Pruden and Krauthammer analyze Obama's 'Soft on Terror' policy

Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? He granted us exactly what the stupid generation wanted in this past election by elevating the least qualified man evah to the highest office in our land, President Barack Hussein Obama.

What hath God wrought? Could it be our first Muslim president was put into place by the Almighty to allow America to be humbled by the Arab terrorists?

Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times considers the implications for our nation's security the "soft on terror" reputation Obama is busily building with every day in office.

Mr. Obama now turns to jobs, jobs, jobs, and promises to do for job creation what he did for health care reform and what he's doing to protect us from terror catastrophe. Which may not be enough, but he's doing a bang-up job of protecting the rights of terrorists.

The president displayed an unusual array of friends and enemies. He lectured the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, six of whom were seated as a group on the front row, for their decision to uphold the First Amendment as it applies to corporations (which are comprised of individual citizens). No one can remember when a president ever breached manners and protocol in such a breathtaking way. When the president inaccurately asserted that the court had "reversed a century of law," Associate Justice Samuel Alito was captured on camera mouthing the words "not true," which is apparently the judicial way of saying "you lie!" But Mr. Obama is a onetime law professor and it's possible that his lecture was kindly intended to fill in the gaps of the legal knowledge of the learned justices seated before him. Professors are always eager to display what they know, even if what they know isn't so. We should give the president the benefit of the doubt, even if the stoic justices clearly did not.

Eric Holder, his attorney general also seated among house seats, appeared to be having a high old time, laughing and smiling and basking in the synthetic admiration that high government officials are accustomed to. Mr. Holder is the author of the remarkable decision to grant Miranda rights to the man who tried to celebrate Christmas by blowing up an airliner over Detroit. (Who says radical Muslims have no respect for the holidays of other people's religions?)

President Obama boasted of how much better he is at fighting terrorism than George W. was: "In the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed, far more than in 2008." Since neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published body counts (that's so Vietnam War), it's a claim that even the Associated Press concedes is impossible to verify.

What is easy to verify is how soft the Obama administration continues to be on terrorists. No waterboarding (not even when a grubby bewhiskered terrorist clearly needs a bath), no harsh questioning. No fair treating such a soldier of Allah like FDR was willing to treat a soldier of the Nazis or a Shinto warrior during World War II.

It's not fashionable in certain circles to notice this, but we can be sure the Obama treatment of terrorists is taken into account in other places. British intelligence officials say that over the past week an "unusually high number" of prospective evil-doers on the airlines' no-fly list have tried to board airliners bound for the United States. As a consequence, the London government has raised the assessment of the terror threat from "severe," which means an attack is reckoned "highly likely," to "critical," which means an attack is "imminent."

The London Daily Mirror quotes British security sources that an Egyptian man tried to board an American Airlines flight last weekend in London bound for Miami. The next day a Saudi man tried to board a United Airlines flight from London to Chicago. They were sent home.

All this is enough to give Americans nightmares, particularly when it's not at all clear that the high officials of the government are taking the threat as seriously as we expect them to. When Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told Congress that it was a mistake that FBI field agents, and not specially trained interrogators (but not waterboarders), had questioned the Detroit bomber, he retreated later in the day to say his remarks were "misconstrued." Since so much Washington talk is electronically recorded now, government officials who blurt out inconvenient truths no longer have the luxury of saying they were "misquoted." Bureaucracy has become a dangerous game.

Sir Charles Krauthammer cuts to the bone, as usual, with his analysis of Obama's terror policy.

WASHINGTON -- The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.

We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI).

The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably. Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.

Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.

Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had only been conceived for use abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of highly nuanced sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack on American soil?

It gets worse. Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not deployed because it does not yet exist After a year! I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.

Now, don't you feel better about our security since Obama's policies are clearly explained by the eminent pair of Pruden and Krauthammer? Me neither. But it sure brings clarity to the mind, somewhat like Samuel Johnson said the prospect of a hanging in the morning will do.

And it's our nation that's hanging in the balance. Come on 2012, we may not survive until then.

