From Little Green Footballs – as usual, bang on the nail:

An astoundingly bone-headed statement from Barack Obama today, as he calls for the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

Memo to the Obama campaign: Russia has veto power in the United Nations Security Council.

Oops!

 Front Page Magazine reports:

Uighur Islamic separatists killed eight people during a rash of suicide bombings on August 9, in the latest in a series of brazen terrorist attacks inside the communist police state. Terrorists targeted a dozen government offices with home-made explosives, just one day after the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening to attack public transportation during the Games.

Earlier in the week, two Muslims drove a truck into a group of paramilitary police in Xinjiang province, then attacked the officers with knives, throwing explosives into their barracks. Sixteen officers died in the brazen attack. A local Communist Party official reported the two attackers had prepared written statements that declared, “they had to wage ‘holy war.’”

To most Western observers, the very existence of Chinese Muslims comes as a surprise. However,as previously reported in FrontPage, followers of Islam (mostly Sunnis) make up an estimated 1%-2% of China’s population – approximately 30 million people.

The Hui people, numbering around 20 million, practice Islamic dietary laws and other customs, but very rarely engage in jihadist violence. However, the nation’s 8.5 million Uighurs present a challenge to Chinese authorities. Located near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders, the north-west province of Xinjiang is home to these Turkic Muslims, whose language is closer to Turkish than Chinese, and whose women often wear buhrkas. Many of the area’s tens of thousands of mosques have been financed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Uighurs have never accepted Communist rule. The cycle of sporadic unrest and subsequent crackdowns by Chinese authorities has persisted for decades … 

For the most part, Western media – using the struggles of Tibet as their touchstone – frame the attacks during the Beijing Olympics as part of “a local ethnic conflict” between the Uighurs and China’s culturally and ethnically distinct Han majority.

However, Dr Walid Phares, the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, charges both parties with denial: “As under the Russians in Chechnya it looks like the Communists in China are battling another form of totalitarianism to come: Jihadism.”

One of those conflicts – like the Iran-Iraq war or the Soviet-Afghan war – which has no side worth cheering for.   

 Obama will never be ready to be president. He is not the man for the job. 

Power Line shares and substantiates this opinion:

McCain has strongly and unequivocally come out in support of our ally Georgia, while placing the onus for the war squarely where it belongs, on Russia. In this, he has aligned himself with our most loyal European allies. Obama, on the other hand, issued the sort of vapid statement that would ingratiate him with the State Department while not requiring any distraction from his Hawaii vacation. An interesting point, by the way: McCain is supposed to be the old guy, but Obama is the one who needs a vacation.

Here is the latest from the McCain campaign:

This afternoon I spoke, for the second time since the crisis began, with Georgian President Saakashvili. It is clear the situation is dire. Russian aggression against Georgia continues, with attacks occurring far beyond the Georgian region of South Ossetia. As casualties continue to mount, the international community must do all it can to avert further escalations. Tensions and hostilities between Georgians and Ossetians are in no way justification for Russian troops crossing an internationally recognized border. I again call on the Government of Russia to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its forces from the territory of Georgia.

Given this threat to Euro-Atlantic security, I am pleased to see the United States, the European Union, and NATO acting together by sending a delegation to the region, in an effort to broker a cease fire. This is an important first step.

The United Nations has been prevented from taking any meaningful action by Russian objections. In view of this, I welcome the statements of democratic nations defending the sovereignty of Georgia and condemning Russian actions.

I strongly support the declaration issued by the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their commitment that ‘aggression against a small country in Europe will not be passed over in silence or with meaningless statements equating the victims with the victimizers.’

 

I doubt that the Europeans were thinking of Obama when they wrote this, but who knows? Maybe they had seen this "meaningless statement equating the victims with the victimizers" from the Obama campaign:

It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other.

McCain’s statement continues:

I share their regret that NATO’s decision to withhold from Georgia a Membership Action Plan may have been viewed as a green light for aggression in the region. As they propose, a new international peacekeeping force should be created, in light of – as they observe – the ‘obvious bankruptcy of Russian "peacekeeping operations" in its immediate neighborhood.’ In addition, Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb, the Chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has said there can be no return to the status quo in South Ossetia and that Russia cannot serve as a mediator in the South Ossetian conflict. Each of these leaders represents a country that has undergone what Georgia is now experiencing.

