’s policy pronouncements.

    On reflection I have concluded that Obama is not a knave. He is too stupid to double deal. He just gets out there with an incomprehensible and stupid policy and pushes it and pushes it and pushes it. For goodness sake, he is still interfering in the internal politics of Honduras for no apparent reason or reasonable goal. Can anyone cite a smart policy pushed by Obama? Please. This is a chess player who has the ability to think one step ahead.

28. I became most afraid because of Obama’s declaration of rooting for nuclear-free world. Does he really believe this crap? It is possible to deal with damn liars, cynics, demagogues: this all is expected from politicians, they still are rational actors, and their moves are predictable. What makes the situation dangerously unstable are fools and delusional utopists at the helm.

29. Neo wrote, “But even when I was a liberal Democrat I knew it didn’t, and I continue to be puzzled at those who do. ”

    Yep.

    Pre-1991 I was liberal and I was enlisted in the Navy and didn’t think like those commenters. There are no flying unicorns and energy doesn’t come from rainbows. Butterfly’s are pretty but they won’t give us peace on earth.

30. Your addendum Neo hits the 24″ nail on the head with an 8 pound mallot.

31. Rudy gets it (at Newsmax.com).

    “A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the left, just like socialized healthcare,” Giuliani said during a recent interview with National Review Online. “This new policy, like Obama’s government-run health program, is a big step in that direction.”

    The United States should not be downgrading its nuclear capabilities at a time when the nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea is increasing, Giuliani said.

    “President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs and have peace symbols,” Giuliani said. “North Korea and Iran are not singing along with the president.”

32. So now Obama says we will not use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack. Is there any reason to believe that he would use chemical or biological weapons in retaliation? He sure has opened the door.

    Up until now Barry has just been expensive, but now he is dangerous.

33. Steve, it is not stupidity, it is worse. Obama can not ever accept his mistakes and failures, even for himself. Trully psychotic trait. Clinton, being no less narcissic, was capable to correct himself and drop failed policies. Obama can not. He digs, and digs, and digs, even in the damnest hole.

34. “…[W]e need to lead by example. Many countries that do not currently have nuclear arms wish to develop them because they are threatened by the big powers. By removing the looming “we can bomb whoever we want when we want attitude”, we are leading by example.”

    Good God, it doesn’t get any more naive than that. Leading by example only works if the other people do not perceive the actions of the “leader” to be walking off a cliff, and that’s exactly what smaller nations will think. Does the administration really beleive that nuclear seeking nations will “follow” the US on this? And yes, I realize Obama’s exempting the two big ones – Iran and North Korea. I, too, am talking about other countries. Which one of them will feel safer that the US is abdicating the nuclear weapons field to nations like Iran and N. Korea? The US isn’t the threat, regardless of what the Westernphobes preach.

    The whole reason for the initial proliferation of nuclear weapons to begin with was to provide an answer for the problem of facing an enemy with a much larger conventional force. There is no nation at all who’ll consider themselves strong enough to face either China, or America, or a now smaller-than-the-former-USSR Russia, Germany, France, etc., without nukes, so “leading by example” isn’t going to stop them from producing them. Why would those nations give up something that provides them a somewhat equal footing militarily?

    Furthermore, the time when states been the source of danger regarding nuclear weapons use is past and fading into history. The most contentious border clash currently occuring between two nuclear powers – India and Pakistan – has not lead to a nuclear exchange, mostly because they, too, are bound by the terrible rationality of Mutual Assured Destruction. My point in bringing that up is that it’s nonstate actors – read: Terrorist groups – that’d use them in a heartbeat. They’re the real threat, current and motivated. I’m much more worried about Zawahiri or Bin Laden getting a hold of a nuke than I am of more nations stocking them (although that right there is sort of a foggy area; some states getting nukes would automatically mean that terrorists obtaining them would follow soon after. Too complex a discussion for a blog response, though). The US setting limitations on nukes and eventually disposing of them won’t make a dent in that demand.

    Ultimately, what worries me about this decision is the fact that the most powerful of rational nations – America – is ceding the initiative on weapons of mass destruction to irrational groups. Obama may think he’s halting nuclear proliferation, but instead what he’s doing is opening the door for use of such weapons. This in and of itself may not be the act that directly leads to a WMD being employed against a western city, but it sure is a brick in the edifice. If a terrorist group in the mid future ends up detonating a nuke somewhere, you know that the seed was planted right here, right in Obama’s statement.

35. “This world should NOT have nuclear weapons. A true visionary with power would do something about it.”

    This commenter’s view is obviously the same as Obama’s. The childlishness of it is just overwheming. “Mommy, make those mean people go away and take their awful sticks with them!”

    The genie left the bottle in 1945 and it won’t be coaxed back in.

36. Steve G: I believe he is a knave. I hope he is also a fool. His goals are different than we assume they are; that’s the reason his policies may seem stupid. They are not, IMHO, if you understand how radical he is—and that’s partly because they are communications and signals to simpatico foreign powers as to what he’s about.

    In addition, if you read the linked NY Times article on which this post is based, you’ll see that quite a few of his advisers disagreed with him, and he overruled them. If the article is true, it’s not all yes-men (the Secretary of Defense is one prime example, and you’d think his opinion would carry most weight)—-but it doesn’t seem to matter.

    Or, it may matter in that perhaps it kept Obama from going as far to the left as he would like to—temporarily, at least. You’ll note that in the article it mentions there were some advisers who thought this policy isn’t concession enough. Here’s the quote:

    The strategy to be released on Tuesday is months late, partly because Mr. Obama had to adjudicate among advisers who feared he was not changing American policy significantly enough, and those who feared that anything too precipitous could embolden potential adversaries. One senior official said that the new strategy was the product of 150 meetings, including 30 convened by the White House National Security Council, and that even then Mr. Obama had to step in to order rewrites.

37. Steve,

    One can’t be this stupid. It has to be planned stupidity.

    I turn 40 this next month. I feel like Obama’s college sophomorism is purposefully dangerous because of his 20 years in the pews listening to Jeremiah Wright.

    Let’s take the signal he gave to the world with his treatment of Netanyahu.

    That – was a purposeful and dangerous signal.

    There is no way that was just “no tact”.

38. There may very well be a taped conversation out there where Obama was engaged in conversation with hatred and disdain for the U.S. I believe his hatred permeated so that he had these deep philosophical conversations often and maybe one of them is taped….

39. “… Make no mistake about it— nuclear weapons are attractive to other countries only because they fear our unbridled rage. Take away that fear, and we are all safer.”

    Another foolish statement from another sheltered, gullible fool. It takes someone with a real ignorance of history to make that statement. I wonder if that person is willing to tell me what about America’s “rage” motivated Japan to implement the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere back in the early 20th century? Or cause the then USSR to make a land grab and push the Iron Curtain west? I wonder if he’ll inform me what it is about America’s “rage” is motivating Iran to produce such weapons.

    These fools do not recognize that it was actually the lack of rage that’s leading to this. Iran is physically far closer to Russia’s nukes than they are to America’s, and from the Communist Soviet history, Russia has been even more meddlesome and imperialistic than even the most outlandish stories about American have been. Furthermore, they’ve retaliated to affronts in a far harsher way. Yet, who does Iran posture against? The nation that hasn’t had a history of hitting back until extremely provoked.

    It’s good that America doesn’t retaliate for every perceived slight, but there’s a problem in going too far in the other direction. And the current fault here is that our President announced that he won’t respond in full to legitimate provocation. Do we really want the cold cynicism of the ex communists in Russia to be the standard setters for how to implement peace in the world? Or do we want to maintain strength and show that there is a finer way, one that’s not weak, but speaks better to the ideals of liberty than it does to the coldheartedness of realpolitik?

    America’s “unbridled rage” freed two nations from imperialistic, fascist regimes and placed them on the paths to democracy and prosperity. You’d think that true thinkers would recognize that there’s more to US policy than “rage”, and conversely, there’s more to other groups reaction to America than fear.

