Arafat's successor: Palestinian state will replace Israel

No Path to Peace Right Now. The Gaza pullout, if successful, will be under fire (as Gaza is today) and will be seen as a huge defeat of the Israelis by the Arabs. See here in the World Tribune.

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, December 22, 2004

The new leader of the ruling Fatah movement said the Palestinians want to replace Israel with a state of their own.

Fatah chief Farouk Khaddoumi said the Palestinian strategy toward Israel was two-fold. In the first stage, he said, the Palestinians would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In the second stage, the Palestinians would seek to eliminate the Jewish state.

In November, Khaddoumi replaced the late Yasser Arafat as leader of Fatah, Middle East Newsline reported.

"At this stage there will be two states," Khaddoumi told Iran's Al Aram television last week. "Many years from now, there will be only one."

Khaddoumi, who regards himself as Palestinian foreign minister, said he was confident that Israel would be eliminated. He said he always opposed Israel's existence and cited the Arab numerical superiority over the Jewish state.
"[There are] 300 million Arabs, while Israel has only the sea behind it," Khaddoumi said.

Khaddoumi said his platform was endorsed by the PLO in 1974. He said the strategy called for a phased plan that would establish authority over any territory obtained from Israel, concluding with an Arab war to destroy the Jewish state.

Online Learning

An interesting idea for learning the violin online, Violin Master Class.

QOTD: Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America (2002)

Whatever index one looks at, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom, whether in terms of military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, lack of human rights, health, longevity, of literacy... Muslims also lag when one looks at the Nobel Prize winners, Olympic medalists, or any other easily gauged international standard. There is a pervasive sense of debilitation... As a Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem put it, "Before we were masters of the world and now we are not even masters of our own mosques."

Professor Paul Eidelberg

This assessment appears to be confirmed by the Syrian army magazine, Jaysh a-Sha’b (The People’s Army), which, on April 25, 1967, published an article referring to Islam as one of the "mummies in the museums of history."[See Bernard Lewis, Islam in History, 2d ed., p. 5] And yet, this mummy, if intellectually dead, is otherwise alive. Sectarian strife, violence, insurrection, and terrorism erupt repeatedly throughout the Islamic world. This turbulence is described in a study of some fifty countries in which Muslims reside; and it matters not whether these Muslims constitute an overwhelming majority or only a tiny minority. The study was published in 1983 by Dr. Pipes.[Daniel Pipes, In the Path of God: Islam and Power, ch. 9] It makes no difference whether the Muslims are Sunni or Shi’ite Muslims, Arabs or non-Arabs, or even whether they are "fundamentalists," "traditionalists," "reformists," or "secularists"--the story is the same.

I do not cite the above authorities to denigrate Islam, but to heighten awareness of the enormous obstacles confronting the United States and more so Israel in their confrontation with what is misleadingly called "militant Islam--misleading because Islam has been militant since its very inception, as can readily be documented.

The Self-Incrimination of a Leader

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

On March 31, 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin was Israel's Prime Minister and Shimon Peres held the post of Foreign Minister, an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post entitled "The Enemy Within." I quote the last four paragraphs, which began as follows:

'When I told the Knesset this week, "This government is against everything that is Jewish," several leftists were riled. But for me, the Jewish cause transcends everything. Israel is the Jewish state; Jerusalem is Jewish, and exclusively Jewish; Hebron is forever Jewish.

'Anyone who aided Arafat in the Lebanon war is anti-Jewish. [...this alluding to Shimon Peres...] Those on whose head lies the blood of the 134 Israeli citizens murdered since the Oslo Agreement are anti-Jewish. And those for whom Jericho is the "tomb of Rahab the harlot" (as Shulamit Aloni put it) and the Cave of the Patriarchs "the burial place of an Arab sheik" are against everything Jewish.

'Anyone planning to hand over Beit El and Shiloh is against Jews and Judaism. Those who gave official status to non-Jews on the Temple Mount are anti-Jewish. Whoever proposes granting Israeli funds to the PLO -- whose leaders transfer the money to their own bank accounts or use it for anti-Israel purposes, including incitement of Israel's Arab citizens -- is anti-Jewish.

