France has been making some serious noise about military action against Iran to prevent their developing, possessing and using a nuclear warhead. The rhetoric almost makes the French sound manly but until they actually fight I'll withhold judgment. They've backed off the talk recently but still sound as if they have at least half estrogen and half testosterone coursing through their foie gras clogged arteries, which is a huge improvement from when Chirac was at the helm.

Anyway, back when the US invaded Iraq, the liberals and assorted other inane folks on the left screamed that we were acting "unilaterally" even though we had numerous nations allied with us including, but not limited to: Spain, Britain, Australia, Poland, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ukraine and Japan. The hand-wringers always said that France wasn't involved so it wasn't really a coalition and didn't give damn that they were disparaging those who actually were allied with us in liberating Mesopotamia.

Well now that the French seem to have morphed into a testosterone-fueled beast ready to take on the mad Mullahs, will those who called our coalition a sham support an invasion? Even though it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Chirac was protecting cronies who were working in concert with Saddam to enrich themselves and didn't want the Oil for Food spigot turned off, they still screamed that idiotic unilateral screed. Will those wretched folks now support an invasion of Iran because the French do? I guess we'll soon see.

Iran is a major problem, they are fighting us in a proxy war in Iraq as is Syria. Should they get nukes, the Straits of Hormuz will be a constant battleground and we'll have to invade to keep it open as a huge amount of oil flows through that thin body of water. The fact that the French are rattling, well maybe not sabers but silverware is a testament to just how important this issue is.

Recently, video footage has surfaced of two gay Iranian men being publicly executed by hanging in Iran. Their crime was merely the fact that they were gay, and in Iran homosexuality is punishable by death. Also punishable by death is any dissidence to the policies of the dictatorial government. Scholars, political opponents, college students and "enemies of the state" routinely disappear or are outright executed.

Is this the type of government that should be allowed to possess weapons that can incinerate entire cities?

Clearly, the issue of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is a goal of the United States. (This is clearly a bipartisan goal as both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress recently voted overwhelmingly to condemn Iran) But what specific foreign policy can be taken towards stopping this regime in its acquisition of atomic bombs?

Fred Thompson has proposed influencing the World Bank from funding Iran. In an article that appeared in the Washington Times, Thompson stated: American taxpayers' money shouldn't be used so that Tehran can divert its own money into a nuclear weapons program." Newt Gingrich has also echoed financial strangulation as a way of curtailing Iran's ambitions. In other parts of the world, more hostile rhetoric has been brought up. France, for example, has been quite liberally throwing the word "war" around in regards to dealing with Iran. (France has a nuclear submarine stationed in the Persian Gulf)

If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons the entire face of the Middle East would change and the repercussions would have dramatic impact on the rest of the world. The nation would have the ability to threaten its neighbors and to deny oil to any country in the world that currently relies on Iranian imports. This would have dramatic impact on Europe and parts of Asia to a degree that most can not imagine and, certainly, neither the US, the European Union or other nations will allow it to happen.

Iran is in the midst of solidifying their position as the regional power in the Persian Gulf. They have as a goal controlling all shipping in and out of that area by controlling the Straits of Hormuz and controlling Iraq upon our withdrawal. They are working apace at developing nuclear weapons and could have them within a year or decade depending on the source you believe. They are a theocracy with a population that is itching to gain more freedom from the Ayatollah-led government but facing severe crackdowns by that regime at any show of liberty and liberalism.

How can we deal with a regime that came to power and as part of their first official act was to kidnap and hold for 444-days Americans as hostages?

The rhetoric is starting to ratchet up as the US has said they will place the Iranian Republican Guards on a list of terror groups and has directly named Iran as a supplier of bombs and weapons to Shia insurgents in Iraq who are targeting US forces. It's getting to be a stickier situation:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to "punch" the United States, in their first response to Washington's plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday.

Local press in the Iranian capital of Tehran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington's ire towards the group because of their recent successes against the United States.

"America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future," he was quoted as saying in the conservative daily Kayhan.