40. Mr. Frank: but where was Giuliani when we needed him? I supported him in the Republican primaries in 2008, but he was a half-assed candidate who basically folded. I believe he would have cleaned Obama’s clock in debate, and fought against Obama hard (unlike McCain)—if he had wanted to. For some reason he didn’t seem to want the nomination (age? health? energy?) and he didn’t really campaign smartly or with vigor. I still hold it against him.

41. This is idiocy. Despite what Bambi might like to think, we are never, ever going to live in a world free of nukes. You cannot put the nuclear genie back in the bottle, as much as you might wish to. I, for one, desperately wish we could. I agree that the world would be a much better place if we could. But that ship has sailed, and pretending it ain’t is foolishness.

    He hopes that by stating an explicit “no first use” policy on our part, he will “lessen the incentive to use nukes?” I got news for you, Bambi, the world is made up of many, many, many countries, and every single one of those countries has their own agenda, and often those agendas are (surprise!) actually independent of ours. Sometimes they are even diametrically opposed to ours.

    I understand you don’t believe this–that no matter what you say, on a gut level you don’t actually believe that other countries can have agendas that have nothing whatever to do with the United States. I didn’t either when I was a leftie–it just never occurred to me, and it was a big component of *why* I was a leftie. (It wasn’t until I stumbled across the blog of the incomparable Den Beste that the thought even crossed my mind.) Nevertheless, it’s true. Remember when Pakistan and India were trading nuke tests a few years ago? Prime example of what I’m talking about. No one in the world is going to be influenced by this, except perhaps our enemies, who will now note that, “Woo-hoo! Free license to start blasting away with bio- and chemweapons!”

    P.S. ElMondoHummus, just saw your 4:48 comment. I pretty much agree with everything you say.

42. Baklava, Neo, me too. In college back in the mid-70s, I thought for a little while that maybe I would become a Quaker. I loved the peacefulness and simplicity of silent meeting, the spirituality and kindness of the people I met there, and the beauty of the Quaker idea of “that of God in every man.” In my young, sheltered, semi-educated state, I certainly had the crucial ingredients that Highlander succinctly identified: “a virtually total ignorance of history along with a delusional disregard as to the true nature of man.”

    However, I must not have been quite ignorant or delusional enough; I never did join the Quakers, and the reason was pacifism. Even as uneducated and susceptible to pretty dreams as I was, I knew enough about World War II, at least, to know that wishing for a nonviolent world wouldn’t make it happen and that I would never be able to subscribe to the “peace testimony” (“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever: this is our testimony to the whole world.”) So, even though that beautiful joint silence (and it is beautiful) drew me back into meeting houses as a visitor a few more times over the years — I never did become a Quaker.

    The thing that puzzles me is that some friends from way back then did subscribe to those beliefs, and now, all these years later, they still do. I didn’t get it then and I still don’t get it. I was no better educated, no smarter, no more experienced in the real world than they were. And I imagine they couldn’t help learning a little more about the persistence of human perfidy as the years went by, just as I did. So how do they manage to hang onto that “delusional disregard” ? I’ve come to think that it must be intentional — that, on some level, people like my old friends simply insist on believing that the world is the way they want it to be, rather than the way it is. They will deny all the evidence they have to in order to hang onto that belief. (Not so different from continuing to support Obama, come to think of it.)

    I imagine those people are celebrating today – or perhaps they are complaining that Obama didn’t go far enough, and that all of the weapons should simply be thrown into the sea (but no, wait, that would be polluting — I guess they’ll have to be recycled.)

43. Mrs.

    Even the blue people from Pandora fought for their land.

    The Quakers enjoy peace due to their location inside the U.S.

44. The nuclear clock just moved to 11:59:57. Those nations which have always been protected by America’s nuclear umbrella are now vulnerable as they’ve not been in the sixty years of my life.

    Absent that protection they will now rush to either develop their own WMD to protect themselves; or they will align themselves with whatever regional tyrant will promise to protect them.

    Nuclear proliferation is a given. The use of nuclear weapons in the near future is a probability.

    Once again the Idiot in Chief has acted in such a way as to guarantee an outcome which will be the exact opposite of his stated goal.

    I fear for my daughters and grandsons.

45. Adrian mentioned this reminded him of a Shel Silverstein poem: it puts *me* in mind of a quote from Serenity:

    “I won’t live to report this, but people have to know–we meant it for the best! To make people safer–Oh God!!!!!”

    Firefly fans know whereof I speak. God help us. 😛

46. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad & Hugo Chavez are pleased to hear about this.

47. Our nuclear deterrent served two purposes.

    Under the MAD concept it insured that the Soviets would not launch a massive pre-emptive strike.

    Secondly, and of increasing importance, our tactical nukes deterred those predators with a huge man power advantage.

    China doesn’t need nukes to go get Taiwan, or any other country on their periphery. Without the threat of nukes we cannot even make them pause to think.

    N Korea’s relatively huge army could overwhelm Seoul in the blink of an eye. Our nuke threat is all that stands in their way.

    By his standards the invasion of a friendly country by an aggressor with overwhelming conventional advantage would not trigger a response–other than perhaps a speech in the UN.

    This fool has opened a great big can of worms. We will be lucky if they don’t come swarming out.

48. There is reason to have grave doubt about Obama’s willingness, indeed, his very ability to defend the United States, in any meaningful way, to say nothing about using nucs. I suspect that while Obama is more than happy to tell our enemies in two hot wars when we’ll be packing up and leaving regardless of whether such action will result in defeat or victory for us, and while he is delighted to tell our enemies, in advance, exactly what we will and won’t do to them to extract life saving information, he will never tell even the American people under which circumstances he would be willing to use nuclear weapons. If asked the question, he’d launch into a 17+ minute diatribe. Even if he could think of a hypothetical situation under which he would use nuclear weapons–to prevent the nuclear annihilation of half of the American population, for example–it’s highly unlikely he would ever, in clear and unequivocal terms, say as much.

    And no, this is not some sort of deranged reverse psychology on Obama’s part. Our enemies are alternately dancing for joy and making serious plans to act on long delayed aggressions, aggressions that only a credible threat of American force have forestalled. And some of those aggressions will certainly be directed at the American homeland and people. Our allies, on the other hand, can no longer have any doubt that as long as Obama is in office, he will do nothing to help or protect them, and afterward, who knows? Any rational America ally must be planning for six more years of Obama, and no doubt, allies such as Japan and Taiwan are going to be pursuing nuclear weapons of their own, if they have not already begun.

    I fear, now more than ever, that the damage Obama will ultimately do to America will be far beyond cultural and economic destruction, but will cost tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of lives.

49. Neo,

    Rudy had a flawed primary strategy. He passed on some early primaries and went for broke in Florida. That ended badly.

    Although Rudy is very good on national security, crime, and fiscal responsibility, his personal life was a disaster. His own kids would not endorse him. Also, being strongly pro choice is not a plus in Republican primaries.

50. “North Korea and Iran are not singing along with the president.”

    Pretty hard to sing when you’re laughing.

51. I just saw a brief text report on Germany’s N-TV news channel that Russia is delaying the START signing because of our missile defense programs in Bulgaria and Romania. More evidence that giving an inch doesn’t work. When will this idiot learn?

52. I don’t know why everyone assumes Obama doesn’t know what this policy will lead to.

    He’s not stupid. He knows. He wants it to happen. This is a man who hates America and all it stands for. He is gutting our defense in order to make it easy for our enemies to kill Americans. He wants to see terror attacks on American cities. He wants our troops in the field to get massacred.

    He has completely internalized the leftist idea that America and its institutions are the cause of all evil and suffering in the world. He is profoundly alienated and angry. He is lashing out against America and its people, trying to hurt them every way he can.

53. I’ve mentioned before the conspicuous lack of gray hairs on the Obama team, as it seems our ‘youth culture’ has finally dealt the knockout punch. This is disastrous.

    Yes, yes, I know we need outside-the-box ideas that oldsters are not known for. But the fact that there is now no counter-balance in our White House, no school of hard knocks wisdom, where instead we have the brilliant ideas that come out of doped up college bull session, does not bode well for our future.

