The Times of Israel, "Feinstein defends Obama over UN settlement vote": Obama's Final Poke in the Eye

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In a Times of Israel article entitled "Feinstein defends Obama over UN settlement vote," Senator Dianne Feinstein is quoted as stating:

"I’ve watched with growing concern the increase in Israeli settlements over the years, where approximately 400,0000 individuals now live. I believe the expansion of settlements has but one goal: to undermine the viability of a two-state solution."

Below are my published comments in response to this article and those of someone who answered me:

JG:
Feinstein: "I’ve watched with growing concern the increase in Israeli settlements over the years, where approximately 400,0000 individuals now live." Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat: Israeli settlements have been built on only some 1.1% of the West Bank.

A pity Feinstein is not more concerned with the Hamas covenant, which calls for the murder of all Jews, or Fatah calls for a Palestine "from the river to the sea."


LS · London:
So does building settlements make Israel more or less secure? I dont follow the logic. Will settlements prevent violence or merely forment more ? It certainlhy hasnt made israel more secure or respected in the international community. This What-about-ery rarely seems to address the question. On the only basis it can be determined by men (the legal&equitable one ). Israel will always have the protection of her friends ..... that doesnt mean she will enjoy their support when she breaks international law. I doubt there wil be any serious consequences on Israel as a result of this UNSC statement. It wont prevent her building more settlements - successive governments in Israel have proven committed to settlement buiding. It does however send a message (however laced with Irony that is the US- of all states - that ultimately helped deliver it ).

No state should be above the rule of law. None.


JG:
Sorry, but Israel will never be secure or respected by the "international community." Query for you, Lekan: Where does the "international community" stand regarding the occupation of all of Tibet by China? And what has the "international community" done regarding the atrocities committed by Russia and Iran against civilians in Syria? In fact, the "international community" has done nothing. After all, it's so much more fun to condemn Israel.

And what does the "international community" have to say about "honor killings" against women in the Muslim Middle East, including the West Bank and Gaza? And what does the "international community" tell us about the murders of gays throughout the Muslim Middle East? Again, the "international community" does not care.

By the way, Lekan, are you aware that when Israeli Prime Minister Olmert offered Palestinian Authority President Abbas an independent state along the 1967 lines with agreed land swaps and Palestinian control of east Jerusalem, Abbas refused? Do you know that several years earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Barak similarly offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and tear down 63 Israeli settlements? In exchange for the settlements that would remain part of Israel, Barak said he would increase the size of Gaza by a third. Barak also agreed to Palestinian control of much of East Jerusalem, which would become Palestine's capital, and Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Arafat, however, also refused.

"So does building settlements make Israel more or less secure?" I favor a two-state solution, i.e. a solution to the conflict that provides for two states accepting one another's right to live in peace. But there can also be no denying that after Israel left Gaza, some 12,000 missiles have been fired at Israeli kibbutzim, towns and cities. How do these missiles, in your opinion, accord with so-called "international law"? Will Israel be "safer" if missiles are also fired from the West Bank at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem?


LS · London:
Jeffrey Grossman simple question bro - theres alot of what-about-ery here. which as i said in my first post - is beside the point and extraneous to the specific matter in hand. the ills and wrongs of the other side do not legitmise the ills and wrongs of 'our side'

With regard to my knowledge of the history of the differnt negotiations and summits , viz camp david, tabtha, and others (plus the law/resolutions and conventions that should underpin them) the answer is yes, I am aware. I am also aware that Barak was not offering a solution based on the accepted 1967 constraints/borders (despite protestations of some to the contrary). I'm also aware that other offers to stop settlement buildings we tied to conditions and blueprints that werent acceptable to the palestinian people - mainly the lack of a contiguous state untinerrupted by Israeli occupied lands. On top of which the simple principle that the offer of cessation of illegal activity (by a sovereign state) is being used as a bargaining chip - is hardly a legitmate or respectable tactic. The state sponsored illegal activity should stop if we are law abiding nations.
So it isnt quite as straight forward as implying that successive israeli leaders have magnanimously offered to the palestinians (that which is theirs by law incidentally ) and the palestinians have just been unreasonable. That not an accuate or believable version of events from our side. You answer the question of security with a question about the law of missles, which doesnt speak as to whether the evidence supports the implied thesis that settlements make Israel more secure - they clearly do not.