That is a direct threat aimed at the U.S. and more importantly, it is an admission by the Iranians that they have indeed been quite active in hurting U.S. troops. In other words, they are provoking us and know that we can't react because of the political climate in the U.S.

Hugo Chavez is praising Sean Penn. Will he have similarly kind words for John Edwards?

The Denver Post reports that the Venezuelan president "read aloud from a recent open letter by Penn to U.S. President George W. Bush in which the actor condemned the Iraq war and called for Bush to be impeached, saying the president along with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are 'villainously and criminally obscene people.'" Chavez, "who shares those views," the article added, planned to meet with Penn, who was visiting Venezuela.

Will Chavez also praise one of the candidates who would supplant Bush, former vice-presidential pick John Edwards? For Edwards answered "Yes" when Anderson Cooper, in last Monday's debate, asked the North Carolinian, "(Would) you meet with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il?"

Edwards did list some preconditions. "I think actually Senator Clinton's right though," he said. "Before that meeting takes place, we need to do the work, the diplomacy, to make sure that that meeting's not going to be used for propaganda purposes, will not be used to just beat down the United States of America in the world community."

So, if Edwards becomes president, we might see some pragmatism and détente between Washington and Caracas.

There were high hopes in the media/Democratic circles for the new British prime minister's trip across the pond to visit President Bush. Ever since Gordon Brown became prime minister, and especially after he appointed United Nations toady and America-hating Mark Malloch Brown to a key position in his Foreign Affairs Office, the media and the Left prepared their talking points about how President Bush had alienated and pushed away yet another ally. Malloch Brown even whetted their appetite:

The new Foreign Office minister says he wants Britain to broaden its international partnerships rather than rely solely on the special relationship with America. "My hope is that foreign policy will become much more impartial. We have a whole set of emerging countries. There will be lots of exciting things to do with Sarkozy and Merkel and other European leaders as well as strengthening our transatlantic relations. "There is this global hub where there is the opportunity to connect Britain to a new way of doing things, when you think again about the partnerships to get things done - how you bring in an India or a China, how you can bring in civil society, Oxfam and Save The Children." Mr Brown will not, he thinks, be cosying up to Mr Bush quite as much on the sofa.

But then reality intruded, and Prime Minister Brown started doing the talking. Here's the lede from a New York Sun article on the prime minister's first meetings with President Bush:

Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, has disappointed American and British critics of the war in Iraq by declaring that he believes the West is involved in a "generation-long battle" against radical Islamic terrorism, that he believes the American mission in Iraq is worthwhile, and that he will stand by President Bush in his efforts to promote democracy in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East. After a four-hour meeting yesterday, which followed a two-hour discussion with the president at Camp David over dinner Sunday night, Mr. Brown offered little encouragement to those who hoped that the departure of Prime Minister Blair from Downing Street would lead to a weakening of the traditional alliance between America and Britain or would diminish the British resolve in Iraq.

Can't you just feel the disappointment? For what it's worth, I think that any chance that Brown would have even slightly modified Britain's relationship with the U.S. evaporated when al-Qaida attempted their latest terrorist attacks in London and Scotland, literally hours after Brown took office. Mission accomplished.

Liberals have always been fascinated by communism. Ask a paleo-liberal what they think of the former Soviet Union and they'll say things such as "it wasn't implemented correctly" or some other such nonsense. You hear the same things about Cuba. Of course, they don't bring up Cambodia and the 2-million dead to create that communist utopia, talking about that is just inconvenient.

Now China is another story. This from the leader of the paleo-Liberals, Trudy Rubin:

China has been using a new approach to expand its influence and global appeal. This approach is one at which the United States once excelled but now does badly.

Call it "soft power."

This term was coined more than a decade ago by Harvard professor Joseph Nye to describe a country's ability to lead by example and get others to follow because they admire what you are. A fascinating new book called Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World looks at Beijing's increasing skill at using diplomacy, trade incentives, cultural and educational exchanges, and other techniques to build an image of a benign global leader.

Rubin actually says that the US should mimic what the Chinese are doing in the region and holds up Chinese actions as something to emulate.