    Equally disturbing to me is how many people are on board with all this.

54. Trimegistus: I don’t know why you say everyone assumes Obama does not know what he’s doing. Plenty here in the comments section have said they do think he knows. I said I think he’s a knave—meaning he’s not stupid; he knows. And the people in the comments section of the Times article who said he’s guilty of treason certainly think he knows.

55. MrsWhatsit and Baklava: in case you haven’t read it before, here’s the first post in my series on the Quakers and pacifism (and this is Part II). You will find that there are varieties of pacifism within the Quaker movement, some more realistic than others—although the more realistic ones have fallen mostly out of favor.

56. The POTUS is the CIC. It is his primary responsibility. He is failing at that job. At some point his incompetence or intentional endangerment (whichever it is really doesn’t matter) of this country must be called to account.

    Our weakness vis a vis Gitmo, the civilian trial of KSM & henchmen, his long delayed decision on Afghanistan, dissing our allies, etc. are also points of anger among TEA party members. This is going to ratchet that up.

57. neo,
    I still believe he is more the fool.

    Evidence is easy to support my conclusion.

    1. He can’t get his basic facts straight. 57 states, the frequent lies, the creation of Israel and the holocaust, etc.

    2. He really, really needs the teleprompter.

    3. He sat in Wright’s church for 20 years when any smart person would become uncomfortable about 5 minutes in and leave. Not only that, he bought Wright’s crap, hook, line and sinker.

    4. He has done everything possible to hide his academic records. I don’t care if he graduated from harvard (note the small “h”) with high honors. That only dishonors the school. How do you become the editor of the law review without ever writing an article for publication?

    5. He was not a law professor, only a lecturer in the law, and the faculty in Chicago held him in very low esteem.

    6. He has the Constitution exactly backwards.

    7. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried and has resulted in the deaths of millions and millions of people. So, he want to create more poverty and, perhaps, kill a few million more.

    8. He is the most powerful man in the world with the ability to assure peace. But he does everything he can to undermine his own authority and create conditions that are more likely to lead to war .

    9. He can’t or won’t tell the truth.

    10. He can’t or won’t explain his policies, or both.

58. J.J: I think it matters whether it’s incompetence or intentional. At least a person could learn to be competent. If it’s intentional, that’s not possible.

59. Roger Simon has written a couple of interesting pieces trying to figure out WTF is going on with Obama. His theory is a serious personality disorder, a possibility that has certainly come up here quite a few times. I’m not sure quite where on the continuum between fool and knave that would put Obama — maybe Simon is arguing for a third axis. Anyway, both are worth reading.

    http://tinyurl.com/yaw4ady
    http://tinyurl.com/ycd68b4

60. MrsWhatsit: I think it’s interesting to speculate on psychological matters with Obama (I do it at times, too). But ultimately it’s unimportant. The reason is that all tyrants have personality disorders. And plenty of people with personality disorders are not tyrants (except sometimes in their personal lives, to those around them). A dangerous tyrant combines several attributes, such as for example (a) malignant narcissism; (b) sociopathy; (c) interest in politics and power; (d) con artist capabilites that enhance his persuasive abilities; (e) cleverness; and (f) acting ability. There are other possible combinations, of course.

    The ones who are fools don’t come to power, or don’t last long when they do. The others can last a very very long time. Hitler’s invasion of Russia, for example, was a foolish move, and helped destroy him. But not before he had done untold damage. At the beginning and for quite some time thereafter, he was not foolish at all in the moves he made to consolidate power. And yet at the beginning, many people regarded him as a buffoon, nothing much to worry about.

61. One reason I don’t like tinyurl is because I like to see the link before I click on it.

    If it is a non-reputable destination I think twice about the click so as to keep my pc free of destruction.

    I know the html to make a link – it’s easy – I get lazy I suppose.

    It’s just as easy to make a link short the manual way – giving us the ability to see the shortcut before we click by hovering and looking at the status bar.

62. Steve G: I guess it depends on how we are using the word “fool.” I agree that Obama’s believe system is foolish. I believe he’s not the genius he makes himself out to be. I use the word “fool” here, however, as it is used in the expression “fool or knave”—meaning, is he just blundering around in the policies he is setting and does he not know the effect they will have on the country (fool), or does he intend to sow chaos economically so that he can take over more of the private sector, and does he intend to weaken us militarily and defensively (knave).

    At a certain level—especially in terms of national defense—it doesn’t matter (although, as I wrote in a comment above, at least a fool can possibly learn something). But the effects are likely to be equally pernicious either way.

63. Neo, thanks for reminding me about your pieces on Quaker pacifism. I read them when you posted them
    but discovered this evening that they are well worth reading again. The meeting I attended in college and the friends I made there were definitely of the idealistic dreaming school of pacifism and would not have welcomed Scott Simon’s thoughts at all.

64. Anything done to reduce the threat of military force will inevitably increase the need for military force.

65. Obama is going to get a lot of people killed. I just hope not too many of them will be Americans, though I think that’s a pretty forlorn hope at this point.

    He’s definitely a knave. A fool would get something right once in a while, purely by chance. Obama is destroying everything he touches, and he seems to revel in it. I’m not a fundamentalist Christian, but I’d have a hard time coming up with a better definition of the Antichrist.

    Even more disturbing to me are the quotes Neo listed from the NYT website. I don’t know how old those commenters are, but they are dangerously naive about history and human nature, as an earlier commenter here pointed out. Those people would enthusiastically vote for Obama’s re-election, or else would vote for someone just like him. The cultural and intellectual rot in our society goes very deep.

66. I was also reading a thread at Belmont Club. Lots of commenters said that this will encourage nuclear proliferation, as countries which were formerly under the U.S. nuclear umbrella are forced to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs as a matter of pure survival.

67. > Make no mistake about it— nuclear weapons are attractive to other countries only because they fear our unbridled rage. Take away that fear, and we are all safer.

    Believe it or not, I’ve found a picture of the commenter

    The mind just boggles at the intellectual brilliance of the statement.

68. I’m with Neo, here–the man is a knave. He’s trying to destroy the country. And his efforts have every appearance of being very well-planned. Remember Cloward-Piven. And yes, if this is the case then incompetence isn’t even an issue. Not only might he be interested in learning, and able to learn–he would also, like a broken clock, be right now and then, just on the odds. He’s not.

    “. . . much as an abused child blames him/herself for the conduct of a bad parent, and thinks that if he/she only acts good enough, the mistreatment will stop . . . .”–yes. This is also the kind of infantile egotism I’ve often thought is typified by global warming enthusiasm in particular, and environmentalism in general. Humans are unhappily prone to see themselves as the cause of everything around them. And Obama is seeking to change the environment by removing human causes as far as is, well, humanly possible.

    “Take away that fear, and we are all safer.” Hmmmm. I’ve often thought the Left–along with others, to be sure–was seduced by that immortal FDR line, “The only thing we have to fear–is fear, itself.” It sounds strong. It has resonance and inspirational, persuasive power. It has the ring of courage in the face of adversity.

    But it’s a lie. Fear is a rational response to threat, not a pathology. True, it can be misplaced, incited, and tinged with the pathology of paranoia. But fear by itself is as useful as pain as motivator. Consider that “fearless” and “foolhardy” are often treated as nearly synonymous. Consider, too, that one would not want to be in a foxhole beside a fearless man. Courage and fear are not antonyms; the one complements the other in very powerful and positive ways. Most good soldiers, and nearly all war heroes I’ve ever heard interviewed, are happy to confess that they were terrified for the entire duration of their heroic acts. It takes a certain clear-sighted character to be able to respond properly and positively, but fear is not an impediment to goodness, and I think the last thing we want to aim for is the molding of a world without it.

69. Anybody remember this campaign commercial from 2008?

    Also, check out the title from the person who posted that video on YouTube: In 52 seconds why Obama MUST become the next president.

    This is only the beginning. There will be more of this from Obama.