Obama fiddles, Iran burns, MSM applauds his "calm"

Obama should buy himself a fiddle. At least he'd have something to play with while the whole world burns down around his shoulders and he stays "calm." That's how the so-called mainstream media terms his nonengagement during the so-far biggest international crisis of his young administration. Sad note is his policy of hiding under the bed when the brown stuff hits the fan has worked out pretty well for him. When during the presidential campaign the economy suddenly collapsed into the continuing credit crisis, what did Obama do? Absolutely nothing.

He just continued on campaigning as if nothing had changed. What did John McCain do? Stopped campaigning and went to Washington to try to lead an effort to solve the crisis. And what did McCain get for his efforts? Ridicule by the MSM when the crisis wasn't solved and MSM praise for Obama's "calm" in the midst of the storm. Calm hell! He was "voting present" like he's always done when there's any small threat to his "political viability," just like President Bill Clinton.

Hey, I think I see a pattern here. President Jimmy Carter yanked U.S. support from the Shah of Iran and backed Khomeni's return to Iran for the revolution that put the mullahs in power. And what did President Clinton do when he had a chance to blow away Osama? Voted "present."

So President Obama is just following in the footsteps of the two most recent Democrat "leaders." Which certainly explains why this run-on-at-the-mouth-about-anything-and-everything president was so strangely quiet about the crisis in Iran for three long days before finally coming forth with his plan: to keep "dialogue" going with the mullahs who stole the Iranian election.

Hey, that's Obama's only executive experience, as Jesse Jackson said, because he's never run nothing but his mouth. So don't expect him to do anything but keep talking while Iran burns.

Sir Charles Krauthammer, as usual, sees through the crisis to its two inevitable conclusions, one good to very good to fantastic for freedom in the Middle East and one bad, very bad to worse.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs' disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

God save America and the world from the "I vote present" leader in power in Washington.

Ralph Peters at The New York Post (yes, Virginia, there is a real newspaper left in NYC) likens the current crisis in Iran to one of the most shameful incidents in recent history, 1956 in Hungary.

Of all our foreign-policy failures in my lifetime, our current shunning of those demanding free elections and expanded civil rights in Iran reminds me most of Hungary in 1956.

For years, we encouraged the Hungarians to rise up against oppression. When they did, we watched from the sidelines as Russian tanks drove over them.

For decades, Washington policymakers from both parties have prodded Iranians to throw off their shackles. Last Friday, millions of Iranians stood up. And we're standing down.

That isn't diplomacy. It's treachery...

And Obama's treachery, Peter says, is giving the green light to the mullahs to do to the Iranian people what the Russians did to the Hungarians in 1956: send in the tanks and crush heads.

Obama's ignorance of history is on naked display -- no sense of the brutality of Iran's Islamist regime, of the years of mass imprisonments, diabolical torture, prison rapes, wholesale executions and secret graves that made the shah's reign seem idyllic. Our president seems to regard the Iranian protesters as spoiled brats.

Facts? Who cares? In his Cairo sermon -- a speech that will live in infamy -- our president compared the plight of the Palestinians, the aggressors in 1948, with the Holocaust. He didn't mention the million Jews dispossessed and driven from Muslim lands since 1948, nor the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians from the West Bank.

Now our president's attempt to vote "present" yet again green-lights the Iranian regime's determination to face down the demonstrators -- and the mullahs understand it as such.

If we see greater violence in Tehran, the blood of those freedom marchers will be on our president's hands.

Actions have consequences. Obama's vote "present" could have deadly consquences in Iran.

Lightweight Nancy takes on Heavyweight CIA: TKO at 11

As usual, Sir Charles Krauthammer cuts through all the BS concerning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's stammering, stuttering half-truths, lies and damn lies about the CIA and torture.

Krauthammer also provides some overwhelming factoids regarding Pelosi's charge that the CIA lied to her:

"Her charge of the CIA lying to her is utterly implausible. Why would it lie to her and tell all the others the truth? It makes no sense at all; and it was refuted by the black and white Obama CIA memo –– not a memo out of the Prince of Darkness: Bush and Cheney; but Obama CIA –– would show that in the briefing in which she says none of this simulated drowning occurred, they had specifically told her about the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques that had been used on a prisoner, obviously, a month earlier."

