Jul

4

Interview With RightGirl & FlapJackson

July 4, 2008 | By Sniper One | 2 Comments

I got an email from my old friend, and former blogging buddy Mike Williams (formerly of PA Pundits) this week. He’s moved on to doing both PodCast and VideoCasting. One of the many *casts he does is with RightGirl of GirlOnTheRight.com. I had the pleasure of being Interviewed by both Mike and RightGirl early this morning (0500) Eastern Time.

Being that it is Independence Day, they wanted to talk to a guy who is in Iraq, and I fit the bill.

I assume the podcast will be going up on both GirlOnTheRight.com and on Mike William’s site BrassBallsRadio.com. (PODCAST LINK)

The recently launched podcast, Brass Balls Radio (www.brassballsradio.com) – a compliment to the longtime popular political blog Girl on the Right – has exceeded all expectations by having one episode downloaded an unprecedented one million times!

While the show debuted as a success on May 19th, with each of its seven episodes to date garnering an average of 200,000 downloads, the June 9th episode featuring an interview with beleaguered author and journalist Mark Steyn was downloaded over one million times.

I sure as hell don’t rate to be in the same group as Mark Steyn, but I’m none the less honored to be chosen by Mike Williams and RightGirl to represent those of us who are in Iraq this July 4th.

Mike and RightGirl will also have me plugging a few websites/blogs over the next week or so. Tune in to see if I picked yours…

Update:

There are some answers where I am being purposefully vague. OPSEC ya know…

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    Jul

    8

    Obama, A Black Jimmy “Disastrous” Carter?

    July 8, 2008 | By PA Pundits | Leave a Comment

    During the 1970s, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - who had acceded to the monarchist governmental leadership role present throughout Iran’s history - implemented economic, educational and social reforms. In the midst of these democratic reforms, the Shah and the Iranian people celebrated 2,500 years of Persian Monarchy. Thereafter, the Carter Administration, foolishly wielding a contorted rhetoric of “human rights,” thoughtlessly encouraged the overthrow of the Shah and thereby hastened the arrival of an exiled and obscure cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, and with him the Islamic Republic of Iran. This decision became one of the worst foreign policy blunders in America’s history.

    President Carter’s misguided approach - catering to fundamentalists and communists - to raising human rights in the context of U.S.-Iran relations, led to the Shah’s fall. Iran then became a theocratic totalitarian abyss, whose radical fundamentalists tolerated far more abuse and torture of political prisoners than the Shah ever had, and supported a stream of terrorist acts and causes. The individuals who comprise Iran’s theocracy are now the world’s, as well as the vast majority of the Iranian people’s, greatest enemies.

    Now, presidential candidate Barack Obama has said that he is inclined to meet with the internationally controversial Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the right time after due preparation and advance work by U.S. diplomats.

    This position only reveals the naiveté of Mr. Obama. Contrary to mainstream media views, the President of Iran is virtually powerless. Any candidate for the presidency of Iran must first be vetted by a hard-line group of twelve clerics who are controlled by the un-elected Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. During the recent election for President of Iran the members of the Guardian Council disqualified over ninety-eight percent of the candidates, including all female candidates and virtually every single reformist.

    Hence, although Iran has elections, these elections are simply fodder for the mainstream media, providing straw figures to distract and entrap ingenuous foreign politicians like Barack Obama.

    Many of Barack Obama’s national security policies are sideways, backward-looking and re-treaded from the Carter Administration. As examples, Obama supports direct negotiations with the Iranian theocracy, opposes support for pro-Democracy Iranian groups, and advocates open lines of relations with the most corrupt members of this despicable regime. All of this works only to legitimize the dictatorship, both in the eyes of the beleaguered Iranian people and in the eyes of the world, friends and foes alike. if enacted, this would be another very dangerous and short-sighted strategic blunder, and one from which we may never recover.

    The signature moves of Obama are meant to be too noble for mere politics, but the team of foreign policy security advisers that his administration looks likely to field is the constellation of advisors and policy staff that will render him just another “high-toned liberal” doomed to failure. The Obama team is composed of a combination of the young and inexperienced, mere repeats of the usual suspects characteristic of the Carter and Clinton administrations, lofted up from the poorly-grounded gray matter of liberal universities and think tanks. The team members may be united by with good intentions; but without appropriate grounding, they are likely on the road to disappointment and failure for America.

