ROME - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to target its weapons against Europe
Putin does have a point, he is definitely more like our Democrats and they must be busting with pride.
In the meantime, President Bush will address the missle defense system that Putin refers to, at the G8 summit.
Under the missile defense plan, the United States would put a sophisticated radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. Bush insists the system is aimed to defend the United States - not Europe - against attacks from rogue states such as Iran. But experts question whether the still-in-development missile defense system can ever work technically, and note that Iran has no missile capable of reaching the United States and is unlikely to develop one before 2015 at the earliest.
Putin sides with Iran, as usual and as our own Democratic party sides with almost every other dictator and tyrant that hates America.
Iran has also come out with yet another statement that makes his intentions very clear.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map," has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat
"With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech.
"By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said. He did not elaborate.
He does not need to eleaborate because it is well known that Iran will, if not stopped, have nuclear capabilities within 2 to 3 years and he has already stated his first intention is to wipe Israel off the map, then attack America.
LONDON (Reuters) - Iran is at least two to three years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon, a leading global think-tank said on Wednesday.
But the International Institute for Strategic Studies said pressure on the United States to stop the programme, including possibly through military strikes, would increase this year as Tehran mastered the process of enriching uranium.
In other political news, Pat Buchanan gives us his opinion on why the Democrats caved to Bush in the emergency supplemental:
Yet, today, there are more U.S. troops in Iraq than when the Democrats won. More are on the way. And with the surge and retention of troops in Iraq beyond normal tours, there should be a record number of U.S. troops in country by year's end.
Why did the Democrats capitulate?
Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they fear the consequences if they put their antiwar beliefs into practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue.
Democrats are an intimidated party. The reasons are historical. They were shredded by Nixon and Joe McCarthy for FDR's surrenders to Stalin at Tehran and Yalta, for losing China to Mao's hordes, for the "no-win war" in Korea, for being "soft on communism."
The best and the brightest — JFK's New Frontiersmen — were held responsible for plunging us into Vietnam and proving incapable of winning the war. A Democratic Congress cut off aid to Saigon in 1975, ceding Southeast Asia to Hanoi and bringing on the genocide of Pol Pot.
Democrats know they are distrusted on national security. They fear that if they defund this war and bring on a Saigon ending in the Green Zone, it will be a generation before they are trusted with national power. And power is what the party is all about.
[...]
With such volatility in this crucial region of the world, with such uncertainty, it is easy to see why Democrats prefer to be the "dummy" at the bridge table and let Bush play the hand.
The congressional Democrats are cynical, but they are not stupid. If the surge works and U.S. troops are being withdrawn by fall 2008, they do not want it said of them that they "cut and ran" when the going got tough, that they played Chamberlain to Bush's Churchill.
And if the war is going badly in 2008, they know that the American people, in repudiating the party of Bush and Cheney, have no other choice than the party of Hillary and Pelosi and Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record).
That is why congressional Democrats are surely saying privately of the angry antiwar left what has often been said by the Beltway Republican elite of the right: "Don't worry about them. They have nowhere else to go
And that is why the antiwar left was thrown under the bus.
Last but not least in this bag of treats, authorities are finally heading to an indictment of William Jefferson, D-La, remember the guy that was caught with $90,000 in cash hidden in his freezer?
Jefferson has been the subject of a ongoing probe in which FBI agents allegedly found more than $90,000 in cash in his freezer in August 2005.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that the Justice Department is expected to unveil the charges later today.
This was the latest development in the 16-month international investigation of Jefferson, who allegedly accepted $100,000 from a telecommunications businessman, $90,000 of which was later recovered from a freezer in the congressman's Louisiana home.
Last year prosecutors and the FBI seized nearly 19,000 pages of documents and electronic files from his office.
Jefferson's attorney argued before a federal judge last month that the seizure was unconstitutional because, while FBI agents looked for documents related to a criminal bribery investigation, they also examined many other records related to Jefferson's work as a legislator, in violation of the constitutional principle that the executive branch may not use its law enforcement powers to infringe on the independence of the legislative branch.
The bulk of the Jefferson investigation has essentially been on hold since last summer because of the legal fight.
Before I could even hit publish it appears, according to the AP, that the jury has indicted Jefferson:
on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money-laundering in a long-running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.
The indictment handed up in federal court in Alexandria., Va., Monday is 94 pages long and lists 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 235 years, according to a Justice Department official who has seen the document.
Among the charges listed in the indictment, said the official, are racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.
Jefferson is accused of soliciting bribes for himself and his family, and also for bribing a Nigerian official.
Nice little bag of treats to start the day off with.
(NOTE: I will be traveling for business again on Weds and Thursday this week, so blogging will be slow, although there will be a few posts from my contributors.)
More to come shortly...
[Update] Stop the ACLU is also discussing the Jefferson indictment.
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