Watch and enjoy Pelosi getting utterly Krauthammered on Fox News last night:

Krauthammer decodes Obama's Grand Plan for America

It's been said if you give a fool enough rope, he'll eventually hang himself. Or in the case of our wordy resident of the White House, perhaps his egoistical need to hear the sound of his own voice will eventually bring about his downfall when the American public finally hears what he's saying.

Sir Charles Krauthammer is becoming quite adept at decoding Obamaspeak. His latest translation is of Obama's grand plan, which he unveiled in a speech that borrows its title from Jimmy Carter's failed presidency. He names his autobiography by stealing a title from crazy ol' Uncle Jeremiah Wright's sermon and now he steals his grand strategy title from a failed Democrat president? Is he nuts?

You really oughta read the whole thing, which Krauthammer calls The Sting, in Four Parts. As usual with swindles, Obama begins The Sting with an outrageously big lie, a real whopper.

The Whopper: The boast that he had "identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." It takes audacity to repeat this after it had been so widely exposed as transparently phony. Most of this $2 trillion is conjured up by refraining from spending $180 billion a year for 10 more years of surges in Iraq. Hell, why not make the "deficit reductions" $10 trillion -- the extra $8 trillion coming from refraining from repeating the $787 billion stimulus package annually through 2019.

The Puzzler: He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded. Amazing. Squeezing discretionary domestic spending at a time of hugely expanding budgets is merely the baleful residue of out-of-control entitlements and debt service, which will increase astronomically under Obama. To claim these as achievements in fiscal responsibility is testament not to Obama's frugality but to his brazenness.

The Non Sequitur: "To make sure such a crisis (as we have today) never happens again," Obama proposes his radical health care, energy and education reforms, the central pillars of his social democratic agenda. But Obama's own words contradict this assertion. Notes The Washington Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.

The Swindle: The Obama administration is spending money like none other in peacetime history. Obama is smart. He knows this is fiscally unsustainable. He has let it be known privately and publicly that he intends to cure the imbalance with entitlement reform.

An excellent strategy. If it takes throwing nearly $1 trillion of "porky" (to quote Sen. Charles Schumer) stimulus spending to soften up a Democratic Congress and make it amenable to real entitlement reform, then fine. Reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would save tens of trillions of dollars, and make the current money-from-helicopters spending almost trivial by comparison.

I'm guessing that Krauthammer is Jewish, but not a particularly religious one, judging by some of his off-the-cuff comments, such as when John McCain's campaign came back from the dead and Sir Charles said he was considering changing his belief in the resurrection. I wonder now if he's beginning to feel a bit like a famous Jewish prophet, John the Baptist, who was "a voice crying in the wilderness." Krauthammer is one of the few pointing out The Sting is afoot.

But is anybody listening besides me?

Pay no attention to the bowing, just keep applauding

The Obamessiah has returned from his first trip abroad amidst the cheering throngs. And that was just the media. Without even mentioning his deep Muslim bow to the King of Saudi Arabia -- another first for our Rookie President -- Sir Charles Krauthammer sums up the results:

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy." And then added: "But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in."

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.

Retired Marine Major Ollie North isn't so diplomatic as Sir Charles about the infamous "bow."

The president of the United States is back in Washington from his "I like you, you like me" excellent adventure in Europe and "surprise" trip to Baghdad. It was nice of POTUS to thank the troops. He should have bowed to them instead of to King Abdullah.

Members of the O-Team -- recovering from late-night teleprompter edits, grand parties and jet lag -- now deny that the apparently obsequious gesture to the Saudi king was really a "bow." Perhaps it would be better described as a "curtsy."

North agreed with Krauthammer on the unreported (the media is still in full swoon and can't be expected to pay attention) link between Obama's appeasement rhetoric and defense cuts.