'Anyone emotionally closer to the PLO assassins than to the settlers in Hebron, who warmly shake hands steeped in Jewish blood but turns in disgust from shaking a Jewish hand holding a prayer book in the Machpela Cave is against everything Jewish. Inciters against Jews, indifferent to their blood being spilled, are anti-Jewish.'

The letter concludes: "Ergo Mr. [Yossi] Sarid and his friends are anti-Jewish, and I am a Jew."

The author of this letter is none other than Israel’s current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon!

Calling Rabbi Wise

Rabbi Avi Shafran names the people partially responsible for FDR ignoring Jewish requests for help during the Holocaust.

On October 6, 1943, more than 400 American rabbis made an unprecedented appearance at the White House, in the hope that they might help convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help rescue Jewish refugees during the final months of what, it had become clear, was the attempted annihilation of European Jews by the Nazis and their friends. Immigration of European Jews was at a trickle, and even permitted quotas were not being filled.

The march was the brainchild of Jewish activist Peter Bergson, the adopted name of Hillel Kook, the nephew of Rabbi Avrohom Yitzchok Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine (Bergson died in Israel in 2001). The marchers had been recruited, though, largely through the Va'ad HaHatzalah, an Orthodox group headed by European-born Torah scholars, the sort of people who, in normal circumstances, would never involve themselves in public affairs, and certainly not in any that might seem aggressive. But circumstances were anything but normal, and so the men -- who included rabbinic figures like Rabbi Eliezer Silver and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, as well as an array of Hassidic rebbes of the time, followed their religious consciences.

The "Rabbis' March" raised hackles, however, among some American Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Congress; and some legislators, like Representative Sol Bloom of New York, the chairman of the House International Affairs Committee. Early on, he reportedly tried to dissuade the march's organizers by telling them it would be undignified for a group of such un-American-looking people to appear in Washington, a comment that only served to nearly double the number of participants.

Arriving first at the Capitol, the rabbis were met by Vice President Henry Wallace, who, Time magazine reported, "squirmed through a diplomatically minimum answer" to their plea.

From there, the rabbis went to the Lincoln Memorial, where they offered prayers for the welfare of the President, America's soldiers and the Jews of Europe. After singing the national anthem, they proceeded to the White House where they hoped a small delegation from among them would be received by President Roosevelt himself.

They were destined for disappointment. Presidential secretary, Marvin McIntyre informed them that the President was unavailable "because of the pressure of other business."

According to the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, the President's schedule was, in fact, "remarkably open that afternoon." His daily calendar "listed nothing in between a 1:00 lunch with the Secretary of State and a 4:00 departure for a ceremony at an airfield outside Washington." The reason Mr. Roosevelt declined to meet any of the rabbis, the Wyman Institute's research revealed, was because his speechwriter and adviser Samuel Rosenman (a prominent member of the American Jewish Committee) and Dr. Stephen Wise (president of the American Jewish Congress, and the leading Reform rabbi of the time) had urged him to avoid the group. Mr. Rosenman, according to a presidential aide, characterized the marchers as "a group of rabbis who just recently left the darkest period of the medieval world"; Dr. Wise derided the "orthodox rabbinical parade" as offensive to "the dignity of [the Jewish] people." President Roosevelt left the White House through a rear door.

Democrats on Abortion

BOTW has a great take on the Democrats' problem with the abortion issue.

The Dems' Abortion Trap
Newsweek reports the Democrats are getting some political advice from an unlikely source:

The week after Thanksgiving, dozens of Democratic Party loyalists gathered at AFL-CIO headquarters for a closed-door confab on the election. John Kerry dropped by to thank members of the liberal 527 coalition America Votes. When Ellen Malcolm, president of the pro-choice political network EMILY's List, asked about the future direction of the party, Kerry tackled one of the Democrats' core tenets: abortion rights. He told the group they needed new ways to make people understand they didn't like abortion. Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party, he said. "There was a gasp in the room," says Nancy Keenan, the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

This scene nicely encapsulates the Democrats' problem with abortion. The suggestion that Dems "don't like abortion" is met with "a gasp in the room." Does anyone "like" abortion? Does it even make sense to talk about it in gustatory terms? ("I like skiing, fine wine and, oh yes, abortion." "The only thing I hate more than broccoli is abortion.")