    Among the few prominent figures are Zbigniew Brzezinski who was President Carter’s National Security Advisor and a veteran of multiple failures in Iran; Lt. General Merrill McPeak, designer of untimely Air Force retrenchment and stillborn change during the Clinton Administration; Gregory Craig, aide to Ted Kennedy and an exuberantly creative Clinton partisan who defended his President at the impeachment; and Susan Rice, the black hole of talk and inaction.

    President Bush has consistently reached out to the Iranian people, a nation that Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute dubbed the “most pro-American in the entire region, if not the world,” and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times called “the ultimate red state,” while the un-elected, anti-American government wields a miniscule 15-20% support.

    Although we are unsure whether Obama merits to be judged by the company he keeps, his advisors appear to adhere only to the obvious naïve and harmful foreign policy proffered by Jimmy Carter. In Iran, the Carter Administration helped bring down one our greatest allies in the Middle East and it encouraged and abetted modern terrorism, due to its naive understanding of foreign policy, particularly in this part of the world.

    The lack of intellectual and moral clarity about global threats, and how America and the freedom-seeking people of Iran and other Middle Eastern nations should respond, will make an Obama administration incapable of acting on the crucial, deeper game.

    FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Slater Bakhtavar is president and founder of Republican Youth of America, a frequent commentator and respected analyst on foreign policy issues, an attorney with a post-doctoral degree in International law and pursuing his M.B.A.

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    Jul

    8

    Kyoto - A Perspective (Part 51)

    July 8, 2008 | By TonyfromOz | Leave a Comment

    CONCLUSIONS (Part 4)

    Fifteen weeks ago I started this series of posts. It has been a long and involved process, and if the posts have been long, then I apologise for that. I had hoped to probably extend it out to six posts at the maximum, but the more I looked, the more I found.
    I come from a background as an electrical tradesman and a teacher of the electrical trade, all this during my 25 years service in the Royal Australian Air Force.

    Why I actually wanted to do this in the first place was to try and satisfy my own curiosity.
    At the recent election in Australia, held in October of 2007, the Government changed. Part of the platform for the incoming administration was that they were going to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol raised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (UNFCCC)
    We had been told at length that this Protocol was to address the causes of climate change, and in so doing, lay out measures for solving the problem.
    With a flourish, our new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd duly signed off on the protocol ratifying it on behalf of Australia, and in so doing agreeing to work towards processes to solve the problem. In so doing, he carefully then told us that there was now only one Country holding out on ratifying the protocol, that being the US.

    All this made me seriously think about just why that was so. I went and actually read all I could find about the Protocol, and found that even though it was a really great ideal to work towards, it was flawed.
    The media bombards us with thirty second video and sound bites on what is actually being done to the environment. We are releasing greenhouse gases into the environment on a scale that is supposedly having an effect on the World’s weather, by raising temperatures to the point that the sea levels would rise alarmingly, flooding low lying Countries.
    We have also been bombarded by the ‘Al Gore Factor’, with his book, series of lectures and movie, winning accolades across the Planet. Because of this, the argument has come down to a political thing, leading us to believe it is a Republican/Democrat thing because Al Gore was the Democrat Vice President, and then making big play that President Bush was being a holdout by not signing, something that is a little erroneous by its very nature, because when the Protocol first came out, President Clinton’s Administration did not submit it for ratification to the Senate, because of concerns that all the World’s Developing Countries were not part of the problem solving, and that the greatest work would have to be done by the US, who would also be forced by ratifying to shoulder the burden as paying for the whole thing, the perception being that the US was the only Country able to actually afford this immense cost.

