Iran's Nuclear Armageddon ... Alan Caruba

Iran's Nuclear Armageddon

By Alan Caruba

During the long years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union faced off against each other, both having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, did the prospect of a real threat to the homeland arise. After a U.S. naval blockade was imposed, the Russians took their missiles home.

The key factor was that the Russian leaders were not suicidal. They were not crazy. They fully understood what it would mean to actually use nuclear weapons or be on the receiving end of them.

The Iranian ayatollahs are a different case entirely. Over the years, they have voiced a rather nonchalant attitude toward being on the receiving end of nuclear weapons because they are a Shiite martyrdom cult. During its eight-year war with Iraq, initiated by Saddam Hussein, an estimated 500,000 Iranians died, including 100,000 children sent to clear mine fields by setting them off.

The failure to grasp the depth and insanity of the current leaders of Iran is pushing the world toward the first nuclear confrontation since A-bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II in 1945.

Yoram Ettinger, a former Israel consul general in Houston, Texas, warns that “Iran’s geostrategic goals are energized by its current Islamic zeal, viewing jihad (holy war) as the permanent state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, while peace and cease-fire accords are tenuous.”

So, when the Israelis shared intelligence with President Obama in mid-November that the Iranians “will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads” by late March 2012, it raised the stakes for President Obama and the nation.

We already know Obama wants a reduction in nuclear arms. He signed a treaty with the Russians to achieve this. He refused to permit missiles to be based in Poland, presumably for the same reason. The surface to air missiles, however, could have deterred any missiles headed toward Europe.

I have absolutely no confidence in Obama when it comes to the preemptive action that must be taken against Iran’s nuclear and military facilities in order to end a threat that even the President acknowledged in a recemt Hawaii press conference would be directed not just at Israel, but at the United States as well.

The stakes just don’t get any higher and this President has not demonstrated any backbone except to okay the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the man behind the attack on 9/11. That was a no-brainer.

I don’t know what military assets and options we have in the Persian Gulf, but if an attack to deter an Iranian nuclear threat is undertaken either by Israel or together, we will likely need a lot of them.

Military observers have concluded that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz that provides access to and from the Persian Gulf, thus putting enormous strain on the provision of Middle East oil that flows through the Straits on a daily basis, not just from Iran, but from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq. An estimated 40% of all seaborne oil passes through the Strait, the equivalent of 20% of the total amount of oil traded worldwide. If closed, it would drive the cost of oil to stratospheric heights.

The failure of the U.S. to develop its own extensive oil reserves will prove to be a massive strategic error. The delay of a proposed Canadian oil pipeline to deliver oil to the U.S. is just one small element of this failure.

In an August 6, 2009 Jerusalem Post article, Anne Bayefsky of EyeontheUN.org wrote, “The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 20 this way: ‘The Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran…they have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran. Their strategy consists of begging us to talk to them.”

Ultimately it will be Israel’s call if U.S. leaders fail to step up to the task and, in the judgment of the Iranians, the U.S. will not. The Israelis have no choice.

In February 2010 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, addressing a crowd celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran,said  “Iran is now a nuclear state.”

The world is rapidly running out of time to prevent an Iranian Armageddon.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

The World is Having a Nervous Breakdown

The World is Having a Nervous Breakdown

By Alan Caruba

If one has been in the habit of reading history then the events of the past and of the present inform each other. For this reason, it occurred to me that the world is once again having a nervous breakdown.

It’s not just about money, though surely the nations of Europe along with the U.S. have spent themselves into the poorhouse in ways that defy the imagination. If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical to see the desperation that has led our Federal Reserve to print money backed by nothing and to watch the central bankers of Europe move gobs of euros around between the new mother church, Germany, and the banks of Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy so that they can pay their bills.

They’re all broke. We have individual States that have a higher GDP than Greece that have balanced their budgets. Those are usually the States whose constitutions require they balance their budget. The rest are run by governors torn between taking the federal largess intended to deprive them of more sovereignty and hoping that the next natural disaster hits the State above or below them instead.

Few arrive at a nervous breakdown overnight. It takes time and a variety of bad decisions or bad luck or both. After blaming George W. Bush and Republicans for his problems, Obama has taken to blaming bad luck. Does he even know that people have concluded the economy is now officially and completely his fault?

When he proposed Obamacare, a million Americans

Obama cannot explain away having increased government spending by 50% between 2008 and 2010 while calling for higher taxes on everyone at the same time there are an estimated 14 million Americans out of work, stopped looking for work, or can’t get a job because Obamacare has so screwed up the near future that businesses are reluctant to hire anyone.