Kerry's choice of words shows that he himself is unclear on the concept. The Democrats' problem is not that they "like" abortion, but that many of them are (or at least seem) morally indifferent toward it. To them the argument is only about "a woman's right to choose"; all moral claims on the other side of the ledger are null and void, at least in terms of public policy.

The Democrats' problem here is not that they need to make their views clearer; it is their views, as expressed by Nancy Keenan's gasp, which are too extreme for most Americans.

The Israeli Conquest of Israel

The Israeli Conquest of Israel
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Why is Ariel Sharon committed to an Arab Palestinian state? Most people will say Sharon regards Palestinian statehood as inevitable and as the only road to peace.

If so, why is Sharon advertising Arafat’s probable successor, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who climbed to power on the corpses of Jews and who has not forsaken terrorism—why, I ask, is this murderer being flaunted as a “moderate”? Was not Arafat himself portrayed as a “moderate” before Oslo? In other words, why is Sharon replaying Oslo? What is there about Oslo that, despite its consequences—10,000 Jewish casualties—attracts Israelis to that demonstrable disaster?

To answer this question we must understand the hidden objective of Oslo’s principal architect, Shimon Peres.

No doubt it would be deemed outrageous to say that Peres is committed to a Palestinian state as a means of destroying the Jewish state. So let us be moderate and merely say that Peres wants to transform Israel into “a state of its citizens,” and that a necessary step in this direction is the establishment of a Palestinian state. But to transform Israel into a “state of its citizens” cannot but lead to the evaporation of Judaism in the Land of Israel. Hence, objectively speaking, Shimon Peres is indeed committed to Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state! That was Oslo’s ulterior purpose.

True, Oslo has been advertised as a means of preserving Israel as a Jewish state. Peres and the Left would have us believe that Israel cannot incorporate Judea and Samaria, with its two million Arab inhabitants, without losing its Jewish and democratic character. And so the 230,000 Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria must leave. That’s what the “security fence” means.

To condition Jews to the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria, the Jews must first leave—must be expelled from—Gaza. Thus, when Sharon speaks of “disengagement,” this means not only disengagement from territory or from Arabs but also from Judaism. Consider only Judea and Samaria—which is not to minimize the significance of Gaza.

As I have elsewhere written, Judea and Samaria are engraved in the Jewish people’s collective memory. The teachings of their prophets and sages are intimately linked to this heartland of the Jewish people—which includes eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. So long as Jews remain in Judea and Samaria, Jews in Israel will remain bonded to Judaism. Hence this bond has to be severed: Judaism has to be eviscerated and the Jewish soul deconstructed. This was the hidden purpose of Oslo’s architects.

As Yoram Hazony points out in The Jewish State: “In some crucial way, the Oslo agreement had signaled the end of the [anti-Zionist] mission, a turn of events that the celebrated author David Grossman described—mimicking the language of the accords, which called for an Israel military redeployment—as a ‘redeployment from [and shrinkage of] entire regions of our soul.’”

Consistent therewith, the Rabin-Peres Government of 1992-1995 all but eliminated Jewish content from the public school curriculum. Its goal was to dejudaize Israel, the only way the secular Left could preserve its political power vis-à-vis the religious community, whose birthrate dooms the Left to political oblivion.

That the Left could enlist Ariel Sharon in support of its goal of emasculating Judaism by a Palestinian state is easy to explain: Sharon is nothing but a Machiavellian whose lust for power underlines his 30-year record of political maneuverings and reversals. Sharon will even enlist the religious parties to serve his Machiavellian objective—the more readily since the leaders of these parties are clerical politicians, people who use the Torah not as an end in itself but as means or instrument of politics.

Notice how Sharon is so anxious to share prime ministerial power with Peres—which he did after the February 2001 election, when he gave Peres a veto power in the security cabinet when dealing with Palestinian issues. He knows very well that Peres is first and foremost an Israeli, not a Jew. Recall Peres’ interview with Ha’aretz following his defeat by Benjamin Netanyahu in the May 1996 prime ministerial election:

Interviewer: What happened in these elections?
Peres: We lost.
Interviewer: Who is we?
Peres: We, that is the Israelis.
Interviewer: And who won?
Peres: All those who do not have an Israeli mentality.
Interviewer: And who are they?
Peres: The Jews.

