What is Putin Thinking?

"How can I handle this situation in a way that most benefits Vladimir Putin?"- that's what he's thinking.

Of course, the insecure, vengeful, and paranoid ex-KGB clique that runs Russia today will use any opportunity to gain advantage and/or poke America in the eye. Over the last few years, we've all seen how they behaved once they got a few bucks. But many are now wondering -as the obstructionism continues (Jihad Watch)- how on earth did Putin arrive at the conclusion -as his current actions suggest- that an unstable, apocolyptic regime in Tehran with nuclear weapons is a good thing? 


Telling us that there's no need to "frighten" Iran -Putin made clear yesterday that he's nowhere near ready for the kind of sanctions Barack Obama was hoping for. This comes at a point where another 6-12 mos of circular arguments and disingenuous foot-dragging is really all that's needed by the apocolyptic loons in Tehran. 


So it now appears to many that the Kremlin is prepared to live with -or even welcomes- a nuclear-armed Iran. James Lewis at the American Thinker thinks that Putin has accepted it, and sees an incredible recklessness in the Kremlin's midwifing of an Iranian Bomb-

...What he is really hoping is that (a) Russia will get more influence and control in the Middle East by driving the Americans back, using Tehran as a proxy; (b) the inevitable nuclear arms race between Sunni Arabs and a new Persian Nuclear Caliphate will allow Russia to coordinate oil prices with OPEC, so as to raise add more gold to its coffers.

Both of those calculations are wild gambles, putting vast numbers of human lives on the line. Putin is letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle...

Putin's cover for the Tehran nuke program may be the biggest strategic mistake in history, bar none. In the next two years it will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that wiser heads have been desperately trying to prevent.

Now while Hillary purports that Russia "wasn't asked" to help with Iran, Prairie Pundit tells us that in-reality Russian FM Sergey Lavrov provided an icy reception to the idea of sanctions. Judged against the official Kremlin positition as opposed to an Iranian Bomb, "the Russian position is not supportable by common-sense or facts." 

Putin is surely loving this position of ME influence- all he had to do to get here was sell nuclear technology to the Iranians at great profit, then obstruct the world's efforts to avoid the apocalypse that he made possible. 

But the perception of Vladimir Putin as shrewd, clever, and calculating doesn't seem to dovetail with Russian aquiescense to an Iranian nuclear weapon. 

One is left searching for the logic applied at this decisive moment- has he truly decided that an Iranian bomb is somehow in his and Russia's interest ... and that Israel can't -or won't- handle the problem?

In a potentially key development, we learn that Russian allegiance might have it's limits after-all. DEBKA (via Israpundit) claims that Putin is suspending the sale of much-needed S-300 AA missile batteries to Tehran- leaving them exposed to Israeli attack, while selling their rivals in Saudi Arabia the yet-more advanced S-400 system. 


And this being the same Saudis who have reportedly already greenlighted an IAF attack on Iran.This abrupt and surprising U-turn does not fit-in with the Russia's otherwise supportive posture re. Iran- and is likely representative of cynical Kremlin opportunism, as was the plan all-along. 


Putin is unprincipled, aggressive, ruthless, and very calculating- but not crazy. In their eyes, the serial Machiavellians in the Kremlin have already written the entire script... and it goes like this: the Russians will milk all sides for whatever they can get -especially the strategically and diplomatically clueless Obama. 


In the end, they know Israel will not let the threat get too far along. Regardless of their ceaseless bluster, the Iranians know this too; morale in their armed forces as war approaches is reported to be in precipitous decline. Israel now plans to attack after the first of the year- and is actively preparing for a larger ME war with Iran's allies/terrorist proxies to ensue, as predicted here last December. 


In the meantime, the Kremlin will be pulling-the-strings as pressure and worry builds on all sides... a situation they will continue to exploit to maximum Russian advantage. In the end... the Iranians will need to back-down or face-the-consequences... as the Kremlin pulls-out the rug at the last minute. 


And if they then refuse, Tehran will be left to handle the Israeli Air Force without advanced Russian AA technology, as we now know- and in the ensuing confilct, the IDF will wipe-the-floor with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the rump Hamas. Unlike limited engagements like southern Lebanon in 2006, the Israelis will fight to win, and win big- with infantry and armor from day one. 


