Israel Urges U.S. to Take Action Over New Iranian Nuclear Facility

ERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the U.S. to take action over a newly revealed Iranian nuclear facility in a phone conversation with American lawmakers, an official in his office said Saturday.

Netanyahu spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a number of unidentified U.S. senators and told them that now is the time to act on Iran. Israel maintains the Islamic republic is seeking nuclear weapons.
"If not now then when?" the official quoted Netanyahu as saying. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak with the media.

He did not disclose what kind of action Netanyahu recommend be taken.
Iran kept the facility, located 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from the U.N. nuclear watchdog until revealing it last week.

Israel has long sounded alarm bells over its belief that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons while Tehran insists its facilities are for intended for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said earlier Saturday that the Iranian nuclear facility proves "without a doubt" the Islamic republic is pursuing nuclear weapons.

"This removes the dispute whether Iran is developing military nuclear power or not and therefore the world powers need to draw conclusions," Lieberman told Israel radio. "Without a doubt it is a reactor for military purposes not peaceful purposes."

The facility enriches uranium fuel to power nuclear reactors.

Evidence of the clandestine facility was presented Friday by President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain and France at the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Obama demanded Iran show greater transparency regarding its nuclear program warning or face tougher sanctions.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later said his country had done nothing wrong and Obama would regret his actions.

Iran insists its facilities are producing nuclear fuel for power plants and not weapons.

Israel considers Iran a strategic threat due to its nuclear program, missile development and repeated references by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Israel's destruction.

Lieberman said he met with Arab foreign ministers while at the United Nations last week and said they expressed their alarm over Iran's nuclear program to him.

"Nobody is worried about the Palestinian problem, everybody in the Muslim and Arab world, and first and foremost in the Gulf states, are worried about the Iranian problem," Lieberman said.

AP
Source

Obama Administration Frees Three More Gitmo Detainees

The Department of Justice Saturday evening announced that two detainees had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to Ireland, and one had been transferred to Yemen.

There are more than 220 detainees remaining at the prison. In the last couple months, the White House has made it increasingly clear that the President will not make his self-stated January 22, 2010 deadline to close to prison.

Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, a native of Yemen, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and returned to Yemen today. The Yemeni Embassy to the US issued a statement saying the country welcomed, "with enthusiasm, the release and transfer of its citizen."

Known at Gitmo as Captive 692, the government labeled Ali Ahmed an "enemy combatant," saying he "was associated with Al-Qaeda. He was present on the front lines in Bagram, Afghanistan. He was identified by a senior Al-Qaeda facilitator as having been a resident at a safehouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2000 (his individual also saw the detainee at a safehouse located in Faisalabad, Pakistan in February 2002 with a group of Yemenis who had fled Afghanistan). Finally, the Detainee was identified by another individual, a senior Al-Qaeda operational planner, as having resided at a safehouse located in Kandahar in 2001."

Al Ahmed denied almost all of the charges.

Political Punch - Jake Tapper

Read Full Story

Iranian Protester Flees After Telling of Torture

By NAZILA FATHI

When he eagerly joined the mass street protests that followed Iran’s tainted June 12 presidential elections, Ibrahim Sharifi, 24, hoped only to add his voice to the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding that the government nullify the results. He never imagined that he would eventually have a far greater impact, as the only person willing to speak publicly about the brutal treatment he was subjected to in prison, including rape and torture.

Mr. Sharifi, who recounted his ordeal to the opposition leader and former presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, and then released a video account last month on opposition Web sites, is now in Turkey. He said he fled Iran after a stranger stopped him on the street to tell him his family would be killed if he testified before a parliamentary committee that was investigating the torture and rape accusations.

“I felt that I was not safe anymore and I could put my family’s life in danger, too,” he said in a series of telephone interviews, in which he spoke in detail about the protests, his imprisonment and the psychological scars he said the abuse had left.