Sharon, too, is an Israeli. And no one should be deceived about where he is taking the Jews. The Israeli conquest of Israel is on the agenda.

A week in a Middle East Utopia

Caroline Glick describes the exact situtation I predict after a Gaza withdrawal. There will be no one there to fight the terrorists who will work on increasing the lethality of their weapons and the frequency of their attacks. If Egypt is given charge of Gaza and Israel finds it necessary to go into Gaza to clean it out, what will Israel do if Egypt says "no"?

In an opinion column in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, [Abraham] Sofaer, who as legal adviser to the State Department during the Reagan administration arguably did more than anyone to prevent international law from being used as a whip to prevent nations from fighting international terrorism, argued that Sharon's withdrawal plan is the only option. Sofaer allows that 'the Palestinians are far from ready to negotiate.' The advantage of Sharon's plan therefore, is that it gets Israel out of an 'untenable' position in Gaza. Sofaer compares the withdrawal from Gaza to Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, arguing, 'Today, the Lebanese-Israeli border is more secure than during occupation.'

This is the sort of sophistry that friends of Israel like Sofaer would almost certainly never have entertained before Sharon adopted the plan. The fact of the matter is that today, Hizbullah forces in south Lebanon constitute a strategic threat to Israel. Just this week the army reported that Hizbullah is developing unconventional weapons. Last week the IDF deployed a battery of Patriot missiles to Haifa to prevent Hizbullah drones, which can be armed with chemical and biological weapons, from infiltrating Israel ? again. Hizbullah's transformation from a tactical challenge to a strategic threat has advanced unfettered over the past four years because the IDF left Lebanon and stopped fighting Hizbullah. The fact that since the withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanon no soldiers have been killed in Lebanon is a tautology, not proof that the move was wise. Aside from that, the IDF also reported this week that the majority of Palestinian terror cells in Judea and Samaria that executed successful terror attacks in 2004 has been affiliated with Hizbullah. And so we disengaged from them in Lebanon only to fight them in Israel.

This week St.-Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky was killed in Gaza as he led forces in uncovering a tunnel for transferring terrorists into Israel. How exactly will Israel be able to prevent such tunnels from becoming operational once IDF forces have left the area? Will Egyptian or British forces fight Palestinian terrorists for us? Sofaer writes that "Israel's security would be threatened if Gaza is taken over by terrorists." Well, who else does he think will take it over when, in order to shore up domestic support, the likes of Abbas and Qurei and Shaath feel it necessary to bed down with the likes of Ahmed Jibril and Assad? What do Sofaer or any of Israel's other staunch supporters think Egypt, with fresh diplomatic ties with Teheran and new legitimacy in Israel because of Azzam's release, will do against these people when Mubarak's chief government-sponsored cleric Sheikh Tantawi this week extolled the legitimacy of the Sunni terrorists fighting Iraqi and coalition forces in Iraq?


The fact of the matter is that by fighting Palestinian terrorists on the ground in Gaza and along the Egyptian border and by controlling the air, land and sea entry points to Gaza, Israel is not in an untenable position. It is in a difficult position. But there can be no doubt that the threat won't go away if we turn our backs to it and call it untenable. As in Lebanon, it will grow all the more dangerous.

NYT: Iran and the Bomb

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/politics/12nuke.html?oref=login&oref=login

...a senior European official related a conversation in which
Iranians deeply involved in the talks warned that any military action would
be futile.

The official said the Iranians boasted that "they can rebuild the facilities
in six months," using indigenous technology.

...The Iranians remember Osirak, the site of a lightning Israeli airstrike
against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 that set back Saddam Hussein's
nuclear ambitions by a decade. American and European intelligence officials
say Iran has taken the lesson to heart, spreading its nuclear facilities
around the country, burying some underground and putting others in the
middle of crowded urban areas.

For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency last year found
centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, behind a false wall at the
Kalaye Electric Company in a densely populated corner of Tehran, where there
would be no way to conduct a military strike without causing major civilian
casualties. "They are not about to make the same mistake Saddam did," a
senior administration official said.