Putin has now showed his hand in withdrawing the sale of S-300 AA batteries- so the Iranians -who haven't left themselves much of an out- will need to decide their fate by the end of this year, or Israel will seal it. Such a humiliating defeat will surely renew anti-government sentiment, hopefully completing the democratization process began earlier this year in Tehran... as Barack Obama turns the United States into an irrelevant, impotent bystander. 

◆ Memeorandum 

◆ Jihad Watch 

◆ DEBKA

◆ Israpundit

◆ American Thinker

◆ Prarie Pundit

◆ putitinthought

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Sunday 2-Funnies

-click any to enlarge-

-thanks as always to Pookie's Toons-

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Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize?

Good grief... for what? This guy hasn't done a damn thing-

And what's he's proposing -"a world without nuclear weapons"- is unfortunately not a goal shared by those most likely to use them in Tehran and Pyongyang, not to mention up-and-coming wannabes in Caracas and elsewhere. Regardless of what noises the Russians might now be making to coax Obama a bit further along, they're the ones spreading most of the nuclear technology around in the first place- while gaining influence and plenty of cash along the way.

Along with Obama's lack of support for defensive missile technologies... how is this any different than unilateral disarmament/capitulation to these vile, aggressive regimes?

Apparently "soaring rhetoric" is all they're really looking for at the Nobel committee- rather than any actual results (like Reagan's ending the 40-year Cold War with a military build-up)... or even a speck of historical precedent that would suggest what Obambi's saying makes sense.

Looks like the international Left is united in trying to prop-up this pompous incompetent Obama in any way they can, so they threw him a bone after the Olympic committee sent him packing with his tail between his legs.

But two Palestinian intefadehs, the rise of Hamas, and many teenage suicide bombers have shown us how deserving Jimmy Carter was of his Nobel... likewise awarded for attempting to appease dangerous enemies, a repeatedly disproven and failed approach.

Meanwhile, those with a little more strategic clarity and a sense of responsibility -say, a Nicolas Sarkozy- have more accurately described Obama's weakness in the face of mortal threats, abandonment of allies, and Pollyanna world-view as "naive":

"President Obama dreams of a world without weapons... but right in-front of us, two countries doing the exact opposite."

►Reuters

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Benedict Brogan in London's Daily Telegraph says Obama should show some self-awareness and turn down the award:

"The whole business of a bunch of Scandinavian worthies doling out the profits of a long-gone dynamite maker’s fortune has always smacked of the worst sort of self-satisfied plutocratic worthiness. But this takes the biscuit.

President Obama remains the barely man of world politics, barely a senator now barely a president, yet in the land of the Euro-weenies the great and the good remain in his thrall. To reward him for a blank results sheet, to inflate him when he has no achievements to his name, makes a mockery of what, let’s face it, is an already fairly discredited process...

And PS for the Obots of Norway: if it weren't for American nuclear weapons, you'd already be "celebrating" your 40th anniversary as a Soviet colony... right along with every inch of the rest of Europe.

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WHERE is the Left on Iran?

Throughout the Cold War years, the self-appointed moral watchdogs of the American left preached to us ad-nauseum on the perils of supporting anti-communist dictators like The Shah, Samoza, and Pinochet. We only damaged our own credibility when backing those who did not uphold human rights above all- regardless of the complex security challenges and/or decidedly undemocratic opponents that confronted these allies. This according to the McGoverns and Carters of the world, anyway.

And the pragmatism that lay behind the defense and intelligence policies that they so heavily criticized -these were in actuality proxy struggles with the expansionist Soviet Union- was brushed aside by liberals as cynicism and a lame excuse for continued US "imperialism". But these views were decidedly in the minority in the United States- and the narrow appeal of such short-sighted thinking surely contributed to McGovern's drubbing in the 1972 election.

Later, pollyana do-gooder Jimmy Carter showed us all how it's done with his withdrawal of support of Samoza over human rights concerns- perhaps it never occurred to him that we'd get something 10x worse with the communist Sandinistas: armed and trained by Moscow, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia... and allied with Havana in a Kremlin-funded enterprise to export communist revolution throughout central and South America.

Now we have a President Obama that basically got elected trashing America's proud history and defense policy-as he continues to do- as well as proposing that we downgrade our position as leader of the free world. All in all, there's not much daylight between Obama's zeitgeist and the finger-wagging, simplistic moral assumptions of the Cold War left.