I want Israel and Palestine to be secure in their respective states; but we cant have it all our own way. We cant do provocative acts and expect/demand security any more than the palestinian authorities or Hamas and Hezbollah can expect peace for the firing of rockets.


JG:
"I'm also aware that other offers to stop settlement buildings we tied to conditions and blueprints that werent acceptable to the palestinian people - mainly the lack of a contiguous state untinerrupted by Israeli occupied lands." Sorry, Lekan, but when Arafat and Abbas respectively declined the offers of Barak and Olmert, the issue of a contiguous Palestinian state was never raised. Again, this is because the settlements, built on only 1.1 percent of the West Bank as per Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, do not stand in the way of a contiguous Palestinian state.

Moreover, Erekat has accepted the principle of land swaps to deal with the issue of Israeli settlements.

Like you, "I want Israel and Palestine to be secure in their respective states," but there is also that small matter of the Hamas Charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews, and repeated Fatah demands for a Palestine "from the river to the sea" without the presence of a single Jew.

Thomas Friedman, "Putin’s Syrian Misadventure": Obama Was Putin's Travel Agent

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No one is more responsible for the rise of the Islamic State than President Obama.

Hungry to justify his Nobel Peace Prize by reaching a legacy-creating nuclear agreement, albeit unsigned, with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Obama watched from the sidelines as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an Iranian vassal, used chemical weapons against his own citizens. Moreover, in his willy-nilly pursuit of détente with Iran, Obama disregarded America's longstanding alliance with Sunni Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a bitter proxy war with Shiite Iran throughout the Muslim Middle East. And although Obama was in no way responsible for George W. Bush's disastrous Second Gulf War which destroyed the Sunni-Shiite equilibrium in the Muslim Middle East by eliminating Iraq as Iran's primary adversary, Obama was guilty of withdrawing American forces far too soon. With American forces gone, the Shiite majority consolidated power over Iraq at the expense of its Sunni minority, thus pushing them into the camp of ISIS. It was then that Iran entered the Iraqi vortex by supporting rogue Shiite militias with military aid and advisors. As reported by Missy Ryan and Loveday Morris in a December 27, 2014 Washington Post article entitled "The U.S. and Iran are aligned in Iraq against the Islamic State — for now":

"Iranian military involvement has dramatically increased in Iraq over the past year as Tehran has delivered desperately needed aid to Baghdad in its fight against Islamic State militants, say U.S., Iraqi and Iranian sources. In the eyes of Obama administration officials, equally concerned about the rise of the brutal Islamist group, that’s an acceptable role — for now.

. . . .

A senior Iranian cleric with close ties to Tehran’s leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, said that since the Islamic State’s capture of much of northern Iraq in June, Iran has sent more than 1,000 military advisers to Iraq, as well as elite units, and has conducted airstrikes and spent more than $1 billion on military aid."

Moreover, as now known to all, Iran's intercession in Iraq was followed by Iran's direct military intercession on behalf of Assad in Syria, together with that of Russia, without objection from Obama, thus further alienating Sunnis throughout the Middle East.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Putin’s Syrian Misadventure," would-be Middle East expert Thomas Friedman would serve as Obama's defense attorney with respect to his "malign neglect" foreign policy involving the Middle East. Friedman writes (my emphasis in red):

"Whereas Putin’s goals are uncertain, and perhaps limited to protecting a truncated Assad regime, Obama really does want to defeat ISIS. Just as important, he wants to do it without being either Putin or George W. Bush, who just dove into the middle."

Obama really wants to defeat ISIS? And all this while, I thought Obama was content with "containing" the Islamic State. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein stated last week that the Obama administration's approach to defeating ISIS was insufficient to do the job.

Friedman goes on to say in his opinion piece:

"Sorry, but to sustainably defeat ISIS you need a mutually reinforcing coalition. You need Saudi Arabia and the leading Sunni religious powers to aggressively delegitimize ISIS’s Islamist narrative. You need Arab, Kurdish and Turkish ground troops — backed by U.S. and NATO air power and special forces, with Russia’s constructive support — to uproot ISIS door to door.

You need Iran to encourage the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to create a semiautonomous 'Sunnistan' in the areas held by ISIS, giving moderate Iraqi Sunnis the same devolved powers as Kurds in Kurdistan so they have a political alternative to ISIS. And you need Iran to agree to a political transition in Syria that would eventually replace Assad.