Israpundit: In Damascus, they voted for George W. Bush

Israpundit has an interesting article from the Lebanese Daily Star about how many in the Arab world wanted Bush elected President. They perceive him as religious and strong-willed and admire those qualities.

While the results of this year's American election may have liberal Democrats and much of the extended international community shaking their heads in disbelief, a surprising number of Arabs seem to have not only expected President George W. Bush's return to power but also supported it.

QOTD: Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett, CEO OF Berkshire Hathaway, in the company's 2002 annual report, as quoted in CIO Magazine.

Three suggestions for investors:

First, beware of companies displaying weak accounting. When managements take the low road in aspects that are visible, it is likely they are following a similar path behind the scenes.

Second, if you can't understand a footnote or other managerial explanation, it's usually because the CEO doesn't want you to.

Finally, be suspicious of companies that trumpet earnings projections.

The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles

Gaby Wenig in The Jewish Journal reveals the abject failure of condoning intermarriage. [Emphasis mine]

At Temple Beth Hillel, Mark Singer teaches his third-grade Hebrew school class about Chanukah using all the usual props: he lights a menorah, spins a dreidel and throws a doughnut and latke party.

However, considering that anywhere from 25 to 100 percent of his students come from mixed marriages, one thing he does not emphasize too strongly is that the real message of the Maccabean victory is a staunchly anti-assimilationist one. Instead, Singer adamantly informs his class that Chanukah celebrations should not be blended with celebrations of that other holiday of the same season.

Rabbi Singer cannot even tell his own students about the true meaning of Hanukah, lest to hold up a mirror to their parents decisions.

QOTD: Dennis Prager

QOTD:Dennis Prager

...liberal positions are far more emotion-based than reason-based.

To cite but one of many examples, take the widely held liberal slogan 'War is not the answer.' It is pure irrationality. War has ended more evil than anything the left has ever thought of. In the last 60 years alone, it ended Nazism and the Holocaust; it saved half of Korea from genocide; it kept Israel from national extinction and a second Holocaust; it saved Finland from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian state; and according to most of the people who put 'War is not the answer' stickers on their bumpers, it saved Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing.

Iran and the bomb 2

Overall, I would guess that Israel will not pre-emptively attack Iran over the bomb. From a strategic point of view, it is necessary.
I'm not sure how it can be accomplished tactically.

Key points:
1. Israel faces an existential threat from a nuclear Iran.
2. Former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani has said,

"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession [i.e., nuclear weapons], the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

3. A nuclear Iran could blackmail the West into abandoning Israel. In fact, it could prevent any retribution against it for backing terrorism.
4. The Iranian parliament has already called on Iranians to volunteer for suicide squads against the US and Israel.
5. The Islamic world has shown that the MAD [mutually assured destruction] strategy no longer applies.

During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, this same Iranian regime sent thousands of its own schoolchildren - each armed only with a small plastic "key to heaven" - to their deaths in human waves across minefields to clear a path for its adult troops. These schoolchildren were members of the Basij militia, known for its religious zealotry and direct allegiance to the supreme Ayatollah.

Three weeks ago, at a peak of U.S. and European pressure on Iran to modify its nuclear program, Iran's leadership gathered tens of thousands of young Basij militia members together south of Teheran to chant "No to Compromise," "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." The spirit of the human wave attacks is still strong.

If Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, this regime that instills hatred in and readily sacrifices its own children, that is so fundamentally hostile to the United States, seems unlikely to hesitate to bring death to the children of America through a nuclear attack on the "Great Satan."

6. Iran learned the lessons from the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi Osirak nuclear plant. (By the way, it was named Tammuz 17. Look that up to see the significance of that day.) Iran's nuclear facilities are alleged to be spread among 100 or more locations. Except by invasion and regime change, how can you take out that many sites from so far away? How deep are these facilities buried? If 20 or 30 feet, you can use bunker busters. What happens if they are 100 or 200 feet underground? They would be very expensive to build, but with Irans petro-cash and commitment, who knows?
7. Iran has also built many of these facilities below residential
neighborhoods for protection.
8. Iran still sees America as the great enemy and plans for its destruction.