    So after reading as much as I could about what the Protocol was all about, and the implications of ratifying it, something quite small stood out for me especially, coming from a background in the electrical trade.
    The greatest of these greenhouse gas emissions is Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The media needs a good stark image that they can show their viewers, so when they talk greenhouse gas emissions, we are shown filthy black smoke issuing from steel mill stacks and emotive pictures of thousands of cars on the freeways at peak hour traffic. So the viewing public gets the unintentional message that cars and steel mills are the greatest emitters, giving the impression that maybe all we need to do is to get smaller cars, drive less, and maybe cut back on those steel mills.
    However, the real fact is that cars produce around 7.5% in total of those emissions. Industry produces a percentage, as does farming of every kind, planes, boats, trains. Public transport and the transport industry also emit a percentage.
    However, the largest emissions are from coal fired power plants. That was an obscure mention that made my ears prick up, because NO ONE AT ALL has hit on that with respect to the solution.
    Using my background in the electrical trade, I investigated, because the unknowing loud voices of the rabid left environmentalists said that was not the problem, because there was unlimited and free power to be had from the Sun. The only reason solar power was not being used was because the fossil fuel industry was actively holding it back so they could continue using those fossil fuels. They seriously believed that once solar plants were up and running all across the Country, then no one would ever have to pay for power again. Because those environmentalist so stridently pursued that line, and pursued it so confidently, the idea was that they were actually correct.
    To that end, as an electrical tradesman, I wanted to satisfy myself of the real facts.

    Could those coal fired plants be replaced by endless free power form the Sun, or even from ANY other source at all.

    Also. I needed to satisfy myself just how much needed to be replaced.
    As I mentioned the more I investigated the more I found. The hardest thing to try and explain was that one word, BASELOAD.

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    Jul

    7

    Kyoto - A Perspective (Part 50)

    July 7, 2008 | By TonyfromOz | Leave a Comment

    CONCLUSIONS. (Part 3)

    Are there options to replace those coal fired power plants?
    Are they viable?
    Are they affordable?

    A cutback of one third of those coal fired plants means replacing fifty plants in the large baseload area, fifty plants of 2000MW size, and if it is to be considered seriously, then those mid sized peaking plants that are coal fired as well need to be replaced, because a 15% cutback in the total production of electrical power in the US amounts to around 150,000MW of power that need to be replaced.
    In earlier posts I detailed each of those proposed replacements. A quick summarising shows that the answer is not a simple one easily come by.

    Gas fired combined cycle power plants.
    These can be used for medium sized plants for up to 1000MW maximum, but mostly are around 400 to 800MW. The nature of this type of plant make them unsuitable for long term running, so that puts them in the class of Peaking power. Currently, these type of plants are the ones that are being constructed more than any others because they are the quickest to come on line from the time of turning the first sod to completion date. They still use a fossil fuel to drive the turbine, and there are numerous gases that can be used, Propane, LNG, and of late, the newer and seemingly quite attractive Coal Seam Gas. These gases burn efficiently. They are also the most efficient because the heat generated from the exhaust of the turbine is used to drive a second turbine/generator unit. They release significantly less CO2 that those coal fired plants. The drawback is that because of the nature of the jet turbine, they cannot be used for constant baseload power. The cost for a medium sized plant in ballpark terms is around $800 Million, and can be brought on line in around 18 months.

    Geothermal Plants.
    These plants could be used for baseload power. Provided that the technology can be proven, they provide a good option. What is problematic is the instability of the geological formation and whether or not it can be proven to stay hot enough for long enough for the time needed for a plant of this type to remain in service. The main problem is that unlike other plants that can be built close to water, with these plants, the water needs to be brought to the plant, and brought there in large quantities, hence huge infrastructure costs for the pipes and the numerous large pumps required to move that water. Then the infrastructure for the transmission lines will also need to be constructed adding further to the cost. Even though viable at a pinch, they would be enormously expensive, so funding would be required from Government sources as well as private backing added to the Authority funding, all these costs of necessity being passed to the consumer.

    Tidal power and Wave power.
    Again, the theory is good. Using the motion of water to drive turbines is a process proven in the two methods of existing large and small scale Hydro power production (Run of river, and pumped storage) that of using the motion of water to drive turbines. However these two processes are only in their infancy, and are only being used in very small scale operation. If the process could be scaled up, the time line would be similar for what Hydro is, with a dam, and it would also be enormously expensive.

    These are the smaller options, There are other ‘boutique’ processes, but in the main they are still experimental, small scale, not yet proven as reliable and still decades away from supplying small scale power only.
    That then leaves us with the big three that are being touted as the saviour in this situation, the ones that people point at and say that here is the answer. The fact is somewhat different, keeping in mind that even I am a ‘glass half full’ type of guy. Each of these three processes has drawbacks, and those drawbacks are not simple things that we can just work out as we go along.

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    Jul

    6

    Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser Participating In The McMahon Group Today

    July 6, 2008 | By PA Pundits | Leave a Comment

    M. Zuhdi Jasser will participate in Pat McMahon’s - The McMahon Group- to air, today, Sunday, July 6, 2008 from 4PM-5PM PST on KTAR News Radio 92.3 FM in Phoenix, Arizona.