. . . .

You can say that when it comes to ISIS and Syria, Obama has done an impossible job badly, and someone else might have done it better. But it is still an impossible job as long as all the key players in that region define their interests as rule or die and as long as most of the real democrats in that region are living abroad."

Arab, Kurdish and Turkish cooperation on the ground with "Russia's constructive support," notwithstanding the downing of a Russian Su-24 by a Turkish F-16? What are you smoking, Friedman?

Iran to agree to a semi-autonomous Sunnistan in Iraq and Assad stepping down from power in Syria? This flies in the face of Iran's pursuit of hegemony throughout the Middle East.

"Obama has done an impossible job badly"? Obama was instrumental in creating that "impossible job." Will Putin continue to pay for stepping into the power vacuum created by Obama? Probably. But the US will also pay dearly for the destruction of its credibility and deterrent power in the years to come.

Nice try, Tom.

Charles Krauthammer, "Obama's phony war": The Islamic State Has Become Obama's True Legacy

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It is a savage world, and fear has begun to grip the American psyche as the country's populace grows painfully aware of a president's impotence in the face of radical Islamic terror. Discussing President Obama's November 16, 2015 press conference in Antalya, Turkey, Michael Gerson writes in a Washington Post op-ed entitled "Obama, speaking from the ruins":

"Another trump card played by Obama in Turkey against his critics was the approval of the U.S. armed forces.

'We have the finest military in the world,' he said, 'and we have the finest military minds in the world, and I’ve been meeting with them intensively for years now, and it is not just my view but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers that that [an expanded military role] would be a mistake.'

How could anyone argue with that? Except that in 2011, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a classified letter to the White House urging the president to keep 16,000 troops in Iraq, which Mullen called 'my best military advice.' With his re-election coming up, Obama overruled Mullen in favor of a lower number. And then the Obama administration did not really push to retain any troops at all. In a 2014 New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins, we learned: 'Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national-security adviser, told me that Obama believes a full withdrawal was the right decision.'

All of which left Iraq less prepared for the emergence of rise of the Islamic State."

Gerson goes on to observe with regard to the conflict in Syria, "Obama refused to support U.S. proxies in the conflict — against the advice of his defense secretary, his secretary of state and his CIA director."

Today, however, the president's "obstinacy" extends far beyond a refusal to heed the advice of his top ranking appointees. As we have now learned from Sharyl Attkisson, quoted in a Townhall article by Katie Pavlich entitled "Attkisson Source: Obama Is Flat Out Refusing to Hear Intel on Islamic Terror Groups," Obama is not even willing to listen to advice which is at variance with his omniscient notions:

"I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind, I would say closed his mind, they say, to the intelligence they try to bring him about various groups he does not consider terrorists even if they're on the U.S. list of designated terrorists. I don't know the reasoning for it. I’ve only been told by those who have allegedly attempted to present him or been in the circle that has attempted to present him with certain intelligence that they said he doesn’t want it, he said he doesn't want it or he won't read it in some instances."

Or stated otherwise, America's Narcissist-in-Chief has taken to wearing blinders.

And then there is Charles Krauthammer's most recent Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Obama’s phony war," in which the good doctor observed:

"Obama defended his policy by listing its multifaceted elements. Such as, 'I hosted at the United Nations an entire discussion of counterterrorism strategies and curbing the flow of foreign fighters.' An 'entire' discussion, mind you. Not a partial one. They tremble in Raqqa.

And 'We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL.' Yes, and what would we do without Luxembourg?

. . . .

Obama’s other passion is protecting Islam from any possible association with “violent extremism.” The Islamic State is nothing but 'killers with fantasies of glory.' Obama can never bring himself to acknowledge why these people kill and willingly die: to advance a radical Islamist millenarianism that is purposeful, indeed eschatological — and appealing enough to have created the largest, most dangerous terrorist movement on Earth.

Hollande is trying to gather a real coalition to destroy the Islamic State, even as Obama touts his phony 65. For 11 post-World War II presidencies, coalition leading has been the role of the United States. Where is America today? Awaiting a president. The next president."

Gerson and Krauthammer are both conservatives, and their views, which are at variance with mainstream thinking, should be taken with a grain of salt? I don't think so. Not when Senator Dianne Feinstein is also telling us:

"I have never been more concerned. I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding. They've just put out a video saying it is their intent to attack this country."