Since he was dumped by his captors on the side of a Tehran highway, he said, he has been terrified of being alone. First, he had trouble sleeping, fearing that the guard who raped him in prison would attack him again. Now he is convinced he is being followed by someone who means to kill him.

“I was ready to be tortured to death,” he said, his voice trembling. “But not ever to go through what happened to me there.”

Mr. Karroubi and another opposition leader and presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, have vigorously condemned the vicious tactics the security authorities used against the demonstrators, 72 of whom they say were killed. Yet, of all the allegations of brutality and abuse that were lodged, none have presented such a threat to the government as those involving rape and sodomy, which are culturally and religiously unacceptable in Iran.

The rape allegations were aired publicly by Mr. Karroubi after the victims began coming to his office to report the abuses. The allegations — which appeared to reinvigorate the battered opposition — were immediately rejected by the government, which then raided the offices of Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Moussavi and seized materials. Subsequently, a judicial investigating committee ruled that documents presented as evidence of rapes and other abuse were fabricated.

But the government has been unable to silence the opposition and human rights groups who dismiss the government’s claims.

Human rights groups say that Mr. Sharifi’s account conforms closely with those of other abuse victims. Omid Memarian, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said he had confirmed the credibility of Mr. Sharifi’s story with people close to Mr. Karroubi.

“His narrative is consistent,” Mr. Memarian said. “He has no reason to risk making up a story like that, especially because he also met with judiciary authorities and demanded a thorough investigation.”

Mr. Sharifi was one of five brothers raised in north Tehran in a middle class family that was religious but not fanatically so. His father, a retired military officer, was a supporter of the 1979 revolution and participated in the rallies against the shah. His mother wore the traditional head-to-toe chador.

At Open University in Tehran, Mr. Sharifi studied computer engineering, and Italian at the Italian Consulate, the latter in hopes of studying medicine in Italy.

Not overtly political, he said he wanted more democracy and freedom, but gradually and peacefully. “I always told my father that even the 1979 revolution was a mistake, and that my generation did not want one,” he said.

He says everyone in his family favored the reform movement and were shocked when Mr. Ahmadinejad announced that he had won in a landslide victory, an outcome that has been denounced as a fraud.

Mr. Sharifi was outraged, and the only one in his family who began participating in rallies every day. He was on his way back home the afternoon of June 22 when he was grabbed by two men. “I had taken part in every single protest, so I saw this coming,” he said.

He said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and, as he later learned, taken to the notorious Kahrizak detention center in southwestern Tehran, where even the government concedes that several detainees were killed.

He said he remained handcuffed and blindfolded for four days in a cramped cell with about 30 other prisoners.

They were beaten senseless the first day, he said, and periodically after that over the next four days. Urine and blood covered the floor.

By the fourth day he was beginning to lose hope of getting out alive. He had trouble closing his mouth and he said he began vomiting blood.

“I told the guard that he should go ahead and just kill me if he wanted to,” he said, breaking into tears. “Then he called another guard and said ‘Take this bastard and impregnate him.’ ”

They took him out of the cell to another room where they pushed him against a wall that had handcuffs and two metal hooks to keep his legs open. The guard pulled down his underwear, he said, and began raping him.

“He laughed mockingly as he was doing it and said that I could not even defend myself so how did I think that I could stage a revolution.

“They wanted to horrify and intimidate me,” he said, weeping.

At that point, Mr. Sharifi said, he passed out. The next thing he remembered was opening his eyes and realizing he was in a hospital with one hand cuffed to his bed. Another young man was screaming hysterically on a bed next to him.

He said he heard a doctor tell someone, “Dump him or you’ll have the same problem as the other ones,” meaning that he would die in custody. Two days later, he said, they put him in a car, took him to a highway in Tehran and left him there, blindfolded.

He immediately went to a psychiatrist who put him on a heavy dose of anxiety medication. Then he went to a police station to file a complaint, but the officers advised him to be thankful that he was alive and to try to forget about it.