    Dr. Jasser will join Pat and along with Diane Brennan and Anna Ramirez to discuss citizenship and immigration.

    It can also be heard on the web streaming at the KTAR Website (Just click ‘Listen Now” in the upper right corner of the homepage).

    Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and Chairman of the based in Phoenix Arizona.

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    Jul

    6

    Islamists, Muslim Voting Bloc And The Threat To American Security

    July 6, 2008 | By PA Pundits | Leave a Comment

    Exclusive: Islamism and the So-called ‘Muslim Voting Bloc’: Shades of Theocracy

    The modus operandi for the political empowerment of Islamists in America is in full public display during every election cycle. The sad part is few realize how central “Islamic politics” is to the driving force of transnational Islamism and its threat to American security. The incessant attempts by American Islamist groups (like the MAS, CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, ICNA to name a few) to collectivize Muslims in the body politic - from voter registrations to their ideological grievance mill - point to their goals.

    What better way to push forth a quasi-theocratic political agenda than to deceive the Muslim faithful into believing that their political survival as a minority in America depends upon the mixture of their faith identity with their political identity? These same Islamists spread the ideology of victimization and identity politics among any Muslims who will listen while they internally promote political Islam and Islamist statecraft within the ummah (Muslim community). They use their efforts at Muslim electoral involvement to exploit the spiritual ummah for political purposes. Most importantly, many in the mainstream media (MSM) and government turn to them to purportedly speak for the American Muslim population, even though they have no mandate or significant membership to do so.

    The fact is that they (the Wahhabi lobby working in tandem with for what all practical purposes appears to be the international Muslim Brotherhood network) only speak for their memberships, organizations, and donors while certainly not representing the majority of American Muslims. But, what better way for them to cultivate future Islamists than to teach them and non-suspecting American media and government that the faith of Islam is intertwined with their political activism?

    Forget party affiliation when they can indoctrinate their Muslim brethren that the Muslim ummah should become their political platform for societal and legal change and division. The mission is clear - first, build a political Muslim identity which drives the activism of American Muslims in their sway. Then, once that bond is created, slip in the agenda of political Islam driven by a domestic and foreign policy agenda which favors the interests of Islamists in government over other ideologies. Motivating a Muslim ‘bloc vote’ is based upon this paradigm of Islamism for the Islamist minority.

    Minority politics and the Islamist Agenda in America

    In Western nations like the United States where Muslims are a small minority (less than 2% of the population) in a free election system where the laws of the land are secular, Islamist organizations must be far more cunning. They have quickly co-opted the propaganda of victimology and identity politics in order to collectivize American Muslims under their Islamist banners and exploit the grand deception that Muslims are monolithic. Forget the diversity of political opinions within the Muslim community. Forget the wide spectra of political ideology in both domestic and foreign policy with which devout Muslims may agree or disagree. The Islamist movement depends upon the motivating propaganda of victimology and identity while dismissing any genuine ideological debate on issues vital to America first.

    Since 2000, these same eleven American Muslim organizations have set out to empower a “Muslim voting bloc.” They then formed the . Back in 2000 on the heels of their lukewarm endorsement of then-Gov. George W. Bush they, along with many other ‘American voting blocs’, went on to claim credit for President Bush’s narrow victory. This year, is moving toward a similar strategy claiming that the three priorities for Muslim voters are civil rights, a fair immigration policy, and ending the war in Iraq. This is clearly an Islamist agenda focused on victimology, identity politics, and the advocacy of Islamist interests in Iraq and abroad.

    Talk to non-Islamist Muslims not affiliated with these organizations and you will find an agenda which more closely mirrors that of general America - the economy, health care, and national security. The Islamist agenda is simply to exaggerate their Muslim grievance mill so that candidates who are loath to be identified as anti-Muslim will divert the attention of the nation completely away from the national security problems associated with various Muslim ideologies contained within the global movements of political Islam. Again, gone is any discussion of an approach nationally to the forces of global political Islam - other than appeasement.