The Islamic State has become Obama's true legacy, and January 20, 2017 can't come soon enough, unless Obama should be followed by Hillary Clinton, who cannot even bring herself to say the words "radical Islam." It's almost akin to Harry Potter and friends trying not to say "Voldemort."

May the Lord have mercy on us.

Jackson Diehl, "In appealing to Congress, Netanyahu places a dicey political bet": Sorry, It's Not All About Politics

Obama is in a panic. Netanyahu has decided to reveal to Congress details of the pending deal between the P5+1 and Iran, and it's not a pretty picture. Although Iran might delay assembly of its first nuclear weapon until after Obama finishes his second term as president, Iran will likely possess its first atomic bomb within five years. Within a decade, when the restrictions of the agreement no longer apply, Iran will have ICBMs with nuclear warheads capable of striking the US.

In a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "In appealing to Congress, Netanyahu places a dicey political bet," Jackson Diehl today concludes:

"If Netanyahu is defeated, U.S.Israeli relations may return swiftly to comity, as happened after the 1999 and 1992 elections. If the election produces a centrist coalition of the Likud and Labor parties, tensions might also drop. But if Netanyahu succeeds in breaking the past pattern and forms another right-wing coalition, an alliance that has been the heart of American engagement in the Middle East will, like the U.S. relationship with Iran, be headed toward an upheaval."

Yes, Netanyahu is a political animal, but the Iranian nuclear threat transcends politics. And although Senator Dianne Feinstein can call Netanyahu "arrogant" and declare that he does not speak for her as a Jew, he will be speaking for me before Congress at a time when Obama is putting the pieces in place for a second holocaust. Moreover, if Feinstein believes that the Israeli Labor Party, should it come to power, will ignore the Iranian threat in the years to come, she is sorely mistaken.

Before proclaiming other people's arrogance, Feinstein might wish to consider taking the time to read Ray Takeyh's Washington Post opinion piece, also of today's date, entitled "The strategic genius of Iran’s supreme leader." Takeyh, born in Tehran and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

"Khamenei is also a first-rate strategic genius who is patiently negotiating his way to a bomb.

After years of defiance, Khamenei seems to appreciate that his most advantageous path to nuclear arms is through an agreement.

. . . .

As Khamenei presses toward an accord that will place him in an enviable nuclear position, he can also be assured that technical violations of his commitments would not be firmly opposed. Once a deal is transacted, the most essential sanctions against Iran will evaporate. It is unlikely that Europeans, much less China or Russia, would agree to their reconstitution should Iran be caught cheating. And as far as the use of force is concerned, the United States has negotiated arms-control compacts for at least five decades and has never used force to punish a state that has incrementally violated its treaty obligations."

Then there is also today's declaration by the director general of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano:

"The Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Obama doesn't know all of this? Of course he does. The man is a radical, who, nearing the end of his presidency, is prepared to shed any pretense of moderation. Remarkably, 81-year-old Feinstein, blinded by partisanship and age, continues to march in lockstep behind him, singing hosannas.

Maureen Dowd, "The Spies Who Didn’t Love Her": Obama's Worst Tuesday

“And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
We cannot pick it up.
There is no way at all!”

― Dr. Seuss, "The Cat in the Hat"

It was quite the Tuesday for the beleaguered Obama administration.

Obama and friends were forced to acknowledge that Obamacare February sign-up numbers were far below those needed to attain the administration's target of 6 million enrolled people by the end of March. As reported by Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Goldstein in a Washington Post article entitled "Pace of health exchange enrollment slows in February, figures show" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/pace-of-health-exchange-enrollment-slows-in-february-figures-show/2014/03/11/6eb32e16-a93d-11e3-8d62-419db477a0e6_story.html?hpid=z3):

"The Obama administration said 943,000 Americans selected health plans, compared to 1.2 million in January. Overall, enrollment stood at 4.2 million as of the end of last month.

Contrary to the Obama administration’s expectations, fewer people chose health plans last month than in either January or December. And the proportion of young adults — a critical demographic if the marketplaces are to function well — did not increase compared with January."