70. I wonder if China is looking across the straits at Taiwan with newer and greedier eyes.

71. NCS, of course they are. Dare we doubt it?

72. bestsybounds: like so many pieces of history, that “fear itself” quote (from FDR’s First Inaugural Address) can only be understood in context. Standing alone (the way we usually hear it), it has been widely misunderstood.

    I wrote about this several years ago. Here’s the quote from my post:

    …[T]his is the message in which [FDR’s] quote was embedded:

    “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory…In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]…Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

    Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts.”

    …And I agree, along with FDR, that “only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” I happen to think the Left fits the definition of “foolish optimist” in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.

73. Neo, thanks–once again–for the look at context, and for your post from those days long past (but–well–I’m older now, and happier 🙂 , and I think 2006 was only sometime around last week–wasn’t it? 🙂 🙂

    You anticipate, and I therefore learn, so much. I’m grateful for your insights.

74. Im suprised Taiwan has lasted this long.

75. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory

    Then again, Obama has said that he doesn’t like the word “victory”…

76. what are we gonna do to China? Threaten not to sell them more of our debt? lol

77. betsybounds: you’re welcome!

    I remembered that FDR quote from when I was a child (not that I was a child when he said it, but I was when I heard it—see this).

    It had long interested me. I have learned that there is almost always a story behind the story, and that it’s the more complex story that tells the tale much better. That’s what I like to at least try to do when I blog.

    And after over five years (yikes!) of blogging, sometimes I think I’ve written about so many things that half the time I realize I’ve already said what I’m about to say—if I can just locate the relevant old post and link to it.

78. Nuclear disarmament was in large part of product of the KGB, the secret sponsors of every disarmament movement from the 1950s SANE to the to the 1980s Nuclear Freeze. But tainted origins don’t matter. Anything is better than nukes, which must be banished forthwith.
    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/obamas_list.html

    by the way, nuclear winter was their idea too.

    knowing this its really weird to read someone like the first commenter, as they are complaining that the US has stood in the way of nations disarming, one by one until only the one that started the idea was left holding them.

    and i love the kind of logic the broken peoples now use on both sides

    The innovators are always heckled and screamed at.

    yes, but that does not mean if your heckled and screamed at, your innovative.

    what i find interesting is that they have been told what to think since they all think the same variation on reasons its good. like someone given the info, and now the class has to write a paragraph on it.

79. LOL!! Threaten not to sell them more of our debt! Well that’s pretty far out, jon baker. It should work out real well for us.

    It’s a matter of supply and demand, of course. We’re accumulating such a quantity of debt that the demand for it is bound to sink, just as a simple inverse function of the number of people wanting to control it. So–well, anyone will soon be able to control us for fire-sale prices, if they’re willing to assume the huge risk, and our possible (probable?) default. Pretty soon we’ll have to pay them to buy us. How’s THAT for slavery?

80. Artfldgr: I happen to know a bit about the relation of Communism to the nuclear disarmament movement in this country. My extremely pro-Soviet pro-Communist uncle was very very active in that movement. So even when I was a child I was suspicious about it (see the second half of this post for a description and an anecdote about that uncle which you may find interesting).

81. In the simplest possible terms, destroying US government finances will require the US to reduce defense spending and reduce forward deployments and support for our allies.

    In the minds of Obama’s progressive supporters, this is a feature, not a bug. They will call it “peace.” It will mean war, and the deaths of a lot of people whose names we will never know.

82. “Obama calls nuke terrorism the top threat to US

    WASHINGTON (AP) – Rewriting America’s nuclear strategy, the White House on Tuesday announced a fundamental shift that calls the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists a worse threat than the nuclear Armageddon feared during the Cold War.”

    http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9ETQPK80%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1017&sc_cid=homepage_newsDCC_article1

    Iran is considered a state sponsor of terrorism.

    http://www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm

    So what will this “new nuclear strategy” do to stop Iran from going nuclear?

83. The Nuclear Freeze movement is where Obama first came to public notice. We don’t have much in the way of legal writing from him; but we do know he was promoting the Soviet line in the early 1980’s.

84. Neo–Well I can sympathize, although on a smaller scale–I often think that I’ve posted the thing I’m about to post before, and yet I’m posting it again.

    It makes about as much sense as this, quoth Bilbo Baggins: “My dear Bagginses and Bobbins! Tooks and Brandybucks! Today is my one hundered and eleventy-eth birthday! Alas, one hundred and eleventy years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits! I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve! I–uh–I have–uh–things to do. . . .”

    Such times we live in. Heh heh.

85. Oblio,
    I think you’re right about that. It ups the ante a lot. We need to get ourseleves and everyone we can to the polls in November and vote these people out!

86. I wonder if China is looking across the straits at Taiwan with newer and greedier eyes.

    Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou demanded on Tuesday that China remove missiles aimed at the island before any peace talks, comments that could slow recent momentum in relations, including two-way trade that has reached $109 billion.

    Beijing must scrap or move missiles, which Taiwan suspects are piling up in China some 160 km (100 miles) away, to begin any discussion on a peace accord, an idea welcomed by both sides when Ma took office in 2008, the president told a group of U.S. scholars.

    i seem to remember that they just got some upgrades and there are a lot pointed towards taiwan. (they have also threatened to use nukes if the US interferes)

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    If they can be deployed successfully, Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles would be the first capable of targeting a moving aircraft-carrier strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. And if not countered properly, this and other “asymmetric” systems – ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, torpedoes and sea mines – could potentially threaten U.S. operations in the western Pacific, as well as in the Persian Gulf.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Beijing is reportedly deploying more sophisticated missile systems in the coastal province across Taiwan. The director of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB)–the island’s principle intelligence agency–confirmed independent reports at a legislative hearing that China has deployed eight battalions of advanced S-300PMU2 long-range surface-to-air missiles in Fuqing county in Fujian province’s Longtian Military Airbase.

    According to NSB Chief Tsai Der-sheng, “It is impossible to deny that Beijing still sees military intimidation as an effective tool in preventing Taiwan from moving toward [de jure] independence,” adding that the number of missiles targeting the island has climbed to nearly 1,400 (Taiwan Today, March 18).
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    so there you have it.. everyone is upgrading a lot.. russia i think is getting mystral from france, china has all kinds of new stuff… so does russia.

    gonna be a hot time in the igloo…

    google has been used to spot new chinese missle bases, as well as others using google (when it allows you), to explore other areas and find stuff (like a new set of submarine docks)

    2008 – The missile deployments were spotted in Delingha, central China and analysis of the GoogleEarth images revealed the Second Artillery Corps 812 Brigade Base with DF-4 intermediate-range mobile and silo-based missiles, and DF-21 medium-range nuclear missiles.

    and as far as that new ship missile..

    The U.S. Navy can’t stop China’s most sophisticated anti-ship missile – and won’t even start testing a defense until 2014.

    The Sizzler starts at subsonic speeds. Within 10 nautical miles of its target, a rocket-propelled warhead separates and accelerates to three times the speed of sound, flying no more than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level. On final approach, the missile ‘has the potential to perform very high defensive maneuvers,’ including sharp-angled dodges, the Office of Naval Intelligence said in a manual on worldwide maritime threats.
    

    but all that is not the scary part…

    [from 2003]
    http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html

    and i found this wiki gem

    All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities

    In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the “below basic” level for prose literacy; 12% are at the “below basic” level for document literacy; and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in these three areas–able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items.

87. neo: i dont envy such family gatherings…

88. Somewhere Jimmy Carter cries silent tears of gratitude.

    He’s off the hook.

    We have a new worst president ever.

89. He’s off the hook.

    I’ve thought the same thing: the person most pleased by this must be Jimmy Carter, who can die knowing he won’t be considered the worst President in American history.

90. Jimmy Carter is George Washington compared to Obama.

91. For Obama to match Carter we will have to see double digit inflation and interest rates. That’s really ugly.

92. Artfldgr, the People’s Republic’s great weapons against Taiwan are diplomatic and financial leverage to keep the American military at Pearl Harbor (assuming they can’t stir up trouble in Hawaii, where there is a secession movement), the natural short-sighted cupidity of businessmen in Taipei and the States, perceptions of isolation and abandonment among the Japanese, Koreans, and Singaporeans, the editorial board of the New York Times, the support of all the Davos folk, and an appeasement-minded administration in Washington who will consider autonomous Taiwan as a remnant of “colonialism.”