    The Deception of Islamist Collectivism

    This Islamist agenda will certainly peak the interests of national media who love a story which pigeon holes voters into bite size demographics - like the “Muslim voter.” Sadly, this deception, no matter what the poll data says about how Muslims vote, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy a decade in the make due to the unbalanced Islamist influence in American mainstream media and foreign Muslim media rather than from any real manifestation of Muslim ideologies. The logic of the Muslim voter is no different than the logic of a Christian voter in a nation which is majority Christian. Certainly, Islamists as a subset of Muslims, who are politically and theocratically-driven Muslims, are a relevant discussion during elections and from a national security perspective. But again, most Muslims are not Islamists. Rather, they look at political issues based upon the political platforms of established American party politics and ideologies - not Islamist politics.

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    Jul

    6

    Kyoto - A Perspective (Part 49)

    July 6, 2008 | By TonyfromOz | Leave a Comment

    CONCLUSIONS. (Part 2)

    Okay, we’ve established that the largest emission of CO2 comes from those coal fired power plants. Here in the US, we are the most technologically advanced Country on the Planet. Surely then, we can find ways to replace those plants with methods that don’t emit as much CO2.

    Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant, Masontown, PA. Image courtesy Allegheny Energy. Click on image to open in a larger window.

    Look very carefully at this image, and I’ll explain how you are being unintentionally misled. Photographs like these are shown to you to emotively express the depth of the pollution pouring into the environment from those power plants.

    Coal is burned in a furnace. This boils water and turns it to steam. The steam drives a multi stage turbine. The turbine drives a generator, and the generator produces the electricity. Those generators are huge, weighing hundreds of tons and produce huge amounts of electricity. It’s no good trying to make the point that they are releasing pollution into the environment if they show you a static photograph of the plant in normal operation, so they show an image with white stuff pouring into the air from those big fat stacks. Those photographs are usually taken in cool weather because that’s when you best see the white stuff pouring out. That white stuff is water vapour. Those fat stacks you see are the cooling towers placed over the ponds where the water cools after the steam process driving the turbines recycles that water. This is not Carbon Dioxide (CO2) the greenhouse gas, but harmless water.
    To the right of those cooling towers there you see the coal, which in this case, looks to be brought up the river on barges, but in most case comes to the plant by rail.
    A plant this size could use up to 10,000 tons of coal each day, and some use a lot more. Some plants can use up to 6.5 Million tons of coal per year. Just below the ‘fat’ stack in the foreground, you can see the conveyor belt continuously feeding coal into the furnace. This plant has three large generators. The two ‘thin’ stacks are the actual chimneys where the gases come out, and you can just make out the darker coloured smoke coming from them. When the media show power plants they show emotive images of that white stuff pouring out, they don’t do that on purpose. They just need an image to get their point across. No matter what type of plant they show you, the abiding memory is of these huge stacks belching white stuff. Why they have these ‘fat’ stacks is to direct the vapour upwards so it doesn’t just hang around the main area of the plant. These are vast cooling ponds where the water waits to be recycled back into the boilers to drive the turbines.

    Night Skyline New York. Image Siddharth Kapur. Click on image to open in a larger window.

    This second emotive image is of the New York Skyline. Again, a night time image like this is also used to unintentionally mislead you. You look at that and think just how much power could be saved if only some of those lights were turned off. Those lights you see there make up only 5% of the power needed to run those buildings. The large percentage of power use in those buildings is needed to keep the air in those buildings at a level that is comfortable for the people working in them. That conditioned air just cannot be turned off at all. It’s not to keep it warm in Winter and cool in the Summer months. It has to be continually left on to keep breathable air circulating in those buildings. It cannot be turned off overnight and then back on the next morning. People work in those buildings at night, the vast army of cleaners, power is also needed to pump water up to each and every floor for the toilets, the water that people drink. Every room on every floor also has to have power supplied for work stations. Power is needed to drive the elevators. The lights in the main also have to be left running for safety purposes. So when you see an image like this, as emotive as it looks the power to those buildings just cannot be turned off at night and then back on the next morning. The power needs to be kept up to those buildings continuously. Not just in New York, but in every city, every workplace, every shopping outlet, every street. The commercial and Industrial sectors consume 62% of the total electric power produced in the US. That power has to be there, constant, regulated, reliable, power.

    THAT IS BASELOAD POWER.

    Large generators like the ones you see at the plant in that first image are what supply that baseload power. Those large generators run at near maximum for 24 hours of every day, in most cases for 50 to 60 years.