So with the president's astounding silence and even apparent disinterest in today's Iranian crisis, WHERE is the moral concern of the holier-than-thou left now? Shouldn't these hypocrites being asking a few questions now that Barack Obama has kissed-up to Ahmedinijad and the Iranian theocracy since before he was even elected? We're talking about a former kidnapper and Holocaust-denying president of what all can now see is a brutal police state; one racing towards constructing nuclear weapons with the oft stated aim of wiping Israel from the map; a regime that cozies up to most or all of America's enemies; who supplied a large amount of Iraq's instability; one that publicly stones adulterers and petty criminals after burrying them up to their necks... and today is shooting unarmed protesters in the street. (Gateway Pundit).

Obama has now gotten his 3am-crisis-call- and so far he's done little but pound the snooze button. The complete inaction and lack of leadership is stupifying. Of course, the irony is that while the Ayatollah Khamenei is now laying blame for his Iranian citizens' uprising on the "Americans" and "the Jews"- the United States under Obama is really not doing anything of substance to support the protesters and would be counter-revolutionaries. To add insult to injury for the freedom-seeking patriots of Iran- the Obama administration also has zeroed out funding for pro-democracy programs inside Iran from the State Department budget for fiscal 2010... just as protests in Iran are ramping up (Newsmax).

Khamenei is now hinting strongly of a much harder crackdown to come- he's already using Hamas thugs imported from Gaza, who are showing their appreciation for the funding, arming, and training of their Islamofacist terrorist organization by cracking heads in the street alongside Iran's own plainclothes security forces.

Compare this all to Ronald Reagan's brave and unwavering support for Solidarity in Poland in the early 80's: in collaboration with Pope John Paul and Polish anti-communists, Reagan helped those seeking freedom in any way possible- with money, training, equipment such as radios and stepped-up VoA broadcasting to help liberate those behind the Iron Curtain.

Obviously -although it’s the last thing Team Obama want to hear- Ronald Reagan’s support of Poland’s Solidarity in the dark days of the Soviet-ordered crackdown is the model- not the preposterous straw-man argument of “what are you going to do, invade?” disingenuously presented by the do-nothing, Obamapologist left/MSM.

Most importantly, Reagan brought the Poles moral support with consistent public statements that gave the revolutionaries hope. The Gipper did this not only because of his belief in the cause of freedom worldwide; he also recognized the larger geopolitical implications of peeling the Warsaw Pact away from a weakened USSR bit-by-bit (similar to the effect that a free Iraq and free Iran could have on the Middle East today). While most referred to European states behind the Iron Curtain as Soviet "satellites"- Reagan insisted on calling them "captive" nations. And not only was Reagan right, visionary, and victorious... but the Poles remember who was with them when it seemed all was lost... that's why Poland is one of America's strongest allies for over 20 years now.

Shamefully, it seems Obama's primary concern is to bide a little more time for the the Mullahs and Ahmedinijad to pull themselves up by their bootstraps... while they beat-down any hope of actual democracy. Barack's already bet all his chips on legitimizing this vile regime- a democratic revolution in Tehran could be downright embarassing at this point. Once the Mullahs put a lid on things over there, these boys can all get back to talking business... just like they do it back in Chicago.

A liberated Iran does little to help Obama politically... which is all that ever really interests him in the end. Besides the obvious embarassment that would result from a new Iranian revolution -or even a substantially more moderate regime in Tehran- Obama appears to lack a Plan B. And if Iran becomes a struggling young democracy, trying to create a better society while battling the country's darker forces (a development any normal US president would have welcomed) -like, say, Columbia- it looks like Obama might just turn on them, too- as he's far more interested in cozying-up to the Castros, the Chavezes, and other tin-pot bullies who hold America in contempt... while snubbing the allied nations that share traditional American values of freedom, democracy, and free-market enterprise.

In other news, Obama's poll numbers are headed south: Rasmussen's daily tracking has him at a weak +1% rating- only once before has it slipped lower -to zero- and that was last week. The more friendly Gallup has him at a job approval of 58%- still a new low for this administration- looks like the deprogramming of the delusional Obamamania cult has begun.

UPDATE 6.21.09: make that Rasmussen poll differential a negative two (-2%)... a new low, and the first time in negative territory for the Obama Administration.

