IRAN - GOING CRITICAL

Posted at 8:58 a.m. ET

Reports on Iran's nuclear program are increasingly disturbing.  Now we might have to say "alarming."  Con Coughlin, who follows rogue states and terror dancers for London's Telegraph, reports:

Fresh evidence has emerged that suggests Iran has renewed work on developing nuclear weapons, according to Western security sources.

Nuclear experts responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear programme have discovered that enough enriched uranium, which if processed to weapons grade level could be used to make up to six atom bombs, has disappeared from the main production facility at Isfahan.

American spy satellites have identified a number of suspicious sites, which the Iranians have not declared to nuclear inspectors, that intelligence officials believe are being used for covert research.

Isn't Isfahan subject to inspection?

The Isfahan complex, which enriches raw uranium "yellow cake" into material that can be used for either nuclear power or atomic weapons, is supposed to be subject to close supervision by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But the Iranians only allow IAEA inspectors access to the final stage of the production process, where the uranium in gas form - UF6 - is stored.

By conducting a careful study of the amount of material stored at Isfahan, and the amount of "yellow cake" known to have been processed at the plant, nuclear experts believe between 50-60 tons of uranium - which if enriched to weapons grade level would be sufficient to produce five or six atom bombs - has gone missing from the plant.

And...

IAEA officials believe the Iranians have deliberately removed the uranium at a stage in the production process that is not under their supervision. "The inspectors only have limited access at Isfahan, and it looks as though Iranian officials have removed significant quantities of UF6 at a stage in the process that is not being monitored," said a nuclear official. "If Iran's nuclear intentions are peaceful, then why are they doing this?"

Maybe it's just cultural.  Maybe we don't understand because of BUSH!  That's it.

The Iranians will be asked to give a full account of the missing enriched uranium when the IAEA's board of governors meets in Vienna later this month to discuss the continuing crisis over Iran's nuclear enrichment programme.

And I'm sure they'll get a full, prompt and friendly answer.

This is serious stuff.  Washington doesn't seem to have the zeal about confronting Iran that it once did, thanks largely to the destroy-all-zeal stewardship of Condi Rice at the State Department, and the life-is-too-hard mentality at Defense. 

Iran is forging ahead, with nothing to stop it.  A new president may confront nuclear weapons in the hands of a theocracy that may actually mean what it preaches.

Note the concern of the Plain-pursuing mainstream media.

September 12, 2008.      Permalink           

CHANGE WE CAN'T BELIEVE IN

Posted at 8:25 a.m. ET

Gerard Baker, of The Times of London, one of our favorite British reporters. dissects the Obama mantra of change, and finds it doesn't quite hold up, for more than a minute or so.  If the polls are any guide, more and more Americans are coming to the same conclusion:

Travelling in Britain this week, I've been asked repeatedly by close followers of US politics if it can really be true that Barack Obama might not win. Thoughtful people cannot get their head around the idea that Mr Obama, exciting new pilot of change, supported by Joseph Biden, experienced navigator of the swamplands of Washington politics, could possibly be defeated.

They look upon John McCain and Sarah Palin and see something out of hag-ridden history: the wizened old warrior, obsessed with finding enemies in every corner of the globe, marching in lockstep with the crackpot, mooseburger-chomping mother from the wilds of Alaska, rifle in one hand, Bible in the other, smiting caribou and conventional science as she goes.

They get this stuff from the BBC, another Atlantic institution that our intellectual establishment reveres. 

Two patronising explanations are adduced to explain why Americans are going wrong. The first is racism. I've dealt with this before and it has acquired no more merit...

...In a similarly condescending account, those foolish saps are being conned into voting for Mr McCain because they like his running-mate. Her hockey-mom charm and storybook career appeals to their worst instincts. The race is boiling down to a beauty contest in which a former beauty queen is stealing the show. Believe this if it helps you come to terms with the possibility of a Democratic defeat. But there really are better explanations.

But, Gerard, those are the explanations that make the intellectual classes feel comfy.

One is a simple political-cultural one. This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism.

McCain believes in the first.  Obama believes in the mush of the second.

You can argue the merits of each case. But let me try to explain to my fellow non-Americans why Mr Obama's problems go well beyond that.

And he does.

The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between the Barack Obama of the candidate's speeches, and the Barack Obama who has actually been in politics for the past decade or so.

Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the need to change the culture of American political life

Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a brilliantly cogent and measured book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways of the ruling party.

That's a point the McCain people should start driving home.

Speechmaker Obama talks about an era of bipartisanship, He speaks powerfully about the destructive politics of red and blue states.

Politician Obama has toed his party's line more reliably than almost any other Democrat in US politics. He has a near-perfect record of voting with his side. He has the most solidly left-wing voting history in the Senate.

And more...

Speechmaker Obama talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the “culture wars” in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion.

Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator. In the Illinois legislature he refused to join Democrats and Republicans in supporting a Bill that would require doctors to provide medical care for babies who survived abortions.

The record is coming into focus.

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

And a wonderful conclusion.  This is why we like Gerard Baker:

It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps.

It will still be a tough fight, and the Europeans may ultimately get their way and see a President Obama.  But we McCain backers may have the last laugh as the European coffee-house crowd starts to realize that Obama doesn't care about Europe, and never even visited when he chaired a Senate subcommittee dealing with European affairs.  What will they say when President Obama refuses to stand up to the new Soviets, and Europeans suddenly realize they're in danger?

Maybe they'll say, "This McCain, is he still available?  We'll take the girl too."

September 12, 2008.