In time, he decided to go see Mr. Karroubi, having heard that other victims of rape and torture were doing so. At first he spoke only about the torture; the rape was too painful and embarrassing to talk about.

But Mr. Karroubi pressed him, suspecting that he had been sexually assaulted because he began weeping and shaking every time he was asked about his last day in prison. Finally, Mr. Sharifi told him.

Even after his shattering ordeal, Mr. Sharifi, who hopes eventually to get to the United States, refuses to be intimidated.

“I think they are following me to kill me,” he said. “But I will not let them force me into silence.”

By NAZILA FATHI

New York Times

In Defense of America Back Online!

In defense of America is back and better than ever.  It has now taken the domain of American Defense Initiative.com as originally intended.  We will be updating our blog frequently. While we can't go into all the reasons for our hiatus, we can say that we will continue to bring news from around the country, as well as offer our insights into our current political climate, American way of life and focusing on the defense of American values.

Thanks for your patience, we look forward to continued service.

God Bless,

The ADI

Global Warming Censored

Global warming crusader Al Gore repeatedly claims the climate change “debate’s over.” It isn’t, but the news media clearly agree with him. Global warming skeptics rarely get any say on the networks, and when their opinions are mentioned it is often with barbs like “cynics” or “deniers” thrown in to undermine them.

Consistently viewers are being sent only one message from ABC, CBS and NBC: global warming is an environmental catastrophe and it’s mankind’s fault. Skepticism is all but shut out of reports through several tactics – omission, name-calling, the hype of frightening images like polar bears scavenging for food near towns and a barrage of terrifying predictions.

The Business & Media Institute analyzed 205 network news stories about “global warming” or “climate change” between July 1, 2007, and Dec. 31, 2007. BMI found a meager 20 percent of stories even mentioned there were any alternative opinions to the so-called “consensus” on the issue.

• Disagreement Squashed: Global warming proponents overwhelmingly outnumbered those with dissenting opinions. On average for every skeptic there were nearly 13 proponents featured. ABC did a slightly better job with a 7-to-1 ratio, while CBS’s ratio was abysmal at nearly 38-to-1.

• Can I See Some ID?: Scientists made up only 15 percent of the global warming proponents shown. The remaining 85 percent included politicians, celebrities, other journalists and even ordinary men and women. There were more unidentified interview subjects used to support climate change hype than actual scientists (101 unidentified to just 71 scientists)

• What’s It Going to Cost?: All “solutions” have a price, but the cost of fighting global warming was something you rarely heard on the network news. Only 22 stories (11 percent) mentioned any cost of “fixing” global warming. On the rare occasion cost came up, it came from the lips of a skeptic like Kentucky state Rep. Jim Gooch (D), who said one climate change bill in Congress “would cost $6 trillion.”

• CBS the Worst: Journalist/global warming advocate Scott Pelley helped CBS be, by far, the worst network. Pelley argued in 2006 that he shouldn’t have to include skeptics in such stories because “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?” In 2007, he helped ensure only four skeptics were included by CBS – and not a single one was a scientist. Compare that to the 151 people used by the network to promote global warming hysteria. The wildly one-sided outcome was not surprising given remarks by some of its other journalists. Harry Smith declared that “There is, in fact, global climate change” on the Aug. 7, 2007, “Early Show.”

• ABC the “Best”: Despite its over-the-top climate hypocrisy of jet-setting journalists around the world to cover climate change, ABC included more skepticism (36 percent) in its broadcasts than either NBC or CBS. Still, the network has plenty of work to do. Bill Weir made the outrageous claim during the Nov. 18, 2007, “Good Morning America” that “all these scientists” urge immediate action to stop global warming. Weather personality Sam Champion even referred to the most recent U.N. climate report as “unequivocal” and “definitive.
To improve coverage, BMI recommends:

• Report the issue objectively: Reporters have a professional responsibility to remain objective and avoid inserting their own opinions into their reports. Many in the media have sorely missed that mark when it comes to reporting on global warming and climate change.