Yes-We-Can (Get Laughed-At by an Eccentric Tin Pot Dictator)

Doesn't look like many countries take Obama and Hillary very seriously, does it?  And the reason it appears that way is because they don't. Time to break-out another goofy "restart" button, perhaps? 

(good luck spelling it right in Korean this time).

Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il 

(I hear he's  one-hell-of-a-golfer ) somehow doesn't seem to have fallen under the charms of Obama's hollow schmoozing one bit.   Rather, sensing weakness, the communist North Korean regime responded to the conciliatory gestures with nothing but contempt and aggression.  The flurry of nuclear testing and missile launches timed for our Memorial Day weekend was yet the latest "diplomatic statement" from the pugnacious, Stalinist 

Hermit Kingdom.

Of course, it never really made a lot of sense to try and deal in good faith and "reach out" to a dark, evil, and Machiavellian regime that would "hate" Mickey Mouse if he was US president- and for a refresher, has shot-down civilian airliners, operates a cruel police-state with a chain of torture/concentration camps... and even had plans to assassinate Reagan on his visit to Korea's DMZ in 1983.  

So it's hard to imagine that a grown-man like Obama truly believed that Pyongyang was reasonable, trustable... and cuddle-able.  The difference with this president is that they will not only hate him, but will despise and disrespect him deeply for his cowardice, naivete, and lack of resolution.  Of course,  a man with all the diplomatic experience and strategic/moral clarity that Obama and Hillary lack -like say, a John Bolton- could have told you this is exactly how it would play out with Obama's appeasement-based posture... as he did. 

Sadly, all Team Obama are really considering is the same kind of "deal" that serial-failure Jimmy Carter talked Bill Clinton into ten years ago: bribing Pyongyang with fuels and food to stop their development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs, while they graciously accept our gifts and continue to do just as they please at secret, underground sites... and serruptitiously selling nuclear know-how to our other enemies like Syria and Iran.

Pyongyang is currently developing -and has now tested- it's longest range ICBM, one specifically designed to carry a nuclear warhead. The Taepodong-2 missile has a 6000 km range, bringing Alaska and even possibly the west coast of the US within range... and right as the misguided Obama seeks the cancellation of many of America's defense programs.

Although many still in the ether don't realize it yet, Obama is in a tailspin on the economy, ethics, and foreign policy.  Nobody that has any sense of how the world works respects (nor fears) him... and that includes Wall St., the military, the Kremlin, Tehran, Caracas, or Pyongyang.  

Somehow all the talk of how Kim is this crackpot eccentric while Obama is portrayed as all-knowing and wise doesn't quite square with reality when the "crackpot" is running circles around our flawless messiah.  This is the same oblivious President Obama that was apparently busy with his puppy-vetting process or playing basketball while the Russians where nabbing our Afghan supply air-base in Kyrgizstan 

In addition to his ethical and fiscal follies, Barack Obama is endangering our national security, a failure of his most primary duty as president... maybe we should draw a line here? 

The luxury of living in a celebrity-driven/liberal/MSM fantasy world is not a right that Obama supporters can cling-to indefinitely, as it's both the voters and the press' duty to make informed, responsible, good-faith decisions... not waste power making a self-indulgent PC fashion statement instead.  And it's getting to the point where this kind of willfully-ignorant "thinking" is not just irresponsible, but dangerous.  Obamania's sheeple are deeply delusional, and in desperate need of deprogramming... as the misguided Obama's enablers, these fools are going to get us killed.

Ruthless, insatiable foes clearly have no reason to take seriously a smiley plastic mannequin like Obama, they know he's not going to do anything.  He was hoping to half-surrender to everyone on his recent international glad-handing tours and have Gates handle Iraq and Afghanistan- in order to buy us some peace and tranquility for him to focus on his real pet project, a radical, far-left domestic agenda... but events tend to have a way of intervening-

I would say that we should now expect for Tehran to deal Obama even greater defeats... except for the fact that tiny Israel will likely be saving us from our folly.   Obama, like Jimmy Carter, is making the US into an impotent, irrelevant bystander as events take their course, and nations like Russia and China fill the leadership vacuum.  Allies such as Israel will be plotting a more independent course in the interest of self-preservation... and will -like our enemies- simply ignore Obama.