The North Koreans defied his warnings of "severe consequences" and test-launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile. In Tehran, the ayatollahs ignored his Utopian plea for "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and claim to have turned on 7,000 more centrifuges to refine uranium. Somali pirates "dissed" his "deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world" and hijacked an American-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

The O-Team was so exercised over the first piracy of an American-flagged merchant vessel since 1866 that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fired off a full rhetorical volley. While the crew was busy retaking the ship, she said that "we're deeply concerned" and "following it closely" and that "the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

More telling than the vacuous hot air blowing from London, Prague, Ankara, Baghdad and Washington was the defense budget presented this week. It assures adversaries and allies alike that we will be unprepared to fight a serious adversary in the future. Hollow talk, empty oratory and impossible dreams are now commonplace in American politics, but the O-Team's Euro-expedition may have set a new foreign fantasy record. Actions speak louder than words -- no matter how flowery the rhetoric...

Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama mentioned the North Korean "provocation" and Iran's "dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons," his defense budget revealed how seriously he takes those and other threats. The O-Team intends to reduce our ability to project power overseas and to protect the American people from nuclear attack.

If the Obama defense budget is approved as submitted, we will increase spending on protecting our troops ashore and fleet at sea from attack by ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction but cut homeland ballistic missile defense by $1.4 billion. We will increase the number of small "littoral support ships" but reduce our ability to project power from the sea by cutting our carrier fleet from 12 battle groups to 10. We will not modernize ground combat mobility for the Army or the Marines, and POTUS will have to wait a few more years for a new helicopter.

Obama fiddles and bows while America burns and slides into third-world status. And the crowd applauds (and that was just the media, again).

Krauthammer explains the ugly truth about North Korea's launch

Sir Charles Krauthammer gives us the unvarnished and ugly truth about Obama's ridiculous "Ban the Bomb!" response to the North Korean launch of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. And it's far worse than I feared. Not only is our rookie president doing nothing, worse than that, at the same time his defense budget is cutting drastically into our missile defense program, which is like strangling a baby in the crib. Preliminary tests have shown our first efforts at missile defense will work. But it's like arming our troops with popguns. They need real guns and lots of them to fight a war. And at the scariest time in our history, we have a rookie president who's beating the useless drum for nuclear disarmament like a brain-fried hippy while also cutting our defenses against maniac regimes in North Korea and Iran, just to name two among many, who would love nothing more than to nuke America's homeland.

Our nation barely survived the "hollow army" under President Jimmy Carter's defense cuts during his one term, 1976-80 and the same is true of two terms of President Bill Clinton. At least then, we were enjoying the "peace dividend" of the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Communists.

Now we're staring at Armageddon and another liberal Democrat is in power. God help us all.

Krauthammer nails Obama and wimpy Europeans vs. America

As usual, Sir Charles Krauthammer is one of the very few bold and insightful enough to point out that not only does "Emperor Obama" have no clothes, but comments from the "great orator" during his second victory tour of Europe (his first was pre-election) are "simply disgraceful."

Krauthammer also quotes an interesting turn of phrase by Sen. Charles Grassley about AIG and applies it to Obama's European adulation from a crowd that's been "sucking on America's tit for 60 years." Wow, Charles, don't hold back, tell us what you really think about wimpy Europeans!



Obama's speech in London was so over the top and fumbling, even the UK Guardian -- a major liberal newspaper -- is making fun of the "World's Greatest Orator." If you need a laugh, here's Obama's stumble in a French Town Hall when he loses his place reading the teleprompter.


And because it's so delicious, here's the entire post on The Guardian about Obama's stumbling "oration" in his press conference in London, without teleprompter "help."

Barack Obama, the World's Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn't exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking ...

Nick Robinson: "A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn't the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?" Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [THANKS FOR NOTHING, GORDY BABY. REMIND ME TO HANG YOU OUT TO DRY ONE DAY.] Barack Obama: "I, I, would say that, er ... pause [I HAVEN'T A CLUE] ... if you look at ... pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] ... the, the sources of this crisis ... pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] ... the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I'M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] ... a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system ... pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SHIT BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that ... pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] ... here in Great Britain ... pause [SHIT, GORDY'S THE HOST, DON'T LAND HIM IN IT] ... here in continental Europe ... pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.] ... around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er ... pause [I'VE LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AGAIN] ... the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged ... pause [I'M REALLY WINGING IT NOW]. So at this point, I'm less interested in ... pause [YOU] ... identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we've taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalised, er, dealing with the enormous, er ... pause [WHY DIDN'T I QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD?] ... drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we've got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there's a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what's the risk involved, what's the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think ... pause [FANTASTIC. I'VE LOST EVERYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF] ... there's enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er ... pause [I'M OUTTA HERE. TIME FOR THE USUAL CLOSING BOLLOCKS] ... I'm a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.