The 2008 financial crisis was 100% a government creation dating back to the establishment of Fannie Mae in 1938 to purchase mortgages from banks in order to encourage more lending, more home building, more home ownership. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it ignored the timeless role of greed in banking.

Rule Number One: Almost everything the government touches, it ruins in some fashion. At the very least, it increases its cost of operation.

Rule Number Two: The government’s primary function is the defense of the nation against attack. As Ronald Reagan said, “Nobody ever started a war with us because we were too strong.”

Rule Number Three: Government exists due to its ability to tax and spend other people’s money. Spending always needs to be restrained.

Rule Number Four. Government will always produce more laws and regulations than are needed. It should be restrained. (See the U.S. Constitution).

Globally, we are just emerging from a bout of total insanity called “global warming.” This was a theory that said that something that represented 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere was trapping all the heat and would kill us unless massively reduced. That “something” is carbon dioxide, a gas on which—along with oxygen—all life depends. It is plant food; the less carbon dioxide, the less vegetation. Herbivores eat vegetation and carnivores eat herbivores. Humans, being omnivores, eat both.

The other craziness afflicting the planet is “radical” Islam. The truth is that it has been just plain old Islam for about 1400 years. There are a billion Muslims, most located in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Indonesia. Wherever they are, their non-Muslim neighbors cordially hate them because Islam teaches that all other religions are false and that those who believe them—infidels—can be killed for not being Muslims. The strange part of this is, depending on whether you’re a Shiite or Sunni, it is perfectly okay to kill other Muslims, too. Christianity went through this during the Reformation, 1517 to 1648.

When I was a child, the world went crazy and held a great big war. It involved Germany, Japan, and Italy as the “Axis” powers and just about everyone else did their best to destroy their military in every way possible. The Axis was defeated first and then, still holding out, the Empire of Japan had not one, but two, atomic bombs dropped on them before they quit. showed up in Washington, D.C. to tell them not to do it. He should have listened to them. Now we call them the Tea Party.

World War Two was the direct result of Europe’s World War One. The surrender terms were so awful the Germans embraced a lunatic called Hitler and the Italians fell in love with Mussolini.

The Soviet Union came out of World War One when the Germans permitted Vladimir Lenin, a Communist, into Russia. He started a revolution and the Russians swapped a czar for a new dictator. Stalin took over from Lenin, but because communism has never worked anywhere it was tried, the Soviet Union eventually fell apart in 1991. Now a republic, the new dictator is named Vladimir Putin.

As the French say, “Plus les choses changent, ils plus elles restent les memes.” The more things change, they more they stay the same.

The world is having a nervous breakdown because institutions, religions, and political ideologies are having difficulty adjusting to the migration and growth of populations. Modern communications technologies are playing a role as well.

The chimera haunting everyone is the military capacity to inflict massive devastation and death has increased beyond the confidence of governments and people that it can be controlled without having to kill a lot of people, i.e., Iranians, in the process..

Capitalism, despite an abundance of communism still around, has triumphed, but like any system, has been subjected to a great deal of abuse, rocking the economies of the U.S., Europe, and making most other nations nervous, too.

And, finally, there are six-going-on-seven billion people on a planet that is probably not intended to have that many. It puts intense strain on everything from water to food to the sources of energy that fuel modern and developing nations.

So everyone’s on edge. Nations and continents are on edge. The world is having a nervous breakdown.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

Israel’s Samson Option

Israel’s Samson Option

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

If, while watching the disturbing events in the Middle East, you are not focusing your attention on Israel – then you are looking in the wrong place.

Once, a very long time ago, I heard someone refer to Israel as the "world’s canary in the coal mine." That is as apt a description of modern Israel as I have ever heard.

As I watch events in the Muslim countries surrounding Israel deteriorate it looks, for all the world, as if we are racing toward Armageddon. The great armies, just now dipping their toes into the deepening unrest in that region, are unaware that they are playing out a story line written thousands of years ago.

Those of us who have read that storyline know how the story ends and, too, we are aware of the events leading up to the true "Mother of all Battles."

For the first time in its history, America is on the wrong side.

Our President, with his loyalty to the world and not to the country that trusted him with the sacred duty to be leader of America and Commander-in-Chief of the mightiest military force in all of history, has gone over to the "Dark Side." He has turned his back on the one nation, which occupies the most important piece of real estate on the globe. He has made it clear he favors the countries, which consider themselves Israel’s most ardent enemies. Israel knows they, now, stand alone.