• Include skeptics: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states journalists should “Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.” It is the media’s job to inform the public, not persuade them by leaving out alternative viewpoints. Particularly, networks should give skeptical scientists the opportunity to share their findings – just like they include scientists who say manmade global warming is negatively impacting the planet.

• Show Me the Money: If the U.S. government passes legislation to address global warming, it will carry a cost and American taxpayers have a right to know what it would be. The media need to do a much better job by asking about or including cost estimates of climate change “solutions.”

Read The Full Report
Executive Summary by Julia A. Seymour and Dan Gainor

McCain, Obama Tilt Over al-Qaida in Iraq

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain mocked Barack Obama's view of al-Qaida in Iraq, and the Democratic contender responded that GOP policies brought the terrorist group there.
The rapid-fire, long-distance exchange Wednesday underscored that the two consider each other likely general election rivals, even though the Democratic contest remains unresolved.

McCain criticized Obama for saying in Tuesday night's Democratic debate that, after U.S. troops were withdrawn, as president he would act "if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq."

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called `al-Qaida in Iraq,'" McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. He said Obama's statement was "pretty remarkable,"

Obama quickly answered back while campaigning in Ohio. "I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that's why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets," he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

"But I have some news for John McCain," Obama added. "There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. ... They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq "so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place."

While he praised McCain as a war hero and saluted his service to the country, Obama said the Arizona Republican was "tied to the politics of the past. We are about policies of the future."
Noting that McCain likes to tell audiences that he'd follow Osama bin Laden to the "gates of hell" to catch him, Obama taunted: "All he (McCain) has done is to follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq."

McCain said he had not watched Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate but was told of Obama's response when asked if as president he would reserve the right to send U.S. troops back into Iraq to quell an insurrection or civil war.

Obama did not say whether he'd send troops but responded: "As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."

On Wednesday, Obama expanded slightly that he "would always reserve the right to go in and strike al-Qaida if they were in Iraq" without detailing what kind of strike that might be _ air, ground or both.

McCain said later in San Antonio: "So I guess that means that he would surrender and then go back."

And Obama continued the attacks and counter-attacks, telling an evening rally at Texas State University in San Marcos: "When it comes to policy, John McCain is not looking forward, he's looking backward. I have some news for John McCain: They took their eye off the ball."
Throughout the primary season, McCain has repeatedly attacked Obama and Clinton for saying they would withdraw troops from Iraq.

"And my friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn't be establishing a base," McCain said Wednesday. "They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida."

He said that withdrawing troops would be "waving the white flag."

In the debate, Clinton did not answer the question about re-invasion of Iraq on grounds it contained "lots of different hypothetical assessments."

For years, McCain has urged sending more troops into Iraq, even before President Bush adopted such a strategy about a year ago.

"I knew enough from talking to the men and women who are serving that this new strategy was what we needed, and I'm telling you, it is succeeding," McCain said. "So what needs to happen, we need to continue this strategy. It should be General Petraeus' recommendation, not that of a politician running for higher office, as to when and how we withdraw."

He was referring to Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.
As he began a swing through President Bush's home state, which holds a presidential primary election on Tuesday, McCain made sure to play up a line he always uses: "I also think it might be nice for President Bush to get a little credit that there's not been another attack on the United States of America," he said to applause.

Later Wednesday, McCain picked up support from a prominent religious conservative, televangelist John Hagee of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church. McCain has labored to win support among evangelical conservatives, an important GOP voting bloc with which he has clashed over the years.

"What Senator McCain needs to do, I feel, to bring evangelicals into his camp is to make very clear his strong defense of Israel and that he has a strong, 24-year record of being pro-life," Hagee said at a news conference with McCain.

Both Obama and Clinton campaigned in Ohio on Wednesday. Obama was heading later in the day for at least three days of campaigning in Texas.