    When people rise in the morning, they turn on all the things that they need to get their breakfasts, to shower, get ready for work. The same occurs when you get home from work in the evenings. You run up the heating, the aircon, the TV, the washing machine and dryer.
    These two daily spikes are added on top of that set required power (Baseload) and they are called Peaking power.
    Smaller generators all across the Country run up to add extra power to that set level to cover the requirements for those spikes. After the spikes they just run back down. This is something that just cannot be done with those large baseload plants because of the immense weight of the generators, and if they were allowed to run down, that weight would bend the shaft making the whole turbine/generator useless. That is why they run continuously, to supply that baseload power. Those smaller generators can be run up and down to add the peaking power when needed.

    Large baseload plants are in three categories. Coal fired plants. Nuclear plants, and hydro electric plants. The first two use steam, boiled from the burning of coal, or boiled by the heat generated by the nuclear reaction. With hydro plants, the water from the huge dam drives the turbine.

    Smaller ‘peaking power’ plants are gas turbines that use a variety of the gases. Some use liquid fuels. Others are powered by other means, some from wave power, some from geothermal power, some from wind power, and some from solar power.
    These smaller plants CANNOT be used to supply baseload power. All they can do is to augment that.

    With respect to those using the wind and solar methods, because of their variability, they are unsuitable for use as baseload power, and no matter what ardent environmentalists might like to tell you, they cannot be used for that baseload power. You could cover every vacant piece of land in New York State with solar panels and wind turbines, and still not be able to supply a constant regulated supply to keep that New York Skyline in electrical power.

    So, now that we’ve established the need for baseload power, then what are the implications when the Kyoto Protocol is brought into the equation.
    It calls for reduction of CO2 emissions back to a level 5% lower than what was being emitted in 1990. Since that time, the US is shown to have increased emissions by a factor in the vicinity of 28%. That means right now, there needs to be a reduction of emissions of around 33%, one third. That’s across the board, every sector, power generation included. Currently the US produces power from coal fired means for just under 50% of the total production. (Keep in mind the World average is almost half as much again, sitting on 72%.) If a one third reduction is to be achieved, then that means one third of 50% or around 15% of the total electric power production in the US.
    An understanding of US power usage shows that 62% is used in the Commercial and Industrial sectors, basically, those places of work for the US. 38% is used in the Residential sector.
    A simple observation here is that removing that amount of power would lead to unemployment on a huge scale, and the result of that would mean widespread chaos, something not to be contemplated. Admitted, this is worst case scenario I know, and I’m not advocating that, because replacements will be found. (The glass half full principle applies here.)

    So, what is needed is two things.
    The first is methods of power generation to replace those coal fired plants, and the second is the time to actually construct them and to bring them on line.

    Now, the full import of the dilemma is being realised. Mainstream media will preface their media bites showing morning rush hour on the freeways, steel mills belching smoke, and maybe a cooling tower pouring water vapor into the atmosphere.

    Until real understanding of the situation is explained to us, then those real implications will not sink in.

    This is something that will have an effect upon every single person in the US, and no one is telling us, not out of wilful neglect, but because those who will be the ones to actually tell us, those politicians, and then the branches of the media, (once the realisation hits) just don’t actually realise what these implications are, and what they mean.

    I’m going to run with the next post tomorrow morning, and in that we’ll see if those coal fired plants can be effectively replaced.

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    Jul

    5

    So We Are At War With Iran Then: Let’s Get Over Our Denial And Do the Right Thing

    July 5, 2008 | By Howard Salter | Leave a Comment

    The United States and its allies have been arguing for months that Iranian operatives are active in Iraq and that they are providing weapons[1], funds[2], and logistics[3] support to fuel the insurgency averse to U.S. dominated forces. While Presidential candidates have been running around purveying the emanation of reasonability in a war that has become increasingly unpopular at home[4], the current U.S. administration has been working diligently to support the fledgling democracy of Iraq against its more influential neighbor: Iran.

    Iran’s economy is in the tank[5] as evidenced by record high inflation[6] and very high unemployment[7]. Iran is racing to war to relieve the burdens of economic isolation caused by its years of uncooperative behavior with the international community. This isolation is worsened from its continued course of clandestine nuclear weapons development[8], their insistence and willingness to export their Islamic revolution to the Middle East[9, 10] and lack of respect toward human rights[11]. While note nearly as atrocious as their neighbor, Saddam Hussein, the Mullah’s still used chemical weapons against the Iraqi’s during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s and Iran has participated incidents of genocide[12] against its own ethnic minorities.