Just this past weekend, Israel deployed their homegrown antimissile defense system "Iron Dome." Another anti-missile defense system, a shorter-range system as we understand it, is in the pipeline and scheduled for deployment soon. Israel is getting ready for the coming conflagration when all the Muslim anger, boiling in the crucible of that region, boils over and pours onto their tiny country.

Without America standing with Israel, Israel stands a better than 50-50 chance of being over-run and wiped out as a country.

The Israelis have planned for that.

The plan is referred to as: "The Samson Option."

The "Samson Option" is Israel’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against "enemies" should its existence as a Jewish state be jeopardized through military attack.

The term was inspired by the Biblical figure Samson, who destroyed a Philistine temple, killing himself, and thousands of Philistine enemies.

The Samson option is a strategy of last resort retaliation - even if it means Israel’s own annihilation.

It has been estimated by so-called experts that Israel has at least 400 thermo-nuclear weapons. They can be launched from land, sea, and air. This means that Israel has a second strike option -- even if much of the country is destroyed.

Nuclear weapons were viewed by Israel as the ultimate insurer of Israel’s continued existance. Israel decided, as early as the 1960’s, to build-up its military and achieve absolute conventional military superiorty over it’s enemies, and not place its reliance on nuclear weapons. Israel did this in the hope that they would never have to call on their thermo-nuclear weapons stockpile to rescue their country.

Clealy the danger to Israel’scontinued existace has escalated until today Israel finds itself ann island of sanity in a sea of madness.

We have warned of Israel’s "Samson Option" many times before. Like their ancient ancestors on Masada, Israel, it would seem, is prepared to sacrifice itself rather than be driven into slavery -- or extinction -- by the enemy hordes that surround it.

Sadly, the only country that can prevent those Middle Eastern madmen from breaching the walls of Israel is the United States. But the US is leaderless, at least until 2013, and the man who currently occupies the office of President of the United States has shown no favor towards Israel or its plight.

Today, the entire world is threathened. The Damocles Sword of Islamic terrorism hangs precariously over our heads. Here, in America, the lives of every man, woman and child has changed since September 11, 2001. And yet, compared to the threat Israelis live under, every day, Americans live in perfect secutity and safety.

The canary in the coal mine is telling us the threat is real and it is lethal. The actions of Israel should be the warning the world heeds. But, sadly, it will not be taken seriously until it is too late. America should be shoring up its relationship with Israel and making it clear to all who threathen that tiny country that Israel’s big brother is back by her side. But that won’t happen until the electorate of America decides to send Obama into retirement where he can play golf and basketball to his heart’s content and leave the job of leading the free world to someone who actually knows how.

J. D. Longstreet

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack ... Alan Caruba

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack
By Alan Caruba

As the Middle East begets one insurrection after another against the oppression that has been endemic to the region for centuries and as Japan faces the worst nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl, the President of America and Commander-in-Chief is Absent Without a Leave (AWOL).

Barack Hussein Obama is the first President of the United States who received a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up. It is a mark of how debased this once prestigious international prize has become. He should give it up.

In the past, the Peace Prize went to Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for negotiating an end to a Russian-Japanese conflict and to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Its value began to fall off the cliff when it was given to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Obama in 2009. In between, it was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

It is an ancient axiom that power is lost when power is not exercised. Osama bin Laden seriously misread the U.S. when he referred to it as “a weak horse”, an Arab way of saying it could be attacked with impunity. George W. Bush responded by bombing the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and then by invading Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden has been in hiding ever since and his top lieutenants keep getting whacked.

Obama’s approach to foreign affairs has been to misunderstand and denigrate the role of America in a dangerous world. Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal calls it “The Collapse of Internationalism” because the failure to lead has demonstrated the uselessness of the United Nations, its Security Council, NATO, the European Union, and the Arab League when it comes to facing down a psychopathic despot like Libya’s Quadaffi and, of course, the same was true regarding Saddam Hussein.

This is how big wars occur.

Recent history bears out the failure to take action against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, against Adolf Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland, to anticipate the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and now the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

This is what happens when an administration’s policy makers are all “intellectuals” who have spun out hypothetical views of the world that have no relationship to history or present realities.

This is what happens when, despite our present financial woes, the most powerful nation on Earth has reduced its naval and air power, and asks its military to engage in nation-building while fighting our enemies. What is needed are entirely separate, highly trained units devoted to that task.