    With tools like that, you don’t need missiles.

93. Let’s not give in to despair, folks. The people of Taiwan are very nationalistic, and will not go down quietly. Let’s not get all self-centered and think that we Americans decide everything in the world.

    The Chinese government is not as strong as we think. There are many peasant uprisings there, and having lots of manpower doesn’t necessarily mean lots of strength.

    A lot of the “elites” in the U.S. are going to get an unpleasant surprise when the U.S. economy goes even further south. Would you like to be employed at a state-funded institution these days? I sure wouldn’t.

94. I agree Promethea.

    I was in China last October and spent some time in Xiamen, which is just across the straits from Taiwan. It is a “special economic zone” (SEZ) that operates under more lax economic rules than the rest of mainland China. Many wealthy Taiwanese live in Xiamen, because they have many investments on the mainland to oversee. The economic ties between the two are very deep. The PRC Army would like to flex their muscles and scare Taiwan into openly rejoining China proper. It probably isn’t going to happen. The Taiwanese or Nationalist Chinese don’t want to get sucked into the communist politics or stricter economic rules. The PRC biggies don’t want to lose the investment know how and enterprise that the Taiwanese bring to the party. Complex, I know. But China is a very complex place.

95. This is the beginning of the dismantling of our defense capability, soon he will completely gut the defense budget, due to the deficit crisis. The damage will take years to repair if it can be.
    Sec Gates will soon be needing to spend more time with his family.

96. This presidency has had to be the most predictable in history. Everyone from Thomas Sowell and Prime Minister Howard to Joe the Plumber predicted this outcome. A wrecked economy, idiotic diplomacy, shattered defenses and lots and lots of dead. Obama is not the mystery, the definition of fanatic and egotist covers both fool and knave; the mystery is why so many at every strata saw through this man and precisely this outcome and why so many from those same strata still do not.

    The other question is when and where do the bodies start piling up? Who is going to be the first people Obama gets killed, or will we have to wait until the Mullahs have a stockpile of A-bombs before the action starts? My guess is the latter. The true horror of his administration will probably take place after he is long gone.

97. Jimmy Carter Occam; Obama rates better than just comparing him to the worst US presidents. Let’s expand the field to include worse leaders any of an English speaking country. As he is deliberately undermining his country’s freedom I figure one would have to go back to Charles I to find an English speaking leader as vile as Obama.

98. This WSJ piece describes Obama’s handling of Karsai.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168124014664404.html

    I think this is an example of how Obama’s narcissism is affecting his actions. He can’t conduct diplomacy behind closed doors. He just has to make a statement showing how tough he is. He doesn’t think through the implifications of his announcements because he “knows” what is right. After all, he learned all this stuff from his mommy before he was 10, when by the way, he lived in Indonesia and came to perfectly understand the mind of the other. His insights into Karsai are about as deep as his insight into the bitter clingers of the Rust Belt.

    He has been grandstanding with the nuclear arms stuff forever. He makes announcements before he gets signatures on the dotted line, and his opponents (our enemies) have used his loss of face avoidance to squeeze damaging last minute concessions from him. Just as with HCR, there had to be a bill by this deadline. Content was unimportant. He had to be seen as accomplishing something historic. Our foreign and domestic policy can now be defined as ego protection and enhancement.

    BTW, the German public and media seem to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the nuclear pronouncement. A few media people are pointing out Obama’s exceptions, but most people will just hear that Obama is against nuclear weapons and he wants peace. GD fools!

    Yet another BTW: one of the videos I saw on German TV was of Gates announcing the changed policy. Since the German media takes WH press releases at face value, I assume they also use WH video footage. Why the need to put Gates forward on this. Barry is hiding again. He wants to convey the image of a real policy rethink across the board in America. He is trying to project his image of total control of American thinking without risking blame if things turn out a little bumpy.

99. Obama unilaterally signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand_Pact and, yes, history really is repeating itself as tragedy.

    There really is nothing new under the sun and all is vanity.

100. The most dangerous development expected is aplying pressure to Israel to get rid of her nukes. This will provoke further Arab attacks in any case and instigate world-wide campaign of delegitimization of Israel.

101. No nukes!

     Well then……

     No national health insurance!

     No fiscal responsibility!

     No expecting the unexpected!

     If we would only be nice to others, they will see the error of their ways, and be nice to us. If we give all we have equally to everyone around the world, no one will be angry or jealous of anyone else, and we will all live in peace and harmony! Coexist!

     sarcasm off.

102. We’re going to have to invent a reboot and system restore feature for this entire administration. Will save time going through the minutia of policies to overturn.

     Do you wish to restore all files to Nov 3rd 2008?
     Yes…click

103. Ahmadinejad accurately takes the measure of the man: “Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended . . . (American officials) bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”

104. It doesn’t matter what Hinderaker thinks Obama will do if attacked.
     It doesn’t matter what any of us think Obama will do if we’re attacked.
     It doesn’t matter what anybody hopes Obama will do if attacked.
     The point is what the potential attacker thinks Obama will do.
     See–it’s hard for some people to track this–we’re talking about what happens AFTER we’re attacked.
     After we’re attacked–that’s AFTER, as in subsequent in time–we may do this, or we may do that, or we may do something else. But that would be AFTER we’re attacked.
     It’s bad to be attacked.
     So, the point is deterring somebody so we don’t have to do something AFTER we’re attacked, because WE’RE NOT ATTACKED.
     Somehow, the downside of that escapes me.
     That leaves two problems:
     One is that potential attackers frequently guess wrong. See the Germans twice in the last century. See the North Koreans. See the Arabs half a dozen times against Israel. See the Argentine junta–did they expect to be beaten and dumped?–in 1982.
     Potential attackers frequently assess the cost of aggression far to optimistically. They have rose-colored glasses. They are smitten with wishful thinking. By the time they get to seriously thinking about aggression, they want the results. They need the results. They want and need them badly. This is not conducive to rational and objective thinking.
     It pays, pays big time, to make the case by actions and military preparation and publicly-stated doctrine so powerfully that even a nutcase can see reality staring him in the face.
     And so he stays home.
     The second benefit is, by being prepared, we are in better shape to send him home briskly with fewer damages to us if he has a terminal case of self-delusion and goes ahead anyway.
     The second problem with zero’s new idea is that, while potential aggressors might presume we’d retaliate strongly and devastingly if they, say, dumped a couple of dozen nuke missiles on us, they don’t know where the line is drawn. They don’t know, for sure, what they can get away with doing to us. One nuke? Anthrax?
     And, as I keep seeing liberals missing, it doesn’t really matter how hard we hit back, that’s AFTER the aggressors hit us. AFTER, is bad, because it’s AFTER. How can so many people not get this?
     Sure, we can track nuke material by its signature isotope ratios. Track it all the way back to its manufacturer. Such as the Sovs in, say, 1995, and thus through three or four owners to….
     And while we can anticipate the bad guys anticipating the FBI pissing away time, and the truthers blaming Bush, and so many saying we can’t kill a couple of million people in a given country just because the bad guys made the final move from within their borders, we can anticipate the bad guys thinking we won’t shoot back at all.
     And it won’t really matter because that will be AFTER we’re hit.
     Damn. I just don’t get this.

105. Colagirl, I’m another Firefly fan. And your reference is a great one.

     For those who don’t know, Firefly was a short-lived one-hour drama on Fox, a space-opera set in a dystopian future in which a statist “Alliance” controls the galaxy.

     After the Firefly was canceled, Joss Wheedon managed to make a two-hour theatrical film called Serenity, which tells the Firefly story in concise form.