But wait, there's more. As acknowledged by Maureen Dowd in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Spies Who Didn’t Love Her" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/dowd-the-spies-who-didnt-love-her.html?smid=tw-NYTimesDowd&seid=auto&_r=0), there is a new scandal engulfing the Obama administration, which involves alleged CIA hacking of Senate computers and removal of documents. Dowd writes:

"In June, [CIA Director John] Brennan had issued a 122-page classified rebuttal to the still-classified $40 million, 6,300-page Senate report. But [Dianne] Feinstein said on the floor that she found the C.I.A. riposte 'puzzling,' given that the Panetta internal review admitted to what the C.I.A.’s rebuttal objected to. Given the C.I.A.’s 2005 destruction of videotapes showing the torture of two Al Qaeda operatives, Feinstein said she has now locked up in the committee vault in the Hart Office Building the parts of the Panetta review that her staff had printed out before it disappeared. She has also requested in writing that Brennan turn over a complete version of the review to the committee.

She said she has received no answers from Brennan, who is no fan of Congress or the media, to her formal questions about the agency’s actions and no response to her request for an apology."

Yup, this time it's 80-year-old Democratic Senator Feinstein making the accusations and demanding an apology, and it's going to be a bit harder for Barack and friends to assert that partisan politics are the basis for the brouhaha.

Brennan? Nominated by Obama to succeed David Petraeus as director of the CIA, he was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in March 2013. Brennan and the CIA report to the Director of National Intelligence, who reports to the president.

Obama's excuse this time? Did he also read about it in the newspapers like the rest of us? Will he refuse to fire Brennan, in much the same way that he has failed to lay a finger on Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius?

It's all out of control.

A silver lining to the story? Always! Obama's inept response to Putin's invasion of Crimea is now fast fading into the past . . .

Dianne Feinstein's Opposition to the New Iran Sanctions Bill: Anti-Semitism?

Yesterday, expressing opposition to the new Iran sanctions bill co-authored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), 80-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)declared:

"While I recognize and share Israel’s concern, we cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war."

Excuse me, but where does the new sanctions bill call for war? Rather, it calls for the imposition of heightened economic sanctions should agreement with Iran not be reached for the curtailment of its nuclear weapons development program. As recently observed by Senator Menendez in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "A diplomatic insurance policy against Iran" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-diplomatic-insurance-policy-against-iran/2014/01/09/f50ec8dc-77b8-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html):

"The proposed legislation is a clarifying action. It allows all sides to negotiate in certainties and provides one year of space for the parties to continue talking. It spells out precisely the consequences should the agreement fail. This should motivate Iranians to negotiate honestly and seriously.

At the same time, these prospective sanctions play a positive and reinforcing role in negotiations. The big winner is the administration. Its ability to pursue a diplomatic path is enhanced by being able to communicate this position in its negotiations with Iran.

This is hardly a march to war, as some critics have suggested. The legislation explicitly does not authorize the use of force, though it does restate the language of a resolution, passed 99 to 0 by the Senate, supporting the United States’ commitment to Israel, should Israel be forced to defend itself against Iran.

The American public supports diplomacy. So do I.

The American public doesn’t trust the Iranian regime. Neither do I."

Regarding Feinstein's allusion to the age-old racist canard that "the Jews control the government," one can only wonder what has happened to her thought process.

In unrelated news, Feinstein recently discovered "a drone right there at the window looking out at me” (see: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/senator-dianne-feinstein-encounter-with-drone-technology-privacy-surveillance-102233.html#ixzz2qWsvhXYZ). Yes, darling Dianne, it's time to consider retirement.

Gail Collins, "The Dread That Is Ted": The Tall Tale Told by Gail

"I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me."

- Dianne Feinstein

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Dread That Is Ted" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/opinion/collins-the-dread-that-is-ted.html?_r=0), Gail Collins takes Senator Ted Cruz to task for daring to lecture 79-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein during a Judiciary Committee hearing this past week regarding the sale of assault rifles. Collins writes of Cruz:

"If you combine a lack of a sense of humor with an absence of humility and then stir in a cup of self-righteousness, you are definitely not working on a recipe for cooperative achievement."

Ah, yes, let's blame freshman Senator Cruz for a lack of "cooperative achievement." In this vein, consider what Olympia Snowe, one of the most moderate Republicans in Washington, had to say when explaining her retirement from the US Senate, i.e. before Cruz arrived on the scene (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/29/snowe-explains-decision-to-leave-defends-tough-criticism-of-senate/):

"People are just stunned by the debilitating partisanship, polarization and the overall dysfunction of the institution and political paralysis as we come, you know, to the point of extreme when it comes to resolving the problems facing our country."