    The British, America’s staunchest ally in the War on Terror, have been the target of numerous attacks by the Iranians. In a battle that echoed the Iran-Iraq war’s Operation Dawn Two, Iranian troops attacked coalition troops near the town of Haj Omran. In another incident in the south of Iraq British troops reported multiple border skirmishes with Iranian troops who have purported to cross the Iraqi border into Iraq or have used surrogate forces to conduct operations against the British in the same providences. While U.S. Presidential Candidate, Barrack Hussein Obama, notes that the United States should diplomatically engage the regime in Tehran, he fails to acknowledge that our friends, the British, are under attack in Tehran and that Iranian diplomacy involved nothing more than a denial from Tehran regarding these kinds of attacks and issues.

    In another related incident of non-diplomacy, when a Persian arms smuggler was arrested north of Baghdad in 2007, the thug-ocracy in Tehran responded diplomatically by closing of the border with the Kurds[13] in the north. This had a significant impact on trade in the North and hurt the Iraqi’s bottom line. According to Iran, this is what being a good neighbor is all about. The Iranians use middle-men to import arms into Iraq to kill Iraqi and coalition forces and then shut down the border on their end in response to the arrest of a spy in Iraq.

    The Iranian people, not having the right of free association as they do in real democracies have staged protests. These are sponsored by the government and in Tehran there have been several of these kinds of protests that resulted in violence against our allies in the region. Iranian nationals have attacked the British embassy more than once and this violence wasn’t limited to stones. In an act of war against our allies in the region, the British embassy in Tehran was bombed! The British embassy has been shut down at least three times because of rioting and attacks as attributed in a 2007 Times Online article[14].

    In a 2007 Army Times article, the architect of “the Surge,” and credited with the success of counter insurgency operations in Iraq, General Pretreus had this to say regarding the involvement of Iran inside the sovereign nation of Iraq. He attributed, “We have found out an enormous amount about what the Iranians have done, and it is staggering; it really is. It is unbelievable. They have trained dozens at a time over there [in Iran] — and dozens doesn’t sound like much, but dozens can just wreak havoc — on the use of explosively formed projectiles, rockets, mortars and IEDs, and how to do operations. They have been funding, over the last several years, certainly hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance to different Shi’a militia groups, and we have found evidence very recently of assistance being provided to Sunni Arab groups as well. One of the Sunni insurgent leaders was just over in Tehran.”[15] It is in this light that the United States realizes that in order to win the peace in Iraq, much of the fight may involve Iran. If the United States fails to act toward Tehran, it will secure a victory for the state willing to export their version of Islamism into secular Iraq and the future of democracy in this fledgling state will be terminated.

    The international tension between the Washington D.C. and Tehran has been at an all time high. Rumors of Israeli and or American plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities have been in the works for months. Israel conducted mock bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities to demonstrate their serious intent of limiting Iranian nuclear capability. After all it was Iran who promised to wipe Israel off the map.[16] According to Mr. Hersh’s interview on National Public Radio regarding the clandestine operations of the CIA in Iran, Vice-president Cheney doesn’t want Israel to do this alone and that it would be better if the United States assisted in the effort. [17] Since it is evident that the United States, Israel, and Great Britain are already at war with Tehran the public denial of this reality must be ripped away. Clandestine operations while important in a time of war, and surprise being of utmost importance in securing a moral and military victory, the end shouldn’t justify the means and the enemy of my enemy shouldn’t always be my friend.

    America, Britian, Israel and Iran are diametrically opposed to each other. In their view of themselves, the oil in the Middle East and the world’s reliance on this resource is seen as a power struggle between Iran and the West. It was the West who discovered it and for Tehran, the nationalization of those resources was a reason for revolution many years ago against the British whom they felt were not treating their people or their government fair. This power struggle goes back decades and right now every time Iran gets the whim to affect the supply of oil, it threatens the flow of oil via tankers in the straights of Hormuz as it did with the Tanker wars in the 1980’s.

    Parenthetically, Iran wishes to export its version of Islamicism to the rest of the Middle East while the United States wishes to create democratically elected states. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only surrou