By LIBBY QUAID and TOM RAUM
From Towhnall.com

Five Questions about Shootings at Universities

Question 1: Why are murderers always counted in the victims tally? The day after the mass murder of students at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the headline in the closest major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was: "6 Dead in NIU Shooting."

"6 dead" included the murderer. Why wasn't the headline "5 killed at NIU"? It is nothing less than moronic that the media routinely lump murderers and their victims in the same tally.
This is something entirely new. Until the morally confused took over the universities and the news media, murderers were never counted along with their victims. To give a military analogy, can one imagine a headline like this in an American newspaper after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: "2,464 Dead in Pearl Harbor Attack"? After all, 55 Japanese airmen and nine Japanese crewmen also died in the attack.

One can only assume that this mode of reporting murders is part of the larger movement toward non-judgmentalism and egalitarianism. To many Americans in academia, the media, and elsewhere, all the dead constitute a tragedy. Suggesting that some dead are more important than other dead is forbidden.

At the San Francisco Zoo, after a young man was mauled to death by a tiger that had escaped its confines, the administrators of the zoo even lumped a killed animal with its human victim: the Zoo set up a memorial to both the man and the tiger. And, unsurprisingly, given the egalitarianism that now also lumps human beings with animals, the tiger received more condolence messages than the human it killed.

Question 2: Which of these three options is more likely to prevent further murderous rampages: a) making universities closed campuses and increasing the police presence on campus (as the president of NIU has promised to do); b) making guns much harder to obtain; or c) enabling specially trained students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus?

Because political correctness has replaced wisdom at nearly all universities, colleges are considering options a and b. But the only thing the first option will accomplish is to reduce the quality of university life and render the campus a larger version of the contemporary airport. And the second option will have no effect whatsoever since whoever wishes to commit murder will be able to obtain guns illegally.

But if would-be murderers know that anywhere they go to kill students, there is a real likelihood that one or two students will shoot them first, and if in fact some would-be murderer is killed before he can murder any, or at least many, students, we will see far fewer such attempts made. Even though many of these murderers end up killing themselves, they don't want to die until they have first murdered as many students and teachers as possible.

Of course, there is virtually no chance that the uniformly left-thinking individuals who run our universities will ever consider this option. To do so would mean abandoning what is essentially a religious-like conviction that guns are immoral rather than the people who use them immorally.
Question 3: Why are "shooter" and "gunman" used instead of "killer" or "murderer"?

If a murderer used a knife to murder five students, no news headlines would read, "Knifeman Kills Five." So why always "shooter" and "gunman"? The most obvious explanation is that by focusing on the weapon used by the murderer, the media can further their anti-gun agenda.
Question 4: Why is "murder" never used to describe homicides involved in these university massacres? And why is "murderer" never used to describe these murderers? Why has "kill" become the only word allowed for deliberate homicide?

Some will say that this is because "murder" is a legal term, and until one is convicted of murder in a court of law, the word should not be used.

I find this unpersuasive. If these murderers can be described as having killed students, then they have in fact committed murder. I believe the major reason for the death of the words "murder" and "murderer" has to do, again, with an unwillingness to make moral judgments, and "murderer" is far more judgmental than "shooter."

Question 5: Would the press note killers' religiosity if they were all Christian?
Imagine for a moment that all the mass murderers at our universities were active Christians. Do you think that the press would at the very least note this? Of course it would, and it would be right to do so.

Yet, to the best of my knowledge, all the recent university mass murderers were secular. Is this worth noting? And if not, why not? Of course, the answer is that few, if any, in the mainstream media would find such a thing worth noting and would likely bristle at its mention. To nearly everyone in the media, the secularism of all the murderers is a non-sequitur. But if they were all active Christians, the same media people would hardly view that fact as insignificant and unrelated.