This is what happens when “foreign policy” involves wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on the United Nations and billions more in so-called “foreign aid” to nations that do not like us, nor support us in times of crisis and need.

Libya, said Henninger, “was a test case, and what we have seen is that a world in which the U.S. doesn’t unmistakably lead is a world that spins its wheel, and eventually the wheels start to come off.”

The U.S. is not, as Obama believes, just one more nation among others or that it is not the single most exceptional experiment in democracy and freedom.

Just as Americans must organize to resist and survive Barack Hussein Obama over the next two years, having come to realize how utterly incompetent he is, other nations are wondering what will occur without the leadership the U.S. has always provided in the past, including two world wars, several smaller ones, and the containment of the former Soviet menace.

The presidency is much more than frequent trips to the golf course, predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament, and an ill-timed visit to Rio. It is a dangerous place filled with people like Quadaffi and others of his ilk.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Obama's Incremental Surrender ... Alan Caruba

Obama's Incremental Surrender
By Alan Caruba

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Since taking office on January 20, 2009, President Obama has engaged in one form of incremental surrender and betrayal after another, letting our allies know the United States is not to be trusted to protect them and our enemies know they need only wait for our troops to depart.
The latest tiny surrender was Obama’s pledge that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against none-nuclear countries no matter what weapons they choose to use against us.

In plain terms, our nuclear weapons may well be the only thing restraining the bad intentions of any number of despots worldwide.

It should be noted that Obama’s new policy leaves our strategic nuclear weapons in place, but limits further development and testing. As The Washington Times noted, “American is taking a pledge to pursue nuclear obsolescence.”

Obama’s policy ignores the fact that our current enemies are not states, but stateless terrorist Islamist organizations with state sponsors. They have made it clear that they would love to get their hands on a small nuclear weapon or on biological/chemical weapons with which to inflict death on the scale of 9/11 or larger.

This kind of empty and stupid posturing may make Obama feel like a great global leader, but in practical terms it does nothing to assure our allies that he has the stomach to retaliate against their enemies and ours.

There’s a reason there has not been a World War Three. It begins with the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. It kept the Soviets mindful of their own destruction until their system collapsed under the failure of communism.

To fail to understand that America has been the global policeman since the end of World War Two is to ignore the benefit this has brought to the world despite the difficulties encountered in Vietnam in the 1970s and Iraq in this decade.

The U.S. armed forces, its Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, represent more than three million personnel on active duty, the vast bulk of whom are stationed within the U.S. with others in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The rest are at sea protecting the vital lanes of commercial traffic around the world and showing the power of the U.S. to those who might think about challenging it. Deployments include, of course, those in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but the U.S. also has more than 56,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Japan, and around 30,000 in South Korea. There are fairly sizeable units in England and Italy. There are units through East Asia, North Africa, the Near East and South Asia, as well as sub-Saharan Africa.

When Obama made his speech regarding the decision to increase our presence in Afghanistan he used West Point cadets as the photo backdrop. He used the return of a casualty of war as a photo opportunity showing him saluting military-style. It is all symbolism without substance and it is obscene.

This president gives every indication of having no real heart for combat. He has demonstrated a knack for picking the wrong side in a fight whether it’s a Fidel Castro- wannabe legally exiled from Honduras or the decision to withdraw a nuclear umbrella from former Soviet satellite nations in Eastern Europe.

He is utterly clueless regarding the lessons previous U.S. presidents have discovered. The Middle East only responds to power and force. Diplomacy produces nothing but stalemate in the Middle East and that is often the best outcome one can accept.

A case in point is our traditional and most reliable Middle East ally, Israel, whose prime minister was recently treated in an extraordinarily shabby fashion by Obama as if to deliberately signal the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Syrians and others whose “side” he’s on. Since 1947 no amount of negotiations and diplomacy have moved Israel’s Palestinian and Syrian enemies any closer to peace though, after having been thoroughly defeated in war, both Egypt and Jordan did accept peace terms.

Apparently, only after Iran nukes Tel Aviv will the new Obama doctrine be debated for several weeks concerning an appropriate level of retaliation. This is a president who, even though a bi-partisan Congress has passed tough sanctions against Iran, hasn’t found time to sign off on them.

It you want World War Three, you need only wait for Obama to force Israel’s hand to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities for lack of any other option. They have previously done this in both Iraq and Syria.

Obama has proven to be a disaster for the nation on so many levels and in so many ways that observers can only watch and wonder what this demented socialist flower child and his cronies will do next.

Alan Caruba

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Israeli Warships en Route to The Persian Gulf?

