Somebody just grew a set...

After issuing radio and visual warnings to remain clear the USS Mahan fired three warning shots at Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy vessels on high speed approach.  Upon firing of the warning shots the Iranian vessels arrested their high speed approach.

The Mahan was escorting a fleet replenishment oiler the USNS Walter S. Diehl and the Wasp class amphibious assault ship the USS Makin Island.

MSN

Might I say it's about frigging time. 

Iran and Iran and Iran

Photo: Seyyed Shabodin Vajed

Iran’s top leader distanced himself on Monday from the nuclear agreement reached with major powers a year ago, accusing the United States of failing to honor pledges in the accord and citing “the futility of negotiations with the Americans.”

“Today, even the diplomatic officials and those who were present in the negotiations reiterate the fact that the U.S. is breaching its promises, and while speaking softly and sweetly, is busy obstructing and damaging Iran’s economic relations with other countries,” 

His problem? Lack of westerners flocking in droves to invest in his 8th century cesspool.

“He is pressing the West to move more quickly on investing in Iran, so that Iranians feel the deal helping their economy,”  MSN

 

As the English would say: Feck Off!

The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.  Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.  Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange.  The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law.  The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars. Full article @ The WSJ

So, here is the key question and it has nothing to do with the release of the hostages:

31 U.S.C. 1301 was enacted in 1809, this statute is one of the cornerstones of congressional control over the Federal purse. Because money cannot be paid from the Treasury except under an appropriation, and because an appropriation must be derived from an act of Congress, it is for Congress to determine the purposes for which an appropriation may be used. Simply stated, 31 U.S.C. 1301(a) says “that public funds may be used only for the purpose or purposes for which they were appropriated”. It prohibits charging authorized items to the wrong appropriation, and unauthorized items to any appropriation. 

SO WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?

Mr. Kerry and the State and Treasury departments sought the cooperation of the Swiss and Dutch governments. Ultimately, the Obama administration transferred the equivalent of $400 million to their central banks. It was then converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane. 


SO WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?

Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media. 

SO WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?
 
Kerry described today's payment of the 35-year-old miltary purchase fund as a "fair settlement", Iran will receive the balance of USD 400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly USD 1.3 billion compromise on the interest," he said.

SO WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?

I'd say $400 million would be a fair settlement for our embassy in Tehran, for the captivity of 52 Americans for 444 days. 

If it were me you'd get your 400 million one Tomahawk at a time, that would be 252 of them, well, 251.5  keep the change. Honestly I'd like to send you the entire $1.7 billion your asking for.

I hope you like today's musical selection, I dug it out of the archives since the last time we had an American president get sodomized by the Iranians this badly Jimmy Carter was in office.

DEATH TO AMERICA

Photo: AP

YEAH!!! WE HAVE A DEAL!

The photo above was from the Quds Day celebrations in Iran on July 10, 2015... on July 14, 2015 President Obama announced that he had successfully negotiated a deal.  

YEAH!!! RIGHT!!!

I might give him the benefit of the doubt if I wasn't watching videos of the Iranian Parliament chanting Death to America, Death to Israel.

Apologists on the left say not to worry, it's only for their own internal nationalist consumption... to which I reply, Yeah, like Nazism was only for Germany's own intern nationalist consumption.  Remember, Chamberlain walked away with a deal too!

What do you say?

Obama's JV Team & Al’s Used Car Lot

Jersey McJones

A couple, let’s call them Pat and Mel, are having a marital spat over buying a car. Pat really, really wants that car, no matter the cost, but Mel points out they don't need it. Pat heads down to Big Al's Used Car Lot anyway, and the salesmen see an eager buyer who hands them concessions before a deal is even close. They're licking their chops. Their car lot has fallen on hard times, but a few patsies like Pat, and they are back in business!

As Pat is being worked over in the showroom by the salesmen, Mel storms in, marriage license in hand and reminds everyone that the marriage, along with the bank account, is 50/50. Pat may really want that car, but Mel sees it as a bad deal and is prepared to do everything to kibosh it if the terms are no good.

Question: 

Do Mel's actions help the dealership pocket the money for an overpriced lemon that will blow up once it leaves the lot? Or do Mel’s actions increase Pat’s bargaining power by putting the salesmen on notice that he won’t put up with any crap? 

Obama's JV Team at the Persian Bazaar

Of course, we’re really talking about Senator Tom Cotton's open letter to the virulently anti-American Iranian dictatorship. His simple constitutional tutorial has thrown the Democrat establishment into paroxysms of sputtering outrage.

