People who prop up figureheads like the Mullahs do with Ahmadinejad sometimes find that they have lost the real power without realizing it. I would not bet that the Mullahs still hold the power and If they do they could lose it at anytime.
Martin | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 3:49 pm | #

I'm thinking the same thing of Obama.

“I will be stunned if he is not the next president of the United States. Now, when he is sworn in, 99.9 percent of Americans won’t know who he is or what he stands for. But it doesn’t matter at this point.”
xqqme | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 4:24 pm | #

Because, you see, Iran and the rest of the terrorists are patiently waiting. They are waiting for the Democrats--with all their inherent moral weakness and confusion; the Iranians are waiting because they perceive fear, appeasement, defeat, and surrender in the Democratic rhetoric and behavior. They know that as soon as an Obama gets elected, they will be home free and will not have to suffer any consequences for wiping Israel off the map--from the U.S., anyway. They will be able to do as they like without interference.

ROTFLMAO!!!!!! Very funny, really. Please seek professional help - NOW. You have gone over the side. I showed your words to some very, very smart military people and you know what they said? They said "So, they are allowed to do that". They didn't wet their pants as you do. They didn't hide under Mom's couch, as you do. I thought the right side was brave and strong, not so much anymore...Hopefully your children won't see you as the chicken shit cowards you truly are.
Fred | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 5:42 pm | #

It is essential (psychology?)to let your enemy know what will irretrievably happen to them should they do XXX.

We blew it big on the first Gulf war saying nothing to Saddam and sending no troops at first.

We blew it big by not blowing up the Berlin wall when the first brick went down.

We blew it big by appeasing Hitler and not sending in troops much earlier.

We still have to wonder about MacArthur not going after N. Korea -the jury is still out on that decades later.

We blow it big everytime we don't take out any Iranian boats that come near us.

I believe that when that idiot Putin tests the West with his planes we need to send him what he's looking for -a clear message as to how we wont tolerate such shennaigans.

It's time we started acting like a world leader instead of letting the wimp dictator wannabees push us around. Do right but tolerate no abuse!
There I feel better already.
Don L | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 5:49 pm | #

I can see where you can liken the current world situation to LOTR, and the Left are certainly doing a fine job of playing the parts of both Saruman and Denethor, and Hollywood is doing wonderfully in its potrayaly of Grima Wormtongue, but alas, I don't see Aragorn anywhere.
SCOTT THE BADGER | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 6:12 pm | #

Scott,

We have to look inside and find our own Aragorn. We must do what is right BECAUSE its right. Not because its easy or popular or politically correct. The devil is in the detail of knowing exactly what is right.

Myth, even modern myth can give us an image of struggle overcome and a sense of what it means to be a hero. It does not tell us what is right in our situation. That is except in the limited case of Sam and his image that one continues doing what is right. You might still fail but if you give up you cannot succeeded.
A. Rational Human | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 6:39 pm | #

Dear Doc, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve placed a link to your site on my blog, under the blogroll “Loyal Eagles Online.” If you object, no problem; I’ll take it down. Additionally, may I have your permission to reprint some of your articles pertinent to the theme of fighting terrorism online, such as today’s article about Ahmadinejad?

BTW, your article was excellent. We are indeed facing a darkness rising, but I continue to hope and pray there are still enough of us ready and willing to stand against it. I would appreciate you reading my article “Defiance in the Name of Freedom.” I believe it’s tremendously important to take a stand on the home front by sending a message and that the means referenced in the article might be just the way to shout it, loud and clear. Could you support such a campaign?
Loyal Eagle | Email | Homepage | 04.11.08 - 11:32 pm | #