Hmmm, is the brutal oppression of Tibet "soft power?" What about the treatment of internal dissidents? The constant shadow cast on Taiwan would be "soft power" in Rubin's eyes, I guess. The fact that they are arming both sides in a conflict killing US soldiers and Marines would qualify as "soft power"as well, I assume.

A stark reminder in the LA Times today of why our efforts in Iraq may well be in vain. The issue is the performance of the parliament. To say the least, it's nothing to brag about:

A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.

This, mind you, is the best that the Iraqi parliament can do amidst all the pressure our government has been applying in an attempt to force them to actually get things done. A two-hour session with less than half of the members in attendance. Oil deal? Regional revenue sharing? Re-Baathification? The thorny question of how to disarm militias? Dream on. Not one of those crucial issues made it to the floor for a vote.

The only thing that is proceeding full-steam-ahead in Iraq are preparations for the parliament's month-long, August vacation. A shame it had to fall just before our own government will evaluate the legislature's progress.

Yesterday's counter attack by Barack Obama was not as much of a climbdown as I originally thought. Barack is now again defending his willingness to meet our enemies "without preconditions." From the Hotline:

Barack Obama continued to frame his dispute with Hillary Clinton this a.m. as old thinking versus a new approach. He said Clinton's views mirror those of the Bush admin.-- to meet with enemy leaders only after they met a set of preconditions. Obama said he's willing to meet them w/o preconditions, but not w/o preparation (and again, not just for coffee).

Engaging our adversaries "allows us to send a message to the rest of the world," he said, which "increases our leverage" in trying to deal with other problems. Obama also challenged reporters to question Clinton's campaign about whether they "are walking back" her statements on the issue.

Whatever else it is, this is liberalism through and through, the idea that we can solve all these problems through talking. Sometimes it's true, but more often than not the old adage is more accurate: "Diplomacy is the art of saying, nice doggie, while reaching for a stick".

In this case Iran will be the one saying "nice doggie" to us until they get the bomb. Then they can say and do whatever they want. And what they want is not good for anyone.

What Obama's saying plays well with Democrats, but in the general election not so much. Too many Americans know that in negotiations, the one who goes first is the loser.

How will our next president deal with the emergence of China as a world power?

China, which hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, is also trying to win a gold medal in the game of global politics. Currently it must settle for a bronze, behind the United States and the European Union. How much it progresses might depend on who's occupying the Oval Office in a few years.

Once reviled for its suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, China has found a friend in the US, earning Permanent Normalized Trade Relations (PNTR) status. The relationship seems cozy despite various pitfalls -- the NATO bombing of a Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and tangles over Taiwan. And, of course, there's that pesky trade deficit imbalance.

How to deal with a nuclear power whose rising ambitions could hurt both our economy and our diplomatic efforts? Hillary, Barack, Mitt, Rudy, the two Johns (Edwards and McCain), and everybody else – this one's for you.

Sen. Barack Obama is trying to balance calls for diplomacy with warlike statements.

In Monday's Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina, Obama sounded dovish. "Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire," he said. "And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward."

Yet some of Obama's past statements seem less evocative of détente and more connected to the bellicose beliefs that brought us the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"America must urgently begin deploying from Iraq and take the fight more effectively to the enemy's home by destroying al-Qaida's leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border, eliminating their command and control networks and disrupting their funding," he said earlier this month.

Ralph Peters, a military-affairs columnist, disparaged this idea. "Sure, we can invade Pakistan," Peters told FrontPage magazine. "Of course, we'll need a draft to round up enough troops. And we'll have to kill, as a minimum, a few hundred thousand Pathan tribesmen and their families, and we'll have to remain as an occupier for many years. Oh, and Pakistan's got nuclear weapons and it's already torn by civil strife."

Peters called Obama's hawkishness on Central Asia "a classic example of the fateful mix of hubris and naivety on Capitol Hill." Equally as bad is the mix of looking like a dove while keeping the feathers of a hawk.

In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, we have seen some dubious choices as winners. Perhaps the most inane was Yasser Arafat who proceeded to collect his money and start the second Intifada whereby he sent young men and women to their deaths as suicide bombers and taking hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians with them. Jimmy Carter also was a ridiculous choice and was chosen solely because it would spite George W. Bush.