     The story’s heroes – former freedom-fighters turned smugglers – discover that the Alliance is covering up the origin of the horrific, cannibal Reavers who terrorize the galaxy. Their creation is the result of a drug called “Pax,” which was administered to colonists on a terra-formed world as a way of controlling and calming human behavior.

     The Pax didn’t work the way it was planned. 90% of the population became so peaceful and calm that they stopped working, eating, or drinking – and perished. For the remaining 10%, the Pax worked the opposite way – it rendered those people hyper-violent, barely human, avid for human flesh.

     The story line is a stark demonstration of what can happen when steps toward a pure and theoretical value – Pax, or Peace – is enforced without reference to real-world human behavior.

     See Serenity. It will blow your mind.

106. Mrs. Whatsit said: I’ve come to think that it must be intentional – that, on some level, people like my old friends simply insist on believing that the world is the way they want it to be, rather than the way it is. They will deny all the evidence they have to in order to hang onto that belief. (Not so different from continuing to support Obama, come to think of it.)
     ——————————————–

     Where I live, the crime rate is low and mostly crimes of theft (unlocked cars & unlocked/easy to break into homes). Full of lefties who think this is the natural order of things. They don’t realize that “Good men can sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”. (Not sure to whom to give credit for the quote).

     These people will never figure this out on their own, if chaos comes to town the results will be frightening.

     Another wonderful post by neo, thanks for the food for thought.

107. Oblio With tools like that, you don’t need missiles.

     maybe… but they sure have a whole lot of missiles there and have informed the US that they WILL use nuclear weapons if our navy interferes with what they will do. new sub, new missile, 8 battalions of missiles, and 30 million conscriptable men…

     you get the feeling that their idea of fighting inst like the idiot west whose jus belum puts every battle into an attritive one?

     8 Battalions of S-300 PMU2 along the shore facing Taiwan, with the idea that they will make the Taiwan people panic to some degree.

     the S-300 PMU2 is based on the US patriot missiles. except patriot missiles only work to 70km, and these work to 200km.

     they also have an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.

     we do not have any countermeasures to this one… are you familiar with it?

     Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.
     

     Mach 10 / 11,950 km/hr / 7,170 miles/hour

     let me put that in perspective.
     36,960 FPS

     if it could maintain its speed, it would circle the earth in 3 hours, it would reach the moon in 33 hours

     we have nothing like it, and we also have no simulator like it to develop against it.

     If operational as is believed, the system marks the first time a ballistic missile has been successfully developed to attack vessels at sea. Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.

     and before you say that they are outdated in other things, i would pay attention to this:

     U.S. Navy officials are concerned over the unexpected appearance of a Chinese submarine during a major military exercise in the Pacific Ocean.

     Senior NATO officials said that since the Chinese vessel surfaced in the middle of the recent military exercise, U.S. Navy officials have been shocked by the advanced technology used by their Chinese counterparts, The Daily Mail said Saturday.

     One official said that based on the ease at which the submarine avoided 12 U.S. warships to surface near a 1,000-foot carrier, Navy officials are reconsidering the potential dangers posed by Chinese subs.

     While Chinese officials have said the entire incident was a simple coincidence, some U.S. diplomats have accused the vessel of “shadowing” the U.S. fleet during the exercise.

     i guess when they stole the machines to make the new propellers decades ago… they made new propellers.

     they have a missle designed to take out aircraft carriers we have no defense to, and a submarine capable of moving through 12 american subs guarding such a craft… that would mean less than 2 or three seconds to respond to the missle if fired that close.

     The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.
     

     well, yeah, we keep thinking that they are not fighting a world war battle, and we stopped.

     which is my complete point. he is disarming us at the same time they are not only rearming, but reforming and rearming with superior weapons made with OUR technology provided by OUR companies working on THEIR soil, and so have the technology to do anything we do… (and they DONT have a dumbed down anti war, leftist, liberal, idiocracy driving the researchers)

     since i have an eidetic memory, i remember the tiny things that others forgot.

     U.S. secrets aboard latest Chinese sub
     Washington, December 6, 1999

     According to a congressional report on Chinese technology theft released earlier this year, the new Type 094 submarine will provide the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with new strategic nuclear capabilities that will increase the threat to the United States.

     The report by the special panel headed by Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, stated that the JL-2’s 7,400-mile range allows it “to be launched from the PRC’s territorial waters and to strike targets throughout the United States.” “This range will allow a significant change in the operation and tactics of the PRC’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines,” the report, based on classified intelligence reports, stated.

     “Instead of venturing into the open ocean to attack the United States, the Type 094-class submarines could remain near PRC waters, protected by the PLA Navy and Air Force.”

     and if we sent forces in to try to stop them, a new missile will sink them all…

     In addition to stolen U.S. technology, the new missile submarine also is expected to contain technology provided by Russia, including advanced nuclear reactors and special propellers that will make the submarines harder to detect underwater.

     for some background (way back machine)
     http://americanhistory.si.edu/subs/anglesdangles/taming2.html

     What I’d asked for was a nuclear submarine propeller, better known in the Navy as a screw. It is so secret that when a sub comes in from patrol its propeller is shrouded with a large covering, and if a sub is drydocked for any length of time, it is commonly removed and stored away from the ship for servicing and prying eyes. It is what drives a submarine quickly and quietly through the water, and it is absolutely critical to a submarine’s stealth. It is an extremely high-tech piece of equipment, resulting from extensive Navy research and development, and until recently our propeller technology exceeded the Soviet Union’s by a considerable margin. As a result of this and other factors, Soviet submarines of the Cold War were noisier, and therefore easier to detect than our own.

     so propellers are a big critical thing…

     But something happened to change all that. Back in the mid-1980s, the Japanese company Toshiba sold propeller milling machinery to the Soviets through the Norwegian Kongsberg firm; this and other submarine intelligence furnished by the Walker spy ring resulted in significantly quieter Soviet subs by the later part of the decade. As writer Neal Stevens wrote about the Akula-class Soviet boats, “The combined results generated a steep drop in broadband acoustic noise profiles.”

     and just so you know… the chinese are using the new shkval torpedo in their subs.

     In late 2000, after the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, new reports began circulating that the Chinese navy had bought the Shkval torpedo.

     and this torpedo would make sure that not only the aircraft carrier would be gone, but the 12 subs guarding her would be too.

     “The Shkval was designed to give Soviet subs with less capable sonar the ability to kill U.S. submarines before U.S. wire-guided anti-sub torpedoes could reach their target.
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     The 6,000-pound Shkval rocket torpedo has a range of about 7,500 yards and can fly through the water at more than 230 miles an hour. The solid-rocket-propelled “torpedo” achieves this high speed by producing a high-pressure stream of bubbles from its nose and skin, which coats the weapon in a thin layer of gas. The Shkval flies underwater inside a giant “envelope” of gas bubbles in a process called “supercavitation.”
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-
     The Shkval is so fast that it is guided by an autopilot rather than by a homing head as on most torpedoes. The original Shkval was designed to carry a tactical nuclear warhead detonated by a simple timer clock. However, the Russians recently began advertising a homing version, which runs out at very high speed, then slows to search for its target.

     There are no evident countermeasures to the Shkval and, according to weapons experts, its deployment by Russian and Chinese naval forces has placed the U.S. Navy at a considerable disadvantage.

     as it was in the cold war, we think or are led to believe that we have the best weapons. but in truth, our being open and using them, allows them to copy early on, and then exceed us and adapt to us, while we have no idea what they are doing in that realm unless we are lucky

     Obama is upsetting the balance that would have prevented actions from happening… DESPITE not having the best equipment for a war between two capable opponents

     and thats the critical part, we have lots of great toys for asymmetric, but we forget symmetric war with a capable opponent would be different (brutal and fast).

     having the equivalent of patriot missiles that can stop US nuclear weapons from the ocean off our shores… and then having a much reduced amount of missiles to shoot down.

     would put them in complete advantage where they have superior ships to prevent ocean movement. they have KEY superior weapons that between us would stop us cold..

     they have our manufacturing capability and our workforce is crippled.

     they also have our debt we would use to fund a fight against us, obama running it up.

     and dont forget that he has also alienated all those states that might join together.

     war is how they are going to reset the finances, and solidify the changes… just as we would remove and work to change things back, our ablity to do so will be clipped by ‘circumstances’ which create the EQUIVALENT conditions. (we are too stupid now to see equivalencies, and so we wont see it (abortion/eugenics)).

     with the points suspended, the final nails can be driven in without our opposition.

     the key to the financial situation, is to get rid of a lot of owners of capital (wich corresponds to changing the inheritance laws).