And what did Snowe, one of three Republicans in the US Congress who voted for Obama's economic stimulus plan in 2009, have to say about President Obama? Snowe told Jonathan Karl that she has not had a face-to-face meeting with Obama in two years, and asked if she had to grade Obama on his willingness to work with Republicans, she replied that he would be "close to failing on that point" (see: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/frustrated-senator-olympia-snowe-gives-obama-f-101657433.html).

Yup, the US government is dysfunctional, but let's not blame Ted Cruz for that. There is someone else at whom Gail should be pointing her finger.

But I stray from the issue of gun control and a ban on assault rifles. I favor a ban on assault rifles; however, I also acknowledge that they are not the problem. Have a look at the data from the FBI on all murders from 2007 to 2011 (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8). In a nutshell, handguns (what Feinstein used to carry around with her) are far more of a problem than assault rifles. For that matter, between 2007 and 2011 clubs and hammers killed more persons than "rifles" (not just assault rifles), and knives killed four times more people than rifles. In all but one year, shotguns killed more people than rifles.

Shotguns? Recall what Vice President Biden had to say about shotguns in a recent interview with Field & Stream magazine (see: http://washingtonexaminer.com/more-advice-from-joe-biden-just-fire-the-shotgun-through-the-door/article/2522791):

"Well, the way in which we measure it is—I think most scholars would say—is that as long as you have a weapon sufficient to be able to provide your self-defense," Biden said. "I did one of these town-hall meetings on the Internet and one guy said, 'Well, what happens when the end days come? What happens when there’s the earthquake? I live in California, and I have to protect myself.'

I said, "Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door."

So just remember, should you accidentally kill the UPS man who arrived to deliver a package, or a Girl Scout who came to sell cookies, have your lawyer tell the court that none other than the Vice President of the United States told my client to "just fire the shotgun through the door."

On a more somber note, both Collins and Feinstein fail to understand that assault rifles are not the root of the problem. Rather, it is the violence inherent in American society, acknowledged by Feinstein, that is responsible for the rage and rampant killing.

Or as Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein on Hezbollah Scuds: Clueless

According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairwoman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Hezbollah has likely received Scud missiles from Syria:

"'I believe there is a likelihood that there are Scuds that Hezbollah has in Lebanon. A high likelihood,' Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, told AFP.

'The rockets and missiles in Lebanon are substantially increased and better technologically than they were and this is a real point of danger for Israel,' Feinstein added.

'There's only one thing that's going to solve it, and that's a two-state solution,' she said, referring to stalled international efforts to create an independent, viable Palestinian state living at peace with Israel."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100420/pl_afp/usmideastlebanonsyriahezbollaharmspolitics

"The rockets and missiles in Lebanon are substantially increased and better than they were"? Excuse me, but what is the Intelligence Committee chair attempting to tell us by way of this garbled sentence?

"A real point of danger for Israel"? You don't say, senator.

Yes, Ms. Feinstein, Hezbollah indeed received Scuds from Syria, but you need to be daft to believe that a two-state solution involving the Israelis and Palestinians will eliminate this threat.

Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas have all called for the annihilation of Israel. At no time have they said that the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Fatah in the West Bank will affect their resolve to destroy Israel.

Moreover, Feinstein is blind to historic Persian-Arab and Shiite-Sunni animosity, which has resulted in more wars and exponentially more deaths than all of the Arab-Israel conflicts. Iran has its own agenda, i.e. Middle East hegemony, and the shipment of arms to Hamas and Hezbollah is part of a larger game in which Israel serves as a diversion. As recently observed by Ray Takeyh:

"Although pressuring Israel to restrain its settlements may be a sensible means of gaining constructive Arab participation in the peace talks, it is unlikely to affect the region's passive approach to Iran. Indeed, should Tehran perceive fissures and divisions in U.S.-Israeli alliance, it is likely to further harden its nuclear stance.

The notion that the incumbent Arab regimes are reluctant to collaborate with the United States on Iran because of the prevailing impasse in the peace process is a misreading of regional realities."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040905075_pf.html

Needless to say, Feinstein also appears ignorant of historic hostility between Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, dating back to the period when Arafat held sway over South Lebanon.

Sorry to say, Dianne, you are in need of better intelligence.