Iran’s major missile exercise in November, during an earlier saber rattling
episode, from Iranian state television.
** GIULIANI SOUNDS LIKE CANDIDATE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, WITH CAVEATS. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ventured to New Hampshire today and addressed a state Republican conference in Manchester, where he was well, though hardly ecstatically, received. He sounded more like a candidate, saying America must fight Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, touting his record of keeping taxes down in New York. But he set no timetable for a candidacy, saying: “The timetable is when is the right time, when do I have the confidence and the sense of organization.”
Giuliani reminded the crowd of his much-praised role on and after 9/11. “When I say we have to bring peace and security — I saw that happen in New York and I made it happen.” He also cautioned the crowd that the military effort in Iraq — he has endorsed the Bush surge strategy there, but has not championed it — may well fail.
** BLAIR AND MCCAIN UPBEAT ON GREENHOUSE ACTION IN DAVOS. As the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland drew to a close today, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Senator John McCain were upbeat on the prospects for greater action against global climate change. “I admit it’s very late,” said McCain, a frontrunning Republican presidential candidate. “I think the U.S. Congress will act soon on this issue and I think the administration will also.”
For his part, Blair said he sensed that attitudes in America are in the midst of “a quantum shift,” saying the world seems “on the verge of a breakthrough” on climate change.
Blair praised California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had been slated to give a major address before his doctor forebade extensive air travel while his leg, injured last month in a skiing mishap, heals. Said Blair: “Many individual American states -notably California, with whose Governor I signed a bilateral agreement on this subject last year – are setting targets for reducing emissions and taking far-reaching action to achieve them. American businesses – including many of their major power companies – have become advocates of a binding cap and trade system.
“The German G8 Presidency gives us an opportunity to agree at least the principles of a new binding international agreement to come into effect when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012; but one which is more radical than Kyoto and more comprehensive, one which this time, includes all the major countries of the world. It is a prize of tantalising significance and I think it is possible.”
** HILLARY IN IOWA. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first trip to Iowa in three years, drew over 1500 people and 150 media to a town hall meeting in an overflow high school gymnasium in Des Moines. She anticipated a tough campaign in next year’s general election for president. “When you are attacked, you have to deck your opponent,” Clinton said. “I have been through the political wars longer than some of you have been alive. We’ve got to be prepared to hold our ground and fight back.”
Despite criticism from many on the left, Clinton made no apologies for her vote to authorize the Iraq War. “There are no do-overs in life,” she said. She criticized the information offered by the administration of President George W. Bush to justify the invasion.
Speaking of the overall Terror War, which she says Bush is thoroughly botching, Clinton struck a very somber note. “I do think we are engaged in a war against heartless, ruthless enemies,” she said. “If they could come after us again tomorrow they would do so.”
** SABERS RATTLE. While American sabers rattle, with a second aircraft carrier underway to the region and new presidential authority to kill Iranian agents in Iraq, Iranian sabers have continued their rattling, with the second major missile exercise in three months.
Meanwhile, two politicians who may have a fair amount of saber rattling in their futures, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani, venture into somewhat unfamiliar territory.
Senator Clinton will be in Iowa this weekend, for the first time in three years. Although the national Democatic frontrunner, she currently trails John Edwards by a substantial margin in polling for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, and is also well behind Barack Obama.
Former New York Mayor Giuliani heads to New Hampshire for the second time in three months. He’s running a little behind John McCain there. The trip is important because there are still quite a few people who don’t think he’ll really run, although he has just sold the investment portion of his portfolio of companies. (Another reason he may have sold it is it was reportedly not a big moneymaker.) The Washington insiders’ Hotline rates him only third among Republican contenders, despite the fact that he actually leads in many polls, behind McCain and Mitt Romney. But he has hired some major staff of late, and is coming to California next month to keynote the California Republican Party Convention in Sacramento.
Now back from the moves of leading potential future saber rattlers in the White House to the drama of the moment. With American politics dominated by the crisis in Iraq, and the Middle East in general, attention is beginning to turn to the US face-off with Iran.
Noted military blogger Bill Roggio thinks that the Iranian leadership is feeling the hit from economic, diplomatic, and military moves. Pressure on the Iranian regime, he says, may be paying off, as this report notes.
Meanwhile, Iran is figuring in the dramatic crisis in Lebanon.
In Beirut, where the government of Lebanon is under tremendous pressure from Hezbollah, a co-founder and former leader of Hezbollah said that the organization is now an arm of Iranian intelligence, that its current leader takes direction from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s goal, in this view, is to “destroy Iraq and Lebanon.”
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But I don’t work for Biden in any event…
And remember, political rhetoric isn’t reality of leadership and dealing with the “inside baseball” of this business.