     House votes to extend inheritance tax on wealthy estates, canceling one-year repeal in 2010

     The House voted Thursday to indefinitely extend a 45 percent inheritance tax on estates larger than $3.5 million, canceling a one-year repeal of the tax set to begin next month.
     

     draft the wealthy, kill em, and keep the cash and property…

     do it covertly through equivalence, and you avoid the problems that a certain Austrian had with all these same policies in covert equivalencies.

     Under current law, the federal estate tax is scheduled to temporarily disappear next year before returning in 2011 at an even higher 55 percent rate.

     tons more stuff…
     its a chess game… and if you cant look across teh whole board, nothing makes sense from one square

108. I’d like us to develop the Baraq=knave theme. Many/most of us agree on this. So let’s figure out his goals, going beyond Eurosocialism for the USA. We know what audiences he’s playing to, domestically and abroad. We see the responses of the Putins, the mullahs, the Chavezes. They all think he’s a fool, that he’s giving away the store. The Chicoms are more oblique but surely feel the same. But Baraq is anything but charitable–he’s giving in order to get.
     So what are Baraq’s goals? I believe them to be personally aggrandizing, regardless of costs to the Nation and his ‘subjects’. Something beyond Leftist motives is afoot. President-for-Life? What else?

109. Maybe Obama actually IS a traitor. Maybe he’s in the pay of the Chinese, the Russians, and/or the Saudis.

     Artfl . . . I’m trying to look across the chessboard. What do you see when you look?

110. Boots, I believe Orwell is responsible for that quote or something very close to it.

111. Why is he doing this? The simplest explanation is probably the best. He thinks it’s a good idea, and he knows he can’t count on majorities in Congress after this November. So he’s ramming through as much as he can, while he still can.

     Keep in mind, please — while I agree that a commitment NEVER to use nuclear weapons against so-and-so is a bad idea (just as is a commitment NEVER to use torture), this is a policy statement, which can be reversed at a moment’s notice if necessary.

     President Obama can say: “I still believe that nuclear weapons must never be used if any possible alternative exists. I have been persuaded, however, that it is a mistake to inform America’s enemies that they are safe from us. So let it be known: if you hit us, we will hit back. How we hit back, and how severely, will be entirely our decision.”

     (Would he say such a thing? Probably not… it doesn’t sound like him, does it?)

     respectfully,
     Daniel in Brookline

112. “Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

     Yup, it’s Orwell.

113. Artfl . . . I’m trying to look across the chessboard. What do you see when you look?

     I see the main collective solidifying power so that they remain in place… fully darwinistic… the demotion of the masses to pets and prols, and the lifting up of the statists to a nice comfortable sheltered existence away from them.

     their special vacation spaces will no longer have Beuford T Pusser visiting cause he was better than they were at runnign a business. ‘

     ultimatly, if you look at how many are related to the people in the past, you will see a return to oligarchic feudal rule.

     it will be like russia was, because thats the model they are following, not china. and its the farthest left you can go.

     with enough of this, then mass starvations will cause a paring down of those peoples who Marx said was dysgenic, that they could never move forward into the industrialized world.

     without the US to prevent by morals, they will run roughshod over every smaller country.

     this is what is across the chess board and what they, like hitler, cramsci, frankfurt school, russia, subversives, spies, and tons of others have all admitted is the goal.

     its really not so hard to know the goal as that is the only thing that is not allowed to change.

     over the next four years, your going to see changes to print, media, and otehr areas. we will be restricted from moving. we will have to have food rationed, and more.

     one only has to look accross the board and to know AND READ what they read and believe.

     then without insulting your opponent, believe them, and see what they are doing.

     then, oppose them…

     but we have been declawed a long time ago.

     On The Coming Revolution
     September 17, 2005
     By TygrBright
     http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/09/17_revolution.html

     and of course they all know its coming, and they all know the words used that they know to respond to the cause, and they know deep down its going to be fun.

     that last part is how unrealistic they are.

     here from 2009

     Divided We Stand
     online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204482304574219813708759806.html

     Still, the precedent for any breakup of today’s America is not necessarily the one set by the musket-bearing colonists’ demanded departure from the British crown in the late 18th century or by the crisis-ridden dissolution of the U.S.S.R. at the end of the 20th century. Every empire, every too-big thing, fragments or shrinks according to its own unique character and to the age of history to which it belongs.

     they have been working sort of in the open for over 100 years.

     they have not changed the goals, nor the methods. you can see that in how their methods have not adopted to a world with citizen cameras and recording devices.

     and the big problem is that other states will NOT sit around and let this happen while they watch, the way the US did.

     they WILL grab neighbors who are unprepared.

     how can china and the world fix the financial place that these progressives pushed us all to in a financial judo throw?

114. Based on my years and years of experience in the military and working in defense, I can tell you that Obama’s “big announcement” doesn’t amount to anything:

     We haven’t had the political will to used a nuclear weapon in defense or in retaliation for 40 years!

     Having lost the political will to exist as an exceptional nation, or even win a war, it doesn’t matter whether we have any nukes or not. We are incapable of using them. We have been for about 40 years.

     Futhermore, I think it is for the best that we stop designing, or even producing, any more nuclear weapons: Let the Chinese and Russians do their own R&D for a change!

115. the world is preparing to fight the US as the world fought Germany.

     Is anyone in the Obama administration paying any attention to Vladimir Putin?

     The Russian prime minister has just returned from his first-ever trip to Venezuela, with bear hugs for dictator-“presidente” Hugo Ché¡vez.

     Russia and Venezuela signed no fewer than 31 agreements in twelve hours. Russia has already sold Ché¡vez $4 billion in military armaments, and now he has signed on for at least $5 billion more.

     its interesting but now russia will be opening up the oil fields that were taken from the US and other western countries.

     A consortium of Rosneft, LUKoil, Gazprom-Neft, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz received a 40 percent share in Junin-6, Venezuela’s largest oil field with 52.68 billion barrels of oil. Moscow and Caracas also agreed to include the Russian consortium in the planned development of the Ayacucho-2, Ayacucho-3 and Junin-3 oil wells.

     the sides signed a letter of intent to create a nuclear power station with a capacity between 200 megawatts and 500 megawatts.

     hey! isnt that how the other states got nuclear bombs? dealing with russia for power?

     On Friday, Putin reaffirmed Moscow’s intention to supply a $2.2 billion, seven-year loan first discussed during last year’s visit, while a source in the Russian delegation told reporters that Venezuela might use the credit line on Russian arms.
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Chavez had said he wanted to buy T-72-S tanks, Smerch multiple launch rocket systems, S-300 and Antey-250 anti-aircraft guided missile systems, although no new arms deals were signed Friday.

     Venezuela has bought at least $4 billion in Russian arms since 2005, including Su-30 fighter jets.

     they only have to light up the board at the same time during our elections… and voila..

116. Gray: you may indeed be correct, but I wonder if the entire world perceived it that way. Wasn’t Bush, for example, perceived as a cowboy, capable of something like that? And Reagan? It’s the perception that would possibly act as the deterrent, not the reality.

117. Wasn’t Bush, for example, perceived as a cowboy, capable of something like that? And Reagan? It’s the perception that would possibly act as the deterrent, not the reality.

     Nah…. It was a useful narrative for European leaders politically, but everyone knew the truth.

     If we were capable of actually acting, Europe, Venezuela, Russia and China would have treated us more the way they treat Iran, instead of crapping on us all of the time.

     As I’ve said here before: we are not even a paper tiger, ‘cuz paper tigers don’t have the need to be loved as the US does.