Say goodnight Gracie.

Back to the future in the Middle East with Jimmy Carter III

I wonder if Barack Obama is so young and ignorant of history that he doesn't know what happened the last time we had a liberal Democrat President who bent over backwards trying to make Islamic "friends"?

I refer, of course, to James Earl Carter Jr., whose long, miserable four years in office led to the Arab oil embargo that crippled our national economy and the Iranian terrorists' takeover of our embassy there leading to 444 days of American hostages held by our Islamic "friends."

As usual, Charles Krauthammer provides a history lesson to point out the utterly astonishing stupidity of Obama's speech about the need for the U.S. to become "friends" with Islam again.

Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on earth. Why are we apologizing?

And what of that happy U.S.-Muslim relationship that Obama imagines existed "as recently as 20 or 30 years ago" that he has now come to restore? Thirty years ago, 1979, saw the greatest U.S.-Muslim rupture in our 233-year history: Iran's radical Islamic revolution, the seizure of the U.S. embassy, the 14 months of America held hostage.

Which came just a few years after the Arab oil embargo that sent the United States into a long and punishing recession. Which, in turn, was preceded by the kidnapping and cold-blooded execution by Arab terrorists of the U.S. ambassador in Sudan and his charge d'affaires.

This is to say nothing of the Marine barracks massacre of 1983, and the innumerable attacks on U.S. embassies and installations around the world during what Obama now characterizes as the halcyon days of U.S.-Islamic relations.

As my dear wife has commented, Sir Charles can say more with fewer words than anybody when he cuts through the smog of fuzzy liberal thinking to lay bare the truth of what's going on here.

Exhibit 2 on Obama's stupidity/blindness/whatever on how to be "friends" to Iran.

Barack Obama is drafting a letter to the "Iranian people," which, as the linked BBC piece points out, is designed to reassure the delightfully cordial Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour.

In other words, Barack Obama intends to validate the repressive regime that currently perpetrates numerous (and heinous) human rights violations. And it will make the lives of dissenters infinitely more difficult.

Jimmy Carter didn't get it, when he played pen pals with Iran's leadership in 1988. And now, it seems, neither does the Obama administration.

I rest my case. God help the U.S. of A. And please Lord, lead us out of this 4-year nightmare.

Tyrrell and Krauthammer endorse John McCain for President

Emmett Tyrrell has joined Charles Krauthammer in endorsing John McCain for President.

Though I cannot recall ever endorsing a presidential candidate I am going to do so in this column. In this, I am following the lead of the dean of conservative columnists, the excellent Charles Krauthammer. Last week he endorsed Sen. John McCain. Count me for McCain, too.

I read a lot of conservative writers, but Tyrrell and Krauthammer sit on top of the heap. Neither is in the habit of endorsing candidates and neither may have ever done it before. This election is that important for our nation. Read Emmett Tyrrell and Charles Krauthammer both as they make their case for McCain and against Obama.

Kristol to McCain: Don't Worry, Be Happy

Charles Krauthammer has written that John McCain has already exceeded his "two Hail Mary's per campaign rule." McCain tossed one long TD when he backed the surge in Iraq in the dark days of 2006. Everybody but McCain, President Bush and General Petraeus said it wouldn't work. It did and the Iraq war turned around miraculously. Hail Mary II was picking Sarah Palin from obscurity as his VP choice.

Despite the MSM's wolfpack attacks, the American people still love Sarah amidst all the bad press so Palin is Hail Mary TD No. 2.

Since then, nothing has gone well for McCain and even the economy has conspired against him with the housing credit crisis sucking all the air out of the campaign. With the constant media drumbeat of the impending return of the Great Depression, panic is infecting voters as well as the stock market. But the polls are still tight, showing a slight trend toward McCain and away from Obama's "inevitable win." Today's record surge on Wall Street may mean the sun is shining again on McCain. I can hope.