That last is a key point, but one that is no doubt lost on Obama and his advisers. It is often said that Obama is not ready to be President, but I don’t think this is exactly right. It seems pretty obvious that Obama, given his temperament, his self-regard, his blithe ignorance of history and of the material conditions of life on this planet, will never be ready to be President. He is not unready: he is unsuited for, and inadequate to, the office.

Western interference in Yugoslavia in order to ‘protect’ Kosovo was always a bad idea.

It was unjustified in that no Western interests were involved; it was bad as a precedent;  bad in its immediate results, spreading war throughout the region; and it continues to be bad in its longer-term effects.

This is from an article in the Telegraph today:

Two key events well beyond Georgia’s borders have triggered Russia’s fury. The first was Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February and the new country’s subsequent recognition by many Western states. This brought a public warning from Moscow that Kosovo’s move to independence could set a precedent for Georgia’s two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The second was Nato’s pledge at the Bucharest summit in April that membership of the Atlantic Alliance for both Georgia and Ukraine was not a matter of "if" but "when", although in deference to Russian objections, no timetable for entry was granted. This provoked Vladimir Putin, then still Russia’s president, to promise more support for Georgia’s breakaway regions.

Now Russia has invaded Georgia. Russia is at fault, as John McCain made instantly clear. Barack Obama put out a statement implying moral equivalence between the invading Great Power and the small independency.

 John Hawkins rightly stresses (in Townhall) that Obama –

has never served in the military, in the House, or as a governor. He has never run a business, was just elected to the Senate in 2004, and has had exactly one hard-fought political victory in his entire career (against Hillary Clinton). So, who would be more qualified to be President: Obama or, let’s say, a guy who served a couple of tours in the military, got out, started his own successful small business, and has served a couple of terms on his local city council? I have few doubts that the city councilman would be far more in touch with the real world and more competent to lead the country than someone who was so haughty and dare I say, messianic that he proclaimed,

 

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

 

This guy has never run a business, run a state, or served in the military, but he’s going to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet? There are people locked away in rubber rooms, drooling on the floor and talking to tiny pink elves, who are less delusional than Obama.

……And that is ultimately the problem with having a President who combines limited experience with towering arrogance. Putting Barack Obama in charge of the United States would be like making a cocky high school class President the new CEO of Wal-Mart. Not only would he not know what to do, he wouldn’t know what not to do, or even that he doesn’t know the difference.

 David Limbaugh writes of Obama in Townhall:

On defense and foreign policy, he very well might dismantle our nuclear weapons in this increasingly nuclear age and would abandon missile defense programs. He would precipitously withdraw our troops from Iraq, thereby jeopardizing its stability and our victory there and inviting the very terrorist enemy he says he would hunt down to reenter and thrive again. He would adopt policies concerning Afghanistan wholly inconsistent with everything he claims to stand for – and against – in Iraq. He would greatly increase our role there and disincentivize participation of our allies in flagrant contradiction to his criticisms of President Bush’s "unilateralism" in Iraq. But he would not add enough troops to simulate Gen. Petraeus’ successful surge strategy in Iraq – only enough to risk entangling us in a Sovietlike quagmire that Democrats claim to oppose, except when they are in control of the executive branch. And he would transform stingy America into a safety net for the entire world with his Global Poverty Act.

But as we all know, she isn’t.

This from Power Line:

Opponents of energy development like to claim that it is hopeless to drill for oil, since it would take so long to get it flowing. Barack Obama, for example, recently claimed that if Congress lifts the offshore drilling ban, it will take seven years to get any oil. Obama supported this assertion by misrepresenting a report by the Energy Information Administration. If you read this post, you already know how the Left is misusing that report.

Today the Institute for Energy Research followed up with more information about misuse of that report. I want to focus on this point:

EIA’s analysis assumes that leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Yet, off the coast of California, some of these resources have already been leased. A report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratoria were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium.