Obama's White House put an Orwellian "Up is down," "War is peace" spin on it, which the stenographers in the press swallowed whole:

The White House has characterized Cotton's primer on America's constitutional form of government as a "rush to war." (AP News)

Obama, noting that some in Iran also want no part of any deal, said "I think it's somewhat ironic that some members of Congress want to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran. It's an unusual coalition." (AP News)

That last quote is particularly galling, since it is President Obama and Secretary Kerry who are enabling the Iranian hardliners.  Cotton is the one putting Iran’s hardliners on notice that if Obama and Kerry come back from the Persian bazaar with nothing more than a pocketful of magic beans, the deal is off.

Harry Reid added his howl to the chorus...

"Republicans don't know how to do anything other than juvenile political attacks against the president," the 75-year-old Reid said with the 37-year-old Cotton listening.

"Let's be very clear: Republicans are undermining our commander-in-chief while empowering the ayatollahs," Reid said.  (AP News)

Nonsense. Obama handing the ayatollahs billions of dollars in exchange for the privilege of sitting down at the table and talking with them is what empowers them. Democrats are dangerous, moreso because the press and their voter base unquestioningly lap up all this Orwellian propaganda. What is it about leftists who rightly excoriate the stinking Saudi Wahhabists, but go all goo goo eyed over the Shia religious terrorists?

Iran's Fascist Regime Defends President Obama:

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif responded via state media, dismissing the letter as a "propaganda ploy" and noting that many international deals are "mere executive agreements." He suggested the senators were undermining not only the prospective deal with Iran but other international agreements as well. (CBS News)

I'm not going to waste valuable Western Hero real estate on fascist propaganda from blustering Iranian pantloads, but suffice it to say the Iranian dictators are ignorant of our constitutional form of government. The US Senate, whether controlled by Harry Reid and the Dems or Mitch McConnell and the Repubs, is not a "political pressure group." It is clear the Iranians are terrified the adults will step in before they can finish shaking down the naifs. 

Senator Cotton's Open Letter to the Iranian Dictators

Here is the text of Senator Cotton’s "provocative" letter that has the leftwing propaganda machine bellowing black smoke as it kicks into full outrage mode:

An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

(Source:  Senator Tom Cotton)

We need less shriveled up Harry Reids, Diane Feinsteins and Nancy Pelosis, and more Tom Cottons.

See Also:
Five Times Democrats Undermined GOP Presidents with Foreign Governments
Treaties v Executive Agreements: When does Congress get a Vote?

Do we have a Middle East Strategy?

“we’re partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.” Barrack Obama - State of the Union

Since 2012, the United States has tried to build a “partnership” against al-Qaeda with President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, training selected Yemeni counterterrorism units and providing close to $1 billion in aid. Mr. Hadi, in turn, has allowed the CIA and Pentagon to use drone strikes to directly target militants deemed to be plotting against the United States. Washington Post

Two days after the State of the Union Address Yemen fell to Iranian sponsored Houthi rebels.

So I ask again, do we have a Middle East strategy?

Here There Be Tygers

I am loathe to praise the president for anything, but amid all his foreign policy fumblings, he may be striking the right posture on Iran. It still doesn't excuse his morally repugnant abandonment of the Iranian uprising, but anyway, Leslie Gelb explains:

Those who can’t wait to start a war with Iran tell us that Tehran is within three seconds, three months, or a year of developing a nuclear weapon. I promise you they don’t know this for anything near a fact.

Now, are these activities something to worry about? Absolutely! But it is not a basis for going to war now or soon. It is a basis for Americans, Israelis, and others to find out more as quickly as possible through better intelligence and diplomacy. Yes, diplomacy, because we can argue forever about exactly what the Iranians have and intend, but making diplomatic proposals allows us to test our hypotheses. If Tehran rejects reasonable proposals, then there are grounds for raising suspicions and waving the war wand. (Leslie Gelb – The Dangers of Warmongering)

With memories still fresh of the Bush Administration’s naïve swallowing whole Achmed Chalabi’s tales of 1001 Iraqi Nights, we should be dubious of any claims made by those who want to bomb Iran now.

Mr. Gelb also cautions against getting involved in Syria, and he provides sound reasoning. We don’t know who the Syrian rebels are; we could be arming and aiding Al Qaeda. What if they win? Will they press on to threaten allies Jordan and Israel? There are too many unknowns and a furious fusillade of unintended consequences await.

Bomb Syria

I respect these worries, but I find myself leaning towards a Libya-like involvement in Syria if for no other reason than to cut off Iranian access to The Levant and the greater Middle East. Without Syria, Iran is isolated, and their proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and other places are isolated as well. It would deal a punishing blow to Iran without firing one shot at them.