Actually, CADTS, having done it myself, I recall several of your errors being pointed out. If you choose not to acknowledge that, that’s fine.
Bill, you pointed out your opinion — you didn’t answer the essential question or address the central issue.
So, in fact, you haven’t other than to say I was wrong…and you left it at that.
Not exactly stunning evidence of my mistakes…
Actually, that would be .. No. And I found this tedious a couple of days ago.
Your posts are full of errors and miss-assessments of some serious issues and an “I know it all” hubris…you do not what a discussion… look at the words and tone of your first entry. There is nothing realist in your assertions A realist and someone serious when addressing FP and security concerns would show an understanding of the many crosscuts in the region, would not be dismissive of regional and religious concerns, would paint a far more subtle picture of the new Middle East reality post Saddam/Iraq…that’s because a serious approach involves factoring in transnational issues, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, globalization, environmental and social issues and most importantly anti- Americanism not only in the Middle East but now spreading across Europe and Great Britain.
If you (and Senator Biden who you say holds this simplistic assessment of Iran) what to really understand Iran…trying seeing what Iran sees all around them…They see Iraq exploding on one side, Afghan drug runners on another side (the drug runners have killed some 3,000 Iranian police and troops in recent years) their borders being infiltrated on yet another side and the Americans running around everywhere who they perceive as launching a war on the Muslim world post 9/11. There are even serious Israeli experts that believe that Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons is defensive, not offensive and that there real concern right now is not Israel but securing and positioning themselves in the Middle East via their Arab neighbors …..lets surmise for a moment that that is true ….then the next logical question to follow is how to respond to them ? I am presenting this not for more discussion but to show you the process of understaning the Middle East is highly nuanced.
You are very bright CADTS but your methodology is off …beware of the lens you look through …especially when looking at the Middle East…..trust me on that, I was trained by the best…He trained me that it is all in the “looking”
and from your post you have not really looked or have stopped looking at the Middle east …that what happens when you think you know it all..
Hemlock – you have a very funny idea of a “binding cap”.
I know a couple closed industrial facilities I can reopen as new companies, get a brand new allocation under your “binding cap”, and sell it off. Who cares that I don’t actually produce anything. My emissions will be very, very low.
I could do this as a rent-seeker, or I could be connected to a company that would very much like these emissions credits.
Either way, so much for “binding”.
Regulators virtually always assume they’re smarter than the people they seek to regulate. When there’s money at stake, some very smart people will spend as much time as they need figuring out how to game the system. It took utility executives a matter of hours to figure out how to turn huge profits, with corresponding losses in affiliated companies being wiped out by bankruptcy, from California’s utility “deregulation” scheme.
But hey, if you want to make the word “binding” mean simply “full employment act for lawyers”, and pat yourself on the back for cutting emissions without them actually decreasing, have at it.
Barbara:
You are continuing to use a Western construct on a Middle Eastern country.
1.) Iraq, “blowing up”, has been perpetuated by the Iranians in an effort to keep the situation destabilized until the Shia can seize control — your statement makes no sense.
2.) The Iranians celebrated the attacks of 9-11. The “American attacks” on the Muslim world are a direct response to that attack.
3.) I have yet to find one “serious” Israeli experts who believes that Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons is defensive — for your “teachers” who think that way, they are either incredibly naive or live in a fantasy world.
I get the “nuances” of the Middle East. Indeed, if you remember, I posted the PRIMARY reason for the failure in Iraq was our nation’s inability to recognize the tribal nature of the country. In fact, Saddam’s hold on power was based a great deal on paying off tribal leaders rather than just shooting them in the head.
And, I know full well that Iran’s blustering is generally for internal consumption — but you cannot tell me the Iran is not making every effort possible to export terrorism and fanatical Islam to the rest of the world in order to gain power.
Your academic exercise in diplomacy is just that, an academic exercise. It has no basis in reality nor has it EVER proven to work. And, with all due respect, the Imams aren’t as a subtle in their decision-making as you would make it out to be.
Frankly, while you see my view as simplistic, it is, as I said, the “realpolitik” of the region.
Also, I am far from dimissive of regional and religious concerns. From fights over natural resources (like say, water) to continued issues as managing thousands of years of tribal concerns versus the governance of an entire nation, these issues are always there.
With that, I am done with this discussion because little of what you are saying is based on anything real. From the Afghan drug running to your allegations that “Americans are running around everywhere who they perceive as launching a war against Muslims”, is overly simplistic liberal/academic rhetoric.
Its hard to have a discussion in that kind of forum.
CADTS there is a wonderful Hebrew word for this moment, obviously I can’t type it in Hebrew …but the word sounds like MUSSPEAK! …it means ENOUGH! really, enough already