Israeli Warships en Route to The Persian Gulf?

Will Nuclear Weapons Be Used Against Iran?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Reports are coming out of the Arab Media that two Israeli “Missile Boats” passed through the Suez Canal, on February 6th, enroute to the Red Sea. Speculation is that the ultimate destination is, in fact, the Persian Gulf.

Last summer, another Israeli warship passed through the Suez Canal accompanied, reports say, by an Israeli submarine. You may read the article HERE.

These reports combined with Iran’s recent promise to strike the west with a “stunning blow” on February 11th, would lead one to conclude the stage is being set for a “counter strike” should Iran go through with it’s threat. There is another line of thought, which says the stage is being set for the attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Egyptians are reporting that the Israeli Navy, in cooperation with the US Fifth Fleet, have been charting Persian Gulf waters and Iranian shorelines in preparation for attacks by the Israeli naval and special operations forces. These reports, for what they are worth, and frankly, we don’t know yet, are saying the Israelis and Americans are locating and defining routes to be used by their forces to drive into Iran, by air and by ground, to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to Debka Files the Egyptians are reporting that Saudi officials are pressing the US to explain why they were not told of US assistance to Israel in planning the attack on Iran. These same reports say that some Gulf intelligence services and navel units have actually tracked some of the Israeli/American movements and are able to document them.

You may read this report, in its entirety, at DEBKA FILES HERE.

Why do we give this report and others concerning these Israeli naval movements credence? Because Iran has been making aggressive noises lately. As others have noted and reported, Iran tends to do this when they feel nervous and threatened. This would explain their most recent threats to strike the west “a stunning blow” on February 11th.

A couple of things: The American President, Obama, is NOT, I repeat, is NOT, a supporter of Israel. Number two: Bebe Netanyahu doesn’t give a d**n what Obama does or does not support! Netanyahu will do whatever is necessary to preserve the lives of Israelis and the nation of Israel – and -- in our opinion, he should.

Obama’s lack of support for Israel is another mistake, a HUGE mistake on his part. The American people, generally speaking, support Israel. We tend to always pull for the underdog, especially if that underdog is a democracy. Remember, the US was the first nation to recognize the State of Israel as a new state. We have supported Israel, to one degree or another, ever since -- right up until Obama.

We would suggest the Obama Regime get real -- and get real fast -- because there is another player in all this – Russia. Russia will almost certainly be involved in any fight between Israel and Iran. They will be in the fray on the side of Iran. Russia has a very real interest in Iran as a countermeasure to what they see as U.S. Mideast dominance.

No matter how one interprets the latest news about the Israeli Missile Boat maneuvers, one thing is certain: Israel is preparing to strike Iran and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. That is a given. It is also a given that no matter what Obama thinks about Israel, the US WILL be involved in the fight against Iran and Russia.

In all likelihood Iran’s surrogate Syria will attack Israel from the north to force Israel to commit a large portion of its military resources to a fight on its own ground. Anything thrown at Syria will not be thrown at Iran.

Obama, and other national leaders with weak knees, should not be surprised if Israel uses nukes against Iran to ensure Iran’s nuclear facilities are completely destroyed. Netanyahu knows he will be condemned by most European nations if he facilitates his nuclear arsenal. That is NOT, however his concern. Netanyahu’s only concern is the preservation of Israel.

Iran has repeatedly declared that it will "wipe Israel off the map" and the IDF is taking this threat seriously -- as it should.

Whatever happens, Israel has been preparing for war with Iran for many months. The Israel Defense Forces, some months ago, purchased three new Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) and have several submarines on alert in the region.

All of this comes at a time when President Obama is asking for a 25% cut in the US Military. Even without a third front, a third war in the Middle East in which the US military is involved up to it’s waist, it makes absolutely NO SENSE to reduce the size of the US Military by one soldier, let alone by one-quarter of its force. With the current developments in the Gulf, America may find that it must re-establish the draft to ENLARGE its standing military force. In fact, the Progressives are so enamored of the draft that may be exactly what they are attempting to do.

My crystal ball remains dark. I cannot predict what will happen in the short run between Israel and Iran. In the long run, however, a crystal ball is not needed. At some point in the future, Israel and Iran WILL collide in war. Alongside Israel will be the US. Alongside Iran will be Russia. With US forces stretched to the limit, the use of nuclear weapons by the US will certainly be on the table. The only question is – will Obama have the intestinal fortitude to use them. Or -- will he allow US forces to be annihilated?

J. D. Longstreet