Iran's hard-line fundamentalist regime continues to blatantly threaten the United States, which it routinely refers to as "the Great Satan."

In May, on the first day of its new session, Iran's parliament broke into chants of "Death to America." At Iran's annual military parade in September, a long-range missile had draped over it a banner proclaiming, "We will crush America under our feet."

Three different sets of Iranian diplomats at the United Nations have been thrown out of the U.S. in just the last two years for suspiciously photographing infrastructure and transportation sites in New York City. Meanwhile, Iran is working on the Shihab 5 missile, which would be capable of hitting the continental United States.

This radical Iranian regime has a history of following through on its threats to attack the United States. This same regime held 52 US diplomats hostage from late 1979 to early 1981. It was also behind the 1983 suicide bombing by its Hizballah proxies of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 American servicemen.

9. What kind of non-nuclear WMD attack would Israel face in retaliation? It could certainly be launched by Hizbullah or the PLO or another proxy.
10. Over which Islamic countries would Israel fly to Iran for an attack? None will give permission. Israel didn't have it before but did not have to do any in-flight refueling either.
11. See here on Israel's preparations and here.
12. Without regime change (which only the US can probably accomplish), how long until Iran rebuilds this capability again?

QOTD: Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill in The River War (1899):

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science . . . the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

HillaryCare Chickens Come Home to Roost in Tennessee

The WSJ reports real-world experiences with HillaryCare in Tennessee. Yikes, look out below. As always, this type of program always ignores supply-demand, how people's behavior adapts to anything given away free, etc.

We think it was Justice Brandeis who said the states should be laboratories for reform. Regarding health care, Tennessee tried a decade ago and the price is now coming due. Hillary Rodham Clinton should call her pollster if she plans on carrying the state in 2008.

In 1994, Tennessee passed what was then a very hot New Democrat idea -- call it government managed care -- a version of the reform the former first lady was also pitching nationwide. TennCare promised the impossible dream of politicians everywhere: Lower health-care costs while covering more of the 'uninsured.' They got the impossible, all right. After 10 years of mismanagement and lawsuits, TennCare now eats up one-third of the state's entire budget and is growing fast. Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, is preparing to pull the plug and return the state to the less lunatic subsidies of Medicaid.

The TennCare concept was for the state to operate like an HMO, providing health insurance to those who needed it and paying the premiums for those who couldn't afford it. The idea was even sold as a cost savings because it would provide 'managed care' (volume discounts, preventative care, etc.). TennCare opened enrollment to hundreds of thousands of people who did not qualify for Medicaid, even to some six-figure earners. Costs quickly exploded, and despite attempts to tighten eligibility rules the program still covers 1.3 million of the state's 5.8 million people.

The skyrocketing costs led previous Governor Don Sundquist, the Republican who had inherited the program, to try to impose a state income tax. His efforts failed, fortunately, but in 2002 Mr. Bredesen was elected promising to cut TennCare's costs.

That, too, has been impossible. Left-wing legal activists have sued the state with impunity to underwrite the cost of nearly unlimited care. A Nashville non-profit called the Tennessee Justice Center has hamstrung reforms for years by suing to enforce a series of consent decrees, some of which predate TennCare.

Prescription drug costs alone increased 23% last year, as there are effectively no limits on the number or types of drugs the system will pay for. If a doctor prescribes aspirin, TennCare pays for it. Ditto for antacids for heartburn and other over-the-counter products. If TennCare denies a claim for a drug or any other type of care, an appeal can be filed for next to nothing. Fighting each appeal costs the state as much as $1,600 in legal fees. With 10,000 appeals filed every month, it's often easier and cheaper to pay a claim, regardless of the merits.

TennCare is now in worse shape than it was a decade ago. Three of the 11 privately run Managed Care Organizations that insured TennCare patients and administered the program have fallen into receivership. Amid the legal wrangling, Blue Cross Blue Shield all but pulled out of the program. Today the state has assumed all the insurance risk and pays most of the premiums.