The fact is that nearly everyone in the mainstream media is secular and therefore cannot imagine associating secularism with anything negative. Secularism is presumed to be all good. But in truth, secularism, a blessing in government, is not a blessing in the lives of most individuals. Now, one can no more blame these college murders on secularism than one could blame Christianity if all the murderers were Christian. But in neither case would it be insignificant.

By Dennis Prager
From Townhall.com

(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Torts and Terrorism

A closed-door caucus of House Democrats last Wednesday took a risky political course. By four to one, they instructed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call President Bush's bluff on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue eavesdropping on suspected foreign terrorists. Rather than passing the bill with a minority of the House's Democratic majority, Pelosi obeyed her caucus and left town for a 12-day recess without renewing the government's eroding intelligence capability.

Pelosi could have exercised leadership prerogatives and called up the FISA bill to pass with unanimous Republican support. Instead, she refused to bring to the floor the bill approved overwhelmingly by the Senate. House Democratic opposition included left-wing members typified by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, but they are but a small faction. The true cause for blocking the bill was the Senate-passed retroactive immunity from lawsuits for private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation's torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party's most important financial base, is more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the phone companies for giving personal information to intelligence agencies without a warrant. Adm. Mike McConnell, the nonpartisan director of national intelligence, says delay in congressional action deters cooperation in detecting terrorism.

Big money is involved. Amanda Carpenter, a Townhall.com columnist, has prepared a spreadsheet showing that 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in the telecommunications suits have contributed $1.5 million to Democratic senators and causes. Of the 29 Democratic senators who voted against the FISA bill last Tuesday, 24 took money from the trial lawyers (as did two absent senators, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). Eric A. Isaacson of San Diego, one of the telecommunications plaintiff's lawyers, contributed to the recent unsuccessful presidential campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the Senate fight against the bill containing immunity.

The bill passed the Senate 68 to 29, with 19 Democrats voting aye. They included Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and three senators who defeated Republican incumbents in the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress: Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jim Webb of Virginia and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Cont.....Townhall.com
By Robert D. Novak

Romney Endorsing McCain

Officials have told The Associated Press Mitt Romney will endorse former rival John McCain.
He will endorse the Republican front-runner on Thursday.

The officials have told spoke on condition of anonymity. Romney will release his 288 delegates and urge them to back McCain.

The former Massachuttsetts governor dropped out of the race last week. It became apparent that toppling McCain would be near impossible.

By LIZ SIDOTI
Frown Townhall.com

Che Obama?

This has been all over the web, however, I wanted to make a point on it.

This volunteer group designed to raise money for Obama in Houston Texas, has a Cuban flag with the face of Che Guevara superimposed on it, hanging in the facilitators office.

Although it is not a representation of an “official” Obama support group, meaning they are not sanctioned, it sure makes you wonder about the type of people that are supporting him.

The facilitator of the volunteer group simply said "I am Cuban." However, it is not just a Cuban flag, it is a Cuban flag with a terrorist on it, what does that have to do with the American political campaign?

Pro-communist indeed, as well as pro socialism, funny how those radical groups are always associated one way or another with the current Democratic party.

The Democratic Party, taking money from Communist and Socialists for over 60 years.

Original Story from Fox Houston

Obama’s War Flip Flop Begins

As Barack Obama shows signs of pulling away with the Democratic nomination, it appears he’s trying to find some wiggle room in his support of a firm withdrawal date from Iraq.

CBS’s Steve Kroft asked Obama in a 60 Minutes interview if he would pull out of Iraq according to a timetable “regardless of the situation? Even if there’s sectarian violence?”

Obama responded, “No, I always reserve as commander in chief the right to assess the situation.”

As a U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate, Obama has called on President Bush again and again to agree to a binding withdrawal date for U.S. troops to leave Iraq.

He even introduced legislation, titled The Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, to remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008.

When Obama introduced his bill, he said on the Senate floor that: “The President must announce to the Iraqi people that within 2 to 4 months, under this plan, U.S. policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in U.S. forces. The President should then work with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates.”