Yes, it could unleash other furies, but the involvement of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and small but mighty Qatar could help contain them. One thing that would certainly have to be done would be a guaranteed safe enclave for Christians, Alawites and other minorities. This is key to peeling Alawite support away from Assad. They are literally fighting for their lives, being a small minority that has been oppressing the Sunni majority. The Alawites are an off-shoot from the bigger offshoot, the Twelver Shia. So even among heretics, they are heretics.

Regardless of how you come down on these issues, Leslie Gelb has some sage advice concerning warmongering “experts”:

Americans need protection from these snake-oil salesmen, and that protection depends almost entirely on Congress and the media. They have got to be much tougher with the experts, pin them down on what they know and don't know and what facts their views are based on. They've got to demand real answers, and not let the experts escape with slogans like “lead” and “take action,” or “that will all work out.”

Beware those beating wardrums who have never been to war -- Kurt Silverfiddle

David Warren - Iran Won't Go Away

Dude, Where's My Drone?

Our babe in the woods president is really playing hardball with the Iranians, who managed to get their grimy mitts on one of our high tech drones.  His statement:

"Let me be clear.  Bla bla bla..."

The Iranian response demonstrates that The Wages of Appeasement is humiliation...

On Tuesday, with Putin-like contempt, Iran demanded that Obama apologize instead. “Obama begs Iran to give him back his toy plane,” reveled the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

How did Iran get our drone?

I don't believe an America-hating mole in the CIA did this, as some of the more conspiratorial-minded have suggested.  It is possible that Iran Hijacked Our Drone, as a chest-thumping Iranian is now claiming.  They are not backwards people and they have help from China and Russia.

Add in our complacency (remember learning that Al Qaeda in Iraq had tapped into our unencrypted Predator drone feeds?), and it is a real possibility.  We are just about stupid enough to fly such advanced technology naked, believing no one is smart enough to take our toys away from us.  I don't know anything about our drone programs, but what the Iranian in the CS Monitor said sounds feasible if the aircraft's networks were not encrypted or if we failed to equip it with safeguards against GPS meaconing.

When will we start punishing complacency and incompetence?

Will anyone in our government or congress investigate this?  Does anyone get fired anymore?  General McChrystal is the only person I can recall getting fired for anything, and that was because he was stupid enough to invite a Rolling Stone reporter in on his staff's bull sessions where they trash talked the president (who the general voted for).

Another Plausible Scenario...

There could be a simpler, low tech answer.  A perfidious Pastun in the Afghan Army or some other group who is ostensibly "on our side" more than likely recovered the craft inside Afghanistan and trucked it over to Iran.

The CIA’s RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone captured by the Iranians last week may have gone down in Afghanistan and then transported to Iran by friendly forces on the ground, a former officer in the elite Quds Force branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards told The Daily Caller. [...]

However, photographs and video footage released by the Iranians on Dec. 8, several days after they announced the drone’s capture, clearly show that both wings had been neatly severed and then reattached.

“This suggests that the drone landed safely and that its wings were cut off so it could be transported by truck,” the former Quds Force officer said. “I believe it was captured by the Taliban inside Afghanistan and transferred to the Iranians, who then reattached the wings,” he added. (Daily Caller)

I don't know what happened, but that seems the most likely scenario. We have no friends over there. The Afghan soldiers we train end up shooting at our soldiers, and the billions in cash we lavish on that hopeless land is split between Karzai's gang of bandits and the Taliban...

Truth be known, neither the Karzai regime, nor the Taliban warlords, want the Americans out of Afghanistan. The treasure we pour into that country sustains the ruling cabal and the Taliban alike. We are the straight man at the bazaar, the stranger fleeced by the locals. (Fouad Ajami)

We are suckers.  We're being played for fools.  We are throwing our technological pearls before swine, and we are shedding American blood for people who hate us. Obama needs to wrap up Afghanistan in the same manner he did Iraq.  We'll take our drones away and let them get back to shooting down kites.

 
What do you think?

UPDATE:  Here's a story from Aviation Week with lots of technical details:  Iran UAV Will Not Expose Latest Technology

I Wracked and I Ran

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I make exceptions for the Middle East and the Muslim world, which gave us this definition of byzantine:

byzantine (from thefreedictionary.com)
a. Of, relating to, or characterized by intrigue; scheming or devious; b. Highly complicated; intricate and involved

That could also apply to our government, but they are not as smart as the Middle Eastern schemers, and we are broke...

Great powers gradually being shunted off the world stage have increasing difficulties getting their way: Itsy-bitsy colonial policing operations in dusty ramshackle outposts drag on for years and putter out to no obvious conclusion.  (Mark Steyn)

We've blown more that half a trillion dollars in South Asia trying to spackle over a 7th century crack in the modern-day global time-space continuum, with nothing to show for it.  We've shed our blood for people who hate us.  Liberals are outraged; conservatives should be.