Mr. Bredesen has proposed numerous reforms to reduce costs by limiting care, and the legislature overwhelmingly endorsed them earlier this year. But they sit in limbo while the Governor negotiates with the Tennessee Justice Center to end its lawsuits. With the talks at an impasse, Mr. Bredesen has instructed state officials to start thinking about dismantling TennCare. "It makes no sense for one facet of our responsibilities -- health care -- to be able to come to the table first and eat and drink all it wants, and then if there is anything left over, we then can consider our other responsibilities," he told the Tennessee School Board Association recently.

Good for Mr. Bredesen for recognizing that the entitlement mentality inevitably leads to fiscal perdition. Has he told Mrs. Clinton, not to mention certain Republicans in Washington?

Iran, the bomb, and all that...

A revealing, excellent post by life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness on Irans pursuit of the bomb. It will come to a head soon. Either Iran will get the bomb (most likely) or there will be regime change facilitated by the US.

"one significant purpose"...And that is, to make plutonium. The quotation is from James Schlesinger, ex-you-name-it, but, as the Russians might say, he knows his onions. In Dr. S's case, he knows nuclear weapons and what it takes to develop them. The context is the fatally-flawed deal that our Euro buds have just gotten with the mad mullahs in one of the founding partners of the Axis of Evil.

The agreement with Iran has this fatal flaw: it prohibits uranium enrichment, but is silent on the manufacture of plutonium. From today's New York Times, a story with the shockingly accurate (for the Times) headline, "Iranians Retain Plutonium Plan in Nuclear Deal":

European diplomats said the issue of suspending Iran's plutonium program, while long discussed with Tehran, was set aside during recent negotiations as a concession to getting the more limited suspension deal. The uranium issue was seen as more pressing, they said, while plutonium production is years away and can be addressed in the future.

But American experts expressed doubts about the European approach, suggesting it had addressed only half the atomic threat. Their main concern is a site at Arak, where Iranian construction crews are starting work on a 40-megawatt heavy water reactor that will make plutonium.

"This is an obvious omission," James R. Schlesinger, a former energy secretary and secretary of defense, said in an interview. "A heavy water reactor of 40 megawatts is likely to have one significant purpose - the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons."

The American experts are, of course, right. Gary Milhollin, an anti-nuke stalwart, notes that “If you look around the world at heavy water reactors of this size, virtually all of them have been used to make bombs…[the agreement] doesn’t make sense. You’re cutting off one path to the bomb but leaving another open.”

Such an agreement may please the Axis of Weasels, i.e. our Euro buds, and the monkey-men of the International Atomic Energy Agency (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil of proliferators), but they don’t get the job done. That job is to ensure that Islamist maniacs such as those who now rule Iran never get their paws on nuclear weapons. Agreements with the mad mullahs simply are not kept by them, nor would any but a fool think they would be. From the Times, even the Times which usually presents free Western democracies and the Iranian thugocracy as being on the same moral plane, notes that

Last year, France, Germany and Britain struck a similar nuclear freeze with Iran, which also omitted the Arak reactor. That agreement fell apart in June after the Iranians decided to resume work on their centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

It should be clear that the only thing that will work with Iran is regime change. The alternative is to keep on making paper agreements that are shredded by the mullahs moments after the ink is dry. Sooner or later, this will lead to Iran having nuclear weapons, which would then be used on Israel – unless Israel pre-emptively strikes first.

No sane person wants to see either TelAviv or Tehran go up in a mushroom cloud. Better regime change, even one that costs thousands of Iranian lives and perhaps Americans as well, than a nuclear exchange that costs hundreds of thousands of lives. Who knows, if we do this one right, we might even get the Iranians to take charge of their own nation and not need to use military force.

U.S. told of Iranian effort to create nuclear warhead

The Washington Times carries an unsurprising article on Iranian efforts to produce a nuclear warhead. My bet is that neither the US nor the EU will do anything about it that has any teeth.

Recent intelligence shows Iran has been working to produce a missile re-entry vehicle containing a small nuclear warhead for its Shahab missiles and has encountered problems developing a reliable centrifuge system for uranium enrichment, U.S. officials said.
The officials, who discussed the intelligence on the condition of anonymity, said Iran's new nuclear warhead program includes what specialists call the basic 'physics package' for fitting a nuclear bomb inside the nose cone of a missile.