Fred,

I'm not sure exactly what point you're trying to make. Maybe your "smart military people" aren't afraid of the Iranians and believe they can handle the situation. Very well. They're well-trained and get paid to make cold-eyed assessments of enemy capabilities. But under our system, the military takes orders from the civilian leadership, and if the military isn't permitted to do its job, then what is it going to do, mutiny? Not a chance. Our military has consistently obeyed its civilian bosses for over 230 years now, and we're the better for it. So yeah, maybe the military isn't afraid of the Iranians. But that's not what the Doc is saying. It's about what the next president and SecDef decide to let the military do about Iran. They may eventually see the light, and grasp that there is only one thing terrorists understand, but it might be too late by then. That's not cowering under a bed. That's seeing the world as it really is, not how you'd like it to be.
waltj | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 1:55 am | #

"I showed your words to some very, very smart military people and you know what they said? They said "So, they are allowed to do that". They didn't wet their pants as you do. They didn't hide under Mom's couch, as you do. I thought the right side was brave and strong, not so much anymore...Hopefully your children won't see you as the chicken shit cowards you truly are."

Agreed with Waltj. It is not clear what kind of point you are trying to make here other than derision.

If you are trying to say, as Walt posits, that the US military is not afraid of Iran and that some person in the US military believes that the Iranians are permitted to create nuclear weapons:

1. Apparently your informant is not aware that Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty so is not permitted, by international law and agreement, to develop nuclear weapons. So if he is referring to nuclear weapons, your informant is just plain wrong (lots of other supporting data on this but we'll leave it at that for now). If your informant is claiming that Iran's intended use of all the nuclear material is peaceful, then perhaps he/she can explain their furious co-development of ballistic missles, just to start?

2. Certainly the US military has no reason to fear the Iranians today -- the USN or the USAF alone, unleashed and with sufficient time/supplies - could reduce Iranian military threat to minimal. It would take significant time since our leaders have now given the Iranians LOTS of time to hide and harden their production facilities. BUT as Walt says, this is not the US military's decision. It is our civilian leadership's role, unless we end up with a military coup and junta.

Laughing at a foreign threat because our military COULD stop them today ignores thousands of years of history. I could easily cite examples from Imperial Rome, but let's start with the more recent and well-remembered WW2. The French and the British armed forces could have EASILY crushed Hitler's military forces as they marched into Sudetenland, but the head-in-the-sand French leadership and appeasing Chamberlain ignored the threat, preferring to believe the Germans would be reasonable thereafter. Like Chamberlain, the Democratic leadership presents a dreamy, utopian everybody-wants-to-get-alone-if-only-we-stop-our- sinning-ways face to the world, which only encourages the evil that Dr. Sanity speaks of.

So thinking that the US military has the power to crush Iran's military today is sufficient to ward off tomorrow's clear world-shaking crisis is foolish and clearly enough contradicted by the lessons of thousands of years of (just to start) Western civilization.

Once the Iranians have nukes, the situation changes dramatically as the terminal risk to Israel and holocaust-level risk to the US population will act to make US military action much less possible. At least without city-losing consequences. I don't know what you are willing to give up to reduce the world-shaking evil Dr. Sanity presents: Chicago? NYC? DC? SF? LA? Boston?
OriginalFrank | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 7:43 am | #

As an aside, is there a more cogent and authoritative commentator on the american news stage today than Charles Krauthammer?
I've not once found a flaw in his reasoning and always come away the wiser for having read his columns. His reasonable and reasoned analysis is first rate no matter what the subject.
Gino the Great | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 8:04 am | #

is there a more cogent and authoritative commentator on the american news stage today than Charles Krauthammer?

Well, Mark Steyn is good, too.


!
The Machine | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 2:41 pm | #

Making the assumption that Fred knows what the hell he's talking about is making an ass out of "u" and "mption." Please note that 'Fred' answered this post approximately 2 and 1/2 hours after it was posted. Are we to believe that Fred read it almost the moment it was posted and showed it to "some very, very smart military people?" Who then took the time out of their busy day to read it and comment on a blog post, relay their thoughts to Fred and then to have Fred post what in effect is an incoherent response? All within a couple of hours? I don’t buy it, except for the incoherent part.