The White House is likely working diligently on how to offer-up a speech or statement full of empty platitudes and ludicrous apologies (as in Prague)... do nothing about Pyongyang's defiance... and then blame it all on someone else.  But the problem with this standard Obama default strategy is that Democrats Bill Clinton and ex-President Carter are the ones who created this mess ten years ago... and our new president has adopted the identical, failed policy lock-stock-and-barrel.  

If you're American or one of our allies, and not scared with Barack Obama as US Commander-in-Chief yet...  you sure ought to be.  

Socialism Returns to Prague

Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, the former Warsaw-Pact Czechs are enjoying the fruits of a dynamic free-market democracy in a country that was crumbling in grey socialist mediocrity just a short time ago.  Today, new Mercedes and Alfa-Romeos fill streets that were previously only sparsely populated with smoking Eastern-block clunkers and the occasional frumpy black commie limo with some aparatchik in the back.   The largely pro-American Czechs (who feature Europe's one and only American country music station and a semi-pro baseball league) supplied troops in Iraq and last year signed-onto George Bush's missile defense proposal based here and in Poland. 

Czech President Vaclav Klaus is a pugnacious conservative known for his skeptimism regarding the EU- a Thatcherite capitalist who famously confronted Al Gore at Davos with "I don't think there's any global warming".  Klaus is credited for much of the speedy transition to capitalism as PM in the early-mid 1990's, albeit with some bumps... and has taken an unfashionable pro-market stance in his ideas for dealing with the world financial crisis.

Current Czech PM Mirek Topolanek is the one who stated in the EU Parliment that profligate spending favored by Obama-Pelosi-Reid represents a "road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.  He added "We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way."  

So Prague Castle doesn't seem to be the most obvious venue for President Obama's first public speech in Europe- but the Czechs currently hold the rotating EU presidency, and of course many people here, as elsewhere, are enthusiastic about the Obama presidency for whatever reasons... so here he is. And there is a varied political spectrum, with powerful social-democrats, Greens, and others- and even an only mildly reformed Communist Party who pragmatically replaced the traditional hammer-and-sickle/star symbol with a less-threatening-looking three red cherries on a stem.  

My wife happens to be Czech, and we have a place in Prague- so this morning I attended Obama's speech at the castle that overlooks this Golden City.  And the script seemed like it was written in anticipation of North Korea's Taepodong II missle test just 7 hours earlier.

The socialism that has come back to Prague 20 years after the revolution -and 40 years after the Russian invasion- now comes in the grinning form of Barack Obama- a man governing far to the left of the bipartisan-centrist rhetoric he employed during last fall's US election campaign.  

One result is a surreal situation in which America has big-spending statist allies like France and Germany considering its "stimulus" proposals too fiscally reckless for their liking.  And countries like Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, who suffered through 40 years of totalitarian socialism's systemic cruelty and comprehensive lack of results, do not share the romantic view some in the West have of Obama's ultra-liberal proposals and big-government solutions for every challenge.

With TelePrompTer screens glistening in the morning haze, Obama appeared about 20 minutes late with his wife Michelle to moderate cheers from the mostly young crowd.  Like Obama's most-fervent US supporters, those attending appeared to be 20-somethings alongside 60-something boomers-  and many of these came in from Germany, where all things Obama are quite trendy.

The President appeared with a large forced grin, as a car salesman would do to manipulate your emotions- providing the same "what's this guy up to?" feeling I got from the first time I ever heard him speak.  And like a slick salesman, Obama is unflinching as he tells you the car can fly, or go under-water... whatever you need to hear.

He proceeded to deliver a speech on green energy and foreign policy that attempted to tie-together Czech and US history and agendas with a dash of Yes-We-Can.  Obama's popularity is clearly helped by his mixed-race heritage, yet he still finds it useful to make statements like "In my birth-year of 1961, few could imagine a person like me" coming here as US President.  That lead inexplicably to "I am here today because people on both sides of the wall (Iron Curtain?) refused to be kept separated, "no matter what they looked like".  How did the communist Europeans look different from Western Europeans?  Hard to imagine just what he's talking about.

Obama used the occasion to outline his pollyanna plans for a "world without nuclear weapons"- including a comprehensive test-ban treaty, anti-proliferation regimes, a world "fuel bank" for supplying cooperative powers with fuel for peaceful uses, as well as a "strategic reduction with the Russians this year".