Yet William Kristol says it's time for one more Hail Mary from McCain: Fire the Campaign and do the unthinkable, go positive to voting day.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

Most on the right are saying McCain has been too much Mr. Nice Guy, time to take to take the gloves off. The left, hypocrites all, are accusing him of running the worst scorched-earth campaign since Attila the Hun, ignoring all the bile spewing daily from their own ranks.

J.R. Dunn of American Thinker is of the "right" persuasion, urging a campaign closer based on Obama's Three Strikes consisting of Bomb-Throwin' Bill Ayers and his equally psychotic wife Bernadine Dohrn, ACORN voter fraud and The New Party socialist revolution.

A terrorist bomber, what may be the largest vote-fraud operation in history, and a political party calling for a socialist revolution in the United States. Obama has certainly been a busy little bee -- though not too busy, it seems, to cover his tracks in all three cases. As well he might -- anybody with such a history has a few questions to answer. And Obama knows this full well, considering the effort he's put into ducking those exact questions since his campaign began.

But those questions must be asked and answered before November 4^th. Which, needless to say, is a job for Superwoman. Sarah Palin's relentless hammering brought the Ayers story back to the surface. She must now tie the three strands together: Ayers, ACORN, the New Party, and pound at it until it can no longer be ignored. (Of course, this will be an extremely upsetting experience for Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, but that can't be helped.)

If the three can be bundled, and the resulting package adequately presented to the American people, Barack Obama is through. American voters have made it clear time and again that they have no use for the political extremes of either left or right. Obama plainly suffers, at best, from a weakness for crackpot left-wing politics, and at worst from a yearning to create a revolutionary situation in American society. The first reveals an immature personality, one easily led and given to romantic concepts of how the world works. The second is evidence of serious maliciousness.

We require neither in the oval office.

And somewhere between right and left, there's Bill Kristol, urging a Monty Python: Now for something totally different. Who knows, maybe The Maverick will zig and not zag.

So why not go for Hail Mary number whateveritis? I can't help but remember another "Happy Warrior," Hubert Humphrey, who never won the big race. A fella named Richard Nixon whipped him soundly.

But what do I know? I'm the stupid schmuck who said the voters weren't stupid enough to vote for Bill Clinton. I was wrong then. Twice.

Sarah vs. Charlie: Round 2, Guns, abortion, homos, sexism

My score: Sarah 2, Gibson 0.

From Round 1, the supposed big "Gotcha" was Gibson's question of Palin about whether she supports the Bush Doctrine? He then mangled its meaning as a followup question.

Charles Krauthammer is the journalist who named the Bush Doctrine after President George W. Bush outlined his response to the terror attacks of 9/11, so perhaps he's a better expert on what it means than Charlie Gibson. Krauthammer writes Charlie Gibson's Gaffe:

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

Now who's "got" who, Charlie? Even this old country boy from the sticks appears to know more about the Bush Doctrine that Big Time Charlie Gibson. I wrote about it on Oct. 27, 2001 in Bush doctrine foreshadowed by Ryan doctrine?

Waking up with an '08 hangover

After all the hoopla of last night's coronation of Obama I, Lord of the Universe, I think it's time for some adult analysis. As usual Charles Krauthammer brings us down to earth with Self-Made Man or Mysterious Stranger?

When John Kerry was introduced at his convention four years ago, an honor guard of a dozen mates from his Vietnam days surrounded him on the podium attesting to his character and readiness to lead. Such personal testimonials are the norm. The roster of fellow soldiers or fellow senators who could from personal experience vouch for John McCain is rather long. At a less partisan date in the calendar, that roster might even include Democrats Russ Feingold and Edward Kennedy, with whom John McCain has worked to fashion important legislation.

Eerily missing at the Democratic convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in Obama's life standing up to say: I know Barack Obama. I've been with Barack Obama. We've toiled/endured together. You can trust him. I do.

When you compare your candidate to John Kerry and come up short, that's not a good sign.

So where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others?

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

The big party's over. God help us all if America wakes up with a hangover and a wedding band.