The last thing we need is one more bloody foray into the bazaar

The Islamic world spawns lies wrapped in conspiracies that are encased in enigmas. And when they want to drag the west into it, they wrap it in photos of doe-eyed starving children and tie it up with sympathetic bows of womens rights and ribbons of religious tolerance and human rights. A horror-filled package wrapped in shiny paper and dime store baubles to appeal to naive western sentiments.  And happily peddled by American warmongers who have never been to war.

Put more bluntly, Ahmad Chalabi suckered us into Iraq, and this latest "Iranian plot" is more of the same.  For what purpose, I don't know.  All I do know is the whole thing stinks, and right now we'd be foolish to believe anything coming out about this.

If Frank Gaffney and Bill Kristol and other chicken-hawk dime store heroes want to attack Iran over this, they can raise their own damned army and go do it themselves.

The Zeta angle is more troubling

We have a far more serious situation brewing to our south, and we keep it going by participating in the criminal gangs' fundraisers, buying all they can send us and snorting it up our noses.  We jail gang members, where they make important business connections and alliances, and then spring them so they can head south to spread the latest American criminal techniques across Central America.

Which border is more important?  The one between Afghanistan and Pakistan?  Or our own Mexican border.  Which region is more important?  South Asia, or North America?

See also:
Andrew Napolitano - Government-generated Plots
Punching Holes in the Iran Plot

The Roots of Evil: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

It’s not often I agree with citizen of the world Thomas Friedman.  He’s the NY Times staff pseudo intellectual who writes glowingly of his admiration for the Chinese Poliburo.  In a rare spasm of lucidity, he nailed the Pakistan situation:

“Looking for Bin Laden became a side-business for Pakistan’s military to generate U.S. aid.  As the Al Qaeda expert Lawrence Wright observed in The New Yorker this week: Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service “were in the looking-for-Bin-Laden business, and if they found him they’d be out of business.” (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

Whatever we're looking for, a rotten pseudo-ally is willing to pretend to provide it

Iran:  Good People - Bad Government

Iran has a stranglehold on Lebanon via proxy Hezbollah.  It tentacles stretch from Afghanistan to Iraq and even to Venezuela and Argentina.  If Iran had a people’s revolution that brought true parliamentary democracy to the country (Iranians are more capable of democratic success than any other country in the region), that would put a stop to funding these global terrorists.  A newly-democratic Iran would have too many pressing issues at home for it to mess with funding terrorists, and no legitimate government wants to cultivate trouble with other nations, especially via such direct violence.

Why was Obama silent as the Iranian protesters were being slaughtered by the Revolutionary Guard?  Is it because they didn’t have Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda membership cards?  I pray to God we are clandestinely helping the free people of Iran topple their rotten regime.

Saudi Arabia:  America's Most Shameful Alliance

We protect them in exchange for oil, and the Saudis maintain a pact with the Wahabbis.  Out of this dynamic metastasized militant Islam that has infected the globe:

During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent some $75 billion for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques, and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. ...  (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

We sought out and cultivated a relationship with Pakistan.  This is the grain of truth that spurs conspiracy nuts to claim the CIA trained Bin Laden.   The Pakistan bargain resembles our Saudi one;  We pay them to marginally cooperate with our goals in Afghanistan (first against the Soviet Union, now against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces), and they pretend to comply.  Meanwhile the Pakistani army rules the roost, papering it all over with a sham democracy.  And they’re a member of the Nuts with Nukes club.

What both countries need is shock therapy. For Pakistan, that would mean America converting the lion’s share of its military aid to K-12 education programs, while also reducing the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan. Together, the message would be that we’re ready to help Pakistan fight its real enemies and ours — ignorance, illiteracy, corrupt elites and religious obscurantism. 

Ditto Saudi Arabia. We are in a ménage à trois with the al-Sauds and the Wahhabis. We provide the al-Sauds security, and they provide us oil. The Wahhabis provide the al-Sauds with legitimacy and the al-Sauds provide them with money (from us). It works really well for the al-Sauds, but not too well for us.  (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

All three countries are full of good people, but our relationship with them is dysfunctional.  We are the bogey monsters of America-hating Mullahs, and our every action is twisted into a sinister threat to Islam.    

Unintended Consequences

I heard an older caller to a talk show say his father called WW II “The war to make the world safe for communism,” and there’s some cynical truth to that.  When confronted with the dual threat of communism, and fascism, Churchill made the smart choice to leave fighting the Bolshies until after we had defeated the fascists.  It took us another 45 years after the first victory to achieve the second.

We made a deal with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan.  Did we defeat Communism only to make Southwest Asia safe for Wahabbism?