There are other areas, too, where pumping could begin in months, not years. Obviously full exploitation of our energy resources will take longer. But that is an argument for starting quickly, not an argument for delay. And we can at least begin to get relief from high energy costs quite rapidly.

 In a Front Page article here, the author argues that in a world of nuclear proliferation it is necessary for the US to maintain its nuclear capability.  But is the US doing so? 

The 63rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima is a time to think realistically about this. 

Like it or not, the truth is that we cannot rid the world of nuclear arms. But we can eliminate ours. And the dirty little secret is that we are well on the way to doing just that – unbeknownst to most Americans who would rightly be appalled at the prospect.

Thanks to 16 years of inattention, purposeful neglect and willful unilateral disarmament measures under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States’ nuclear arsenal is steadily obsolescing, becoming evermore problematic to maintain and increasingly losing its deterrent credibility. We alone among nuclear powers – declared and undeclared – are going out of the business by failing properly to preserve, let alone modernize, our aging stockpile.

The 63rd anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima should serve as an opportunity for urgent stock-taking. We can persist in the pretense that our inexorable, solo denuclearization is of no strategic consequence by pretending to rid the world of all nuclear arms.

Or we can recognize reality: A world without effective, safe, reliable and credible U.S. nuclear weapons will not be one in which there will be no more Hiroshimas. It will, instead, be one in which others can continue to inflict such destruction on us. And the contribution our deterrent has made to world peace – to say nothing of the security and freedom of this country and its allies (including post-war Japan) – will be no more.

The self-abasement of the British authorities before the Arabs is now complete and utterly contemptible. It’s hard to say whether they are more stupid in their shortsightedness as to the consequences of such caving-in,  or more wicked in possibly working deliberately to bring about the demise of their nation and all that it used to stand for.  

The Saudis, in their customary immoral fashion, used bribery to gain commercial advantage. It was a clear breach of British law. But the highest court in Britain has let them off.  

Read Melanie Phillips here on how the Law Lords have sacrificed the highest principles of British law to sheer expediency. 

The following is from a report and commentary you can read here.

 Iraqi Terrorist and former leader of the fanatic Mehdi army, Ahmed Al-Fartoosi, responsible for the deaths of dozens of British soldiers is suing the British Ministry of Defence —why?? – because someone left pornography near a toilet that Al-Fartoosi used.

How ironic that a man who apparently had no problems with killing dozens if not more people should scream like a baby over his "virgin" eyes looking at nude pictures is cause for a lawsuit.  But then again – did anyone force open Ahmeds eyes and make him look at the porn?? Obviously not. Thus if he looked at it – he did so voluntarily. Nevertheless, the mere presence of the likely magazine is enough for this brave muslim to put his hand out to receive compensation for his "discomfort".

The other "egregious" offences committed against Fartoosi for which he wants the British taxpayers to provide free legal aid so that he can in essence…………sue the British taxpayers are:

HEARING porn videos being played on a soldier’s laptop;

 

BUMPING his arm and thigh when being put in an armoured vehicle; and

 

LOSING sleep in his cell due to noise and lights from a corridor.

No formal complaints were ever logged regarding the above incidents leading one to surmise that the above "horrific events" were not upsetting UNTIL Fartoosi and Attorney Phil Shiner met.  Far too often, a dhimmi lawyer, such as Phil Shiner, is waiting in the wings and ready to dip his hands into the British taxpayers pockets so that, in this instance, he can also self-righteously pretend to protest a war that he says he disagrees with and also manage to greatly enrich his bank account in the process. (Shiner has a past history of profiting off of legal aid money to defend Iraqi insurgents.)

Thus Fartoosi, via Shiner, is suing for false imprisonment and violations of new European human rights laws. Many feel that the EU human rights laws encourage terrorists to come to Britain. The EU human rights laws are consistently far more favorable to terrorists, murderers and rapists then to the victim so much so that a prominent British newspaper has started a movement to end the travesty that has been brought by these laws:

"The whole concept of “human rights” in Britain has become a travesty under which the interests of killers, rapists and paedophiles are placed above those of their victims."