Obama put some effort towards presenting a case that forced-Soviet-allies of the Warsaw Pact like Prague "came together" with the West because they "wouldn't listen" to those who said it wasn't possible or likely- sounds good.  But the plain truth is that no Velvet Revolution would ever have been possible without a serious rollback of Soviet power- as accomplished by Ronald Reagan... and he didn't do it by talking.  

One only has to look to the Soviets' crushing of the Budapest (1956) and Prague Spring (1968) uprisings to see just how they dealt with renegades. President Reagan never considered "reaching out" to the Russians until they had been forced to bring in the reformer Gorbachev, and the US had regained military superiority- well into his second term as president.  Even then, he was reluctant to make any deal that would save the Soviet system economically... he wanted it to be defeated, and for millions to be freed.

It was Reagan who aggressively challenged Gorabachev with "tear down this wall" in Berlin- and was mocked by the American and European left as naive and too confrontational.   While previous presidents promoted containment or detente with the USSR, producing a smoldering, dangerous, and expensive 40-year Cold War, Reagan argued for a "real arms race" with the Soviet Union.  He said "in an all-out competition, they can't keep up" and would become economically "unhinged".  Pacifists -such as then-Senator Joe Biden- opposed Reagan's Pershing II missile deployments in Europe, SDI missile-defense inititiative, as-well as almost every other weapons program he used to confront the Soviet Union. 

When Reagan initiated this politically unpopular military buildup in 1981, called the "Evil Empire" by it's name, then later struck a deal with the Saudis to drive the price of oil to $20/bbl, the Soviet empire cracked, then crumbled... completely vindicating the principled and politically brave strategy.  The fact is that the Czechs, Poles, East Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Slovaks didn't stand a chance of throwing-of their chains until Reagan put the Kremlin back on it's heels for good.  And it was that moral and strategic clarity that won the Cold War without firing a shot... not offers of appeasement. And clearly not the two sides joining-hands, as in Obama's version of reality.

Sounding today much like strategic train-wreck Jimmy Carter, Obama  pronounced that "Moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon"-  just the kind "moral" superiority that allowed Carter to lose countries such as Nicaragua and Iran to far worse regimes than the unsavory US ally that he withdrew support for.  In stark contrast, Reagan had told us that "We can't play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent." 

President Obama stated that in overthrowing communism, the Czechs "exposed the emptiness of an ideology"- but it would be interesting to hear him explain just what he considers the key differences to be between past socialism and the multi-trillion-dollar big-government/social programs that has unveiled since he got himself elected.

He then stressed that regarding Iran and North Korea, we should not "let anybody tell you we can't work together- because Yes  We Can"- but there's really nobody saying that except perhaps some imaginary straw-man in the speechwriter's mind.  We have worked very well with a number of allies in the Six-Party talks with Pyongyang, as well as the US-EU diplomatic efforts regarding Tehran's nuclear ambitions.  We've also been offering for years, alongside these allies, exactly the same incentives, dialog, and sanctions/threats of sanctions that Obama proposes... and without a trace of success.  There is likely little new that the West can offer at this point that would entice them into giving up a their nuclear programs- if they're not about to be bombed, then keep going- why not? 

The sad truth is that both have sensed weakness in Obama's "open hand" gestures- which they have met only with contempt.  These regimes' political survival is completely based on outside enemies, a confrontational stance, and propaganda victories- and their power can't survive a comprehensive peace deal, so they see little to gain from it.   Obama says they can "join" the rest of us- but can either really expect to compete effectively in the world economy? He seems to operate under the assumption that they don't want to be rogue states- while in reality, they thrive on it.  They've already survived all the sanctions thrown at them, and are likely correct that their strongest hand lies in pursuing nuclear weaponry and ICBM systems.  If either had wanted a good faith deal, they'd have done it a long time ago-  instead, they've broken every agreement or promise ever made.

What in-fact might work would be a credible military threat, so these apocalyptic cults would realize the consequences of such nuclear brinkmanship, while leaving them a final "out"-  but that's far from what Barack Obama was proposing today.  This speech had standard formula in-full: smiling, hope-n-change "we're-all-in-this-together" themes, false arguments regarding "they",  conveniently malleable history lessons, and the proposal of failed ideas of the past as "new" and morally-superior.  

He also stated that it was "cowardly" to embrace fear, rather than "hope"- apparently this doesn't apply to his domestic strong-arm tactics with legislators of his own party.   How much longer will this schtick work before reality intervenes, anyway?