118. Nah…. It was a useful narrative for European leaders politically, but everyone knew the truth.

     Lemme answer that better:

     When faced with aggression from Russia, and now, Islamic Radicals, it was the wisest position for European nations to denounce us publically and support us privately, which they have always done. They are on Russia’s doorstep and they are full of Islamic Radicals. They never had a choice: they know how feckless we truly are.

119. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

     Yeah. Obama also committed to:

     1) televising the health care debates on C-SPAN,
     2) accepting public campaign finance
     3) giving the American people five days to read every bill before he signed it,
     4) closing Guantanamo, and
     5) withdrawing troops from Iraq in 16 months.

120. Futhermore, I think it is for the best that we stop designing, or even producing, any more nuclear weapons: Let the Chinese and Russians do their own R&D for a change!

     oh, they have… they have…

     not only that, did you remember that china can disarm our most important system. GPS? and we have no space shuttle to go up and fix it, unless our enemies (in such a situation) would rent us the platform… and dont forget that both china and russia recently rewrote their nuclear doctrines as well. anyone beside me remember? anyone remember how many nuclear weapons that russia has? and how many SMALL tactical nuclear weapons she has?

     it all depends on whether you include the ones in which the heads are off and can be put on again.

     if you do, then there could be as many as 40,000 devices… if your only looking at what can be fired today, or in a few days, then your looking at a third of that.

     According to the Center for Security Policy and other think-tanks, US intelligence has never been able to ascertain the true size of the Russian strategic nuclear force and has issued estimates, which have consistently underestimated the size of the Russian nuclear force.

     they have just upgraded yamentau mountain. and they have built more.

     “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015” reiterated the conclusion of past CIA reports in citing the Russian and Communist Chinese nuclear arsenals as the two greatest threats to this country. A much downsized US strategic nuclear arsenal would be more vulnerable than ever to a disabling Russian nuclear first strike and would leave us even more likely to Russian nuclear blackmail. written during Bush era

     but thats not the scary part. the scary part is that he has said that he wont retaliate if its biological… right?

     Soviet biological weapons program
     en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_program_of_biological_weapons

     they were supposed to stop their developemetn when we stopped ours.

     however, they didnt… (ergo the escape of anthrax that killed hundreds, and which the false story of AIDS being from american labs was created. as i said, they ALWAYS equalize with their enemies by accusing them of doing what they are doing!! its a mental thing, they ALWAYS do this)

     In the 1990s, President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin admitted to an offensive bio-weapons program as well as to the true nature of the Sverdlovsk biological weapons accident of 1979, which had resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people [5] Soviet defectors, including Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov, first deputy chief of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992, confirmed that the program had been massive and still existed. In September 1992, Russia signed an agreement with the United States and Great Britain promising to end its bio-weapons program and to convert its facilities for benevolent scientific and medical purposes. [6] Compliance with the agreement as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented. [7]

     so if they use any of that stuff…

     obama will not respnod with nukes

     i guess he will try to field an invasion of russia by conventional means.

     [edited for length by n-n]

121. Russian writer Maksim Gorky and his son. During the Trial of the Twenty One in 1938, NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda admitted that he poisoned to death Maksim Gorky and his son and unsuccessfully tried to poison future NKVD boss Nikolay Ezhov. The attempted poisoning of Ezhov was later officially dismissed as falsification, but Vyacheslav Molotov believed that the poisoning accusations were true. Yagoda was never officially rehabilitated (recognized as an innocent victim of political repressions) by Soviet authorities.

     ezhov… is the latvian who helped created the KGB…

     and OBAMA looks like him!!!
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ezhov.PNG

     wiki doesnt list very many of them. and confirmed poisonings, like of stalin, are considered alleged. (but now we know as we have seen the archives to some degree).

     for instance, the wiki has polytskya, but not the man killed with polonium.

     The KGB’s Poison Factory
     online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111282082770699984,00.html

     you can find the article outside the subscription if yo look… its from 2005…

     4 years ago..

     Viktor Yushchenko was intentionally poisoned during Ukraine’s presi dential election campaign last year.

     he is the man in Becks ‘documentary’ that tells of his family member suffering the soviets.
     and how he points out that the stories we think are exceptional are not, they are average and horrors..

     A team of American doctors that secretly flew to Vienna to assist Austrian colleagues in treating Mr. Yushchenko found a substance in his blood — a highly toxic dioxin of the type 2,3,7,8-TCDD (Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) that a Russian laboratory had successfully experimented with a few years earlier.

     Former Soviet spies and intelligence historians like myself, listening to the debate and taking note of the victim, the timing and the early confusion surrounding Mr. Yushchenko’s symptoms, can speculate about the source with some authority. Even before the news that the poisonous compound had been found, we had already noticed uncanny similarities to the past work of the “Kamera,” or as KGB veterans might remember it, “Laboratory No. 12”.

     Whatever its official name, Kamera’s products — poisonous biological and chemical agents — have been constantly refined over the years as advancing science opens new possibilities and as Kremlin leaders have new requirements. They are highly specialized, tailored for each recipient to cause the desired effect — usually death or incapacity — in specific ways. But one thing in their desi gn is constant. They must make the victim’s death or illness appear natural or at least produce symptoms that will baffle doctors and forensic investigators. To this end the Kamera developed its defining specialty: combining known poisons into original and untraceable forms.

     and this is why polonium was used on a KGB defector recently, and here is a historical one

     the 1955 attempt on Nikolay Khokhlov, a defector from the KGB. He drank a cup of coffee at a public reception in Germany in 1957 and fell ill. In his blood the doctors found traces of thallium, a metallic substance commonly used as rat poison. But the appropriate treatment had little effect and it was not until weeks later when Khokhlov was close to death that ima ginative doctors at a U.S. Army hospital in Frankfurt found the hitherto undreamed-of answer. The thallium had been subjected to atomic radiation so that the metal would slowly disintegrate in the system, giving symptoms as common as gastritis as a patient slowly died of radiation poisoning. By that time, the thallium would have disintegrated and left no trace even for an autopsy.
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Countless others — literally countless, for who can count poison victims when no poison is detected? — suffered this fate. I have identified more than a dozen examples through the years. The Chechen rebel leader Khattab was poisoned by the FSB in March 2004. A KGB agent poisoned the food of the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin in December 1979. Trotsky’s secretary Wolfgang Salus died mysteriously in 1957. The anti-Soviet emigr? writer Lev Rebet was thought to have died from a heart attack in October 1957 until the KGB assassin defected four year s later and told how he had sprayed a Kamera mist containing poisonous gas from a crushed cyanide ampoule into Rebet’s face as he passed him on a stairway.

     without defection they would have not known how it was done. the son of the man, also learned years later what he was helping his dad do.

     and please..
     in this next paragraph…
     note the way they say whatever to get a percentage of the population to oppose another percentage of the population, and then think of nancy pelosi, the left ehre, and tea baggin

     Russian intelligence veterans will also recognize, as I do, the characteristic campaign of Soviet-style “active measures” to confuse the issue. Officials in the government of Leonid Kuchma said that the candidate ate some bad sushi, or maybe caught a virus, or even disfigured himself on purpose to win electoral points. And they acc use the doctors and laboratories of “medically falsified diagnoses.” Former KGB Colonel Viktor Cherkashin, who handled the two notorious American traitors Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, was recently quoted as saying, “I have my doubts about whether Yushchenko was poisoned at all. It looks more like a dermatological problem.”

     north korea also has labs, and so does china.

     we do not have the labs. period

122. I am supporting Obama for re-election.
     I always wished I could have been around in 1776 and helped the US form. Does anyone doubt that after 8 years of Obama the US will have to be rebuilt from scratch, OK a lot of what will need to be rebuilt may be radioactive, but hey the greater the challenge the greater the glory.

     Come to think, four years may be more than enough to reach that point, we’ll see.

123. Just wanted to say I strongly second E’s recommendation of Firefly/Serenity. The series is amazing. Its first and only season is so clear-cut that I can only wonder what it would have achieved if it had been given a second, third or fourth season.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>