This new position could be the beginning of a new, moderate war strategy designed for the general election. Over the weekend, Obama won primary contests in Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands and Washington State with wide margins over Hillary Clinton.
Right now, Obama only has a small edge over Clinton in delegates. Obama has 1,134 and Clinton has 1,131 according to CBS, but Obama is favored to win other post-Super Tuesday elections.

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will likely face Republican Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), who was once a POW, chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, backed President Bush’s “surge” of troops to Iraq, and opposes a fixed date for withdrawal.

By Amanda Carpenter
From Townhall.com

Rush, Sean, and Laura

With the exit of Gov. Mitt Romney there is no doubt that Sen. John McCain will be the Republican nominee.

The Popular Press is running around in tiny circles, eyes wide, arms waving, mouths agape selling themselves on the theory that McCain's impending nomination will signal the end of the Republican Party.

The Main Stream Media has a vision of the GOP which is that Republicans are a bunch of narrow-minded, widely-condemning, high-handed, low-opinioned, under-educated, over-critical brutes who subscribe to a political orthodoxy which brooks no deviation from a belief set laid down by disciples of Aimee Semple McPherson
Not all. But many.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the others are doing the work of the New York Times and the rest of the popular press by railing against McCain all day, every day.
It appears on the surface that their goal is to make Conservatives stay home next November 4 and hand the White House to Hillary or Barack.

But the reality is they are doing it because it means good ratings. When their listeners get tired of hearing them beat up on McCain, they'll switch to something else.

If they were to ask for my advice (which they most assuredly will not) I would suggest they take on the issue of the Democrats in the Senate holding up - according to the Wall Street Journal - 208 nominees: 180 nominees to executive branch positions and 28 nominees to the Federal bench.

If Rush, Sean, Laura and the rest wanted to really do a favor for America, they would get their tens of millions of listeners amped up about the nominees who are being held up - some for as long as two years - by Senate Democrats who will not allow the President to govern and will not allow the Judicial Branch to function.

But, I digress.

It is not a surprise that Mitt Romney got out of the race yesterday. After spending some $40-50 million of his own money and perhaps $100 million overall, he needed be able to have said more than "I did somewhat better than Mike Huckabee" after Super Tuesday.

Huckabee would never have gotten out of the race as long as Romney stayed in, so Romney found himself in an untenable political corner in which he was boxed in by McCain on his left and Huckabee on his right.

Huckabee will likely stay in at least until next Tuesday (the "Potomac Primary" - Virginia, DC, and Maryland) to see how he fares without having to share the right side of the ballot with either Romney or, as in South Carolina, Fred Thompson. After that Huckabee will get out leaving the field clear for McCain.

I don't have any idea that this has actually happened, but I would be surprised if surrogates for Charlie Black (McCain) and Ed Rollins (Huckabee) haven't been on the phone laying down the ground rules for a discussion about what role Huckabee will have in the campaign and what role his delegates will have at the Republican National Convention.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) yesterday, John McCain showed confidence and courage by standing before the very group which Rush, Sean, Laura and the rest have been attempting to agitate like a washing machine on steroids against him.

Watching the speech on television - first on Fox then on CNN - it appeared those in attendance appreciated McCain showing up, his willingness to openly speak about their differences, and his recitation of his Conservative creds.

It did not hurt that former Sen. George Allen stood with McCain as he was introduced, thus demonstrating that a favorite of core Conservatives - Allen - was pronouncing McCain satisfactory, acceptable, and … OK by him.

John McCain has nearly nine months to consolidate Republican support behind him. He will, with the aid of other Conservatives, do that.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going to be duking it out until at least April and maybe all the way to the Democratic National Convention in August - leaving the nominee only a couple of months to accomplish that feat on the Dem side.

The Talk Show Set should get on board and stop doing the work of the New York & Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek and Time.

By Rich Galen
From Townhall.com