If by that .0001% chance that Fred did show it to "some very, very smart military people" the obvious question is so what? It wasn’t about the military!
Don Miguel | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 3:11 pm | #

Well, there is one other thing. Israel will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. They can't afford it. So while the world watches and has meetings, Israel will act according to her own intelligence, because they must.

Gondor will not fall because its unthinkable.
Jim | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 6:02 pm | #

Fred knows very, very smart military people.


That's two verys.


I'll see those two verys and raise ya one:


Fred is very, very, very deranged.


But it is rather fun to watch Fred dance in the doctor's laboratory.


!
The Machine | Email | Homepage | 04.12.08 - 7:41 pm | #

Barack Hussein Obama has announced his defense strategy. It consists of running away from iraq, standing down our nuclear alert forces, canceling new nuclear warhead development, cutting spending by 10s of billions, canceling future combat systems, stopping strategic defense initiative, and establishing a requirements board to replace the QDR. The above do not project an image of strength.

Should he become President we should expect a large chemical or dirty bomb attack in a large city by May 2009.
Arch | Email | Homepage | 04.13.08 - 8:14 am | #

> The dithering Democrats will excuse, rationalize and basically look for any reason to exculpate any atrocity Iran initiates

If a strong response to Iran's nuclear action is called for, I'd argue that Hillary is a better choice than Obama. I think she'd be a lot nastier than he would.

It's the aftermath I would fear --

I don't fear Hillary's weakness, I fear her lack of rational control. You cannot do something against her and be anything less than an implacable enemy, and she is quite certain that she is justified in doing anything she imagines is correct. She is the Pure Modern Liberal.

I would much more greatly fear her attempting to become a despot herself -- "all for the best of reasons" -- than any other major issue during a term of office by her... and a nuclear attack on the US would be a spectacularly good reason for suspending habeas corpus and preventing her end-of-term replacement indefinitely. And her removal from office would almost certainly require the force of arms -- I do not believe sh would step down quietly.
OBloody Hell | Email | Homepage | 04.14.08 - 10:07 am | #

> I don't see Aragorn anywhere.

Aragorn is never visible until push comes to shove.
OBloody Hell | Email | Homepage | 04.14.08 - 10:08 am | #

> ROTFLMAO!!!!!! ...(snip)... I showed your words to some very, very smart military people

Fred, your "Sgt. Rock" doll and your "Nick Fury" comics are not "people".

You might want to see someone about your obvious confusion on that issue.

.
OBloody Hell | Email | Homepage | 04.14.08 - 10:11 am | #

The Samwise Gamgee quote you cited at the beginning has an interesting story behind it:

When scripting the movie trilogy, they kept rewriting that particulay speech over and over because "It sounds too much like something George W Bush would say" before going with the original, figuring Sam was a gardener, not a trained public speaker.
Headless Unicorn Guy | Email | Homepage | 04.14.08 - 1:31 pm | #

Because, you see, Iran and the rest of the terrorists are patiently waiting. They are waiting for the Democrats--with all their inherent moral weakness and confusion; the Iranians are waiting because they perceive fear, appeasement, defeat, and surrender in the Democratic rhetoric and behavior. They know that as soon as an Obama gets elected, they will be home free and will not have to suffer any consequences for wiping Israel off the map--from the U.S., anyway. They will be able to do as they like without interference.

When do the mass conversions to Islam begin "To get on the Winning Side"? I saw that happen during the Carter years with the Communist Party, for that exact reason.

Now, when he is sworn in, 99.9 percent of Americans won’t know who he is or what he stands for. But it doesn’t matter at this point...

Because OPRAH! endorsed him, and Her Blessing is all that matters.
Headless Unicorn Guy | Email | Homepage | 04.14.08 - 1:34 pm | #

"Fred knows very, very smart military people."

Hey, leave Fred alone. He consluted the top military minds.

I'm not supposed to reveal this, but he spoke with one over a leisurely breakfast and then with another on a top secret very secure communications channel.

So, he knows what he's talking about, see!
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 04.17.08 - 12:57 am | #