Now we have another winner showing that the Nobel Peace Prize is a farce. Ireland's Betty Williams, who took the award in 1976, takes Bush Derangement Syndrome to new heights:

In a keynote speech at the International Women's Peace Conference on Wednesday night, Ms. Williams told a crowd of about 1,000 that the Bush administration has been treacherous and wrong and acted unconstitutionally.

"Right now, I could kill George Bush," she said at the Adam's Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. "No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that."

About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush's removal from power.

Emphasis mine. So let me get this straight, a woman was asked to speak at a peace conference for women and she advocated the assassination of a sitting U.S. president and said she's like to so it herself? Furthermore, the crowd who attended the "peace" conference gave her an ovation? Hypocrisy on a global scale!

The next time you hear of the current Congress referred to as "do-nothing," tell the person who said it that they have done quite a lot -- they have managed to weaken our national security to the point that we are sitting ducks.

It started with their initial push to extract out troops from Iraq. It continued when Nancy Pelosi went on her whirlwind tour, visiting dictators who despise America and attack their neighbors without fear, thus showing said dictator that he can do what he wants whenever he wants. They also want our borders left wide open with free and open access to anyone who wishes to come through: jihadists, drug runners, etc. leaving us open to attack from within.

This week, they've finally gone for the gusto:

Apart from prosecuting the global war on terror, creating a comprehensive missile defense shield is the Pentagon's most important job in the 21st century. Yet some in Congress are trying to kill it.

Why is Congress trying to defund the U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe - where it will protect not just our allies but the U.S. as well?

Nicolas Sarkozy is having the time of his life, as the Weekly Standard reports. He's getting things done, and even better, his opposition has fallen apart over what just might be a bad relationship gone sour. Hollande and Royale had a 25 year relationship and four kids, but things didn't seem to be going that well:

...What was notable was that they didn't seem to speak much to each other, and were obviously running separate campaigns, with separate agendas. At times, it even seemed that Hollande resented his companion's candidacy and was surreptitiously undermining it. ...

What once was rumor is now established fact, thanks to La femme fatale, by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Ariane Chemin, published between the presidential and legislative elections. Terse and ungossipy (relatively little name dropping, for instance), it asserts that Hollande had left Royal a few years ago for another woman, and that Royal, seeking revenge, had worked hard to become a political leader in her own right. When the book appeared, the couple sued both authors for breach of privacy, an offense that, under French law, includes exposure of intimate matters such as adultery.

Then Royal changed course. On June 17, at precisely 9 P.M., the moment the polls closed in the legislative elections, she publicly acknowledged being separated from Hollande, thus essentially validating Bacqué and Chemin's book. And she made clear she would make a bid for the party's leadership, if necessary against her former companion.

To put this in perspective. Imagine that Bill and Hillary have a private falling out sometime between now and 2008, and he underhandedly sabotages their campaign. And after a 2008 defeat they each fight over the remaining scraps of the Democratic party to the amusement of the GOP.

Not that that's likely to happen, considering the Clinton's history. But France has made a dramatic turn to the right because a bad relationship split the opposition. Something for both parties to think about.

Three purported jihadi's rammed a car full of flammable liquid into a Glasgow, Scotland airport today and the facts are sketchy at best. It appears three men smashed a jeep into the terminal, one jumped out and set himself on fire and ran into the terminal. The suspects were attempting to blow up the vehicle and kill as many civilians as possible.

Other uncomfirmed reports say that at least one of the men had a suicide vest on:

There was a further twist last night as the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, where the man was being treated, was evacuated after a suspect device was found. Strathclyde Police later said that the man had possibly been wearing a suicide belt.

That would be a serious escalation in the latest terror onslaught that I believe is timed to test the resolve of new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown has only been in office for two days and this terror wave has got to be more than coincidental.

Pay attention folks, this is what al-Qaida and their offshoots plan for the United States. Imagine the damage that would be brought on our economy if several sleeper cells woke up and bombed places in the U.S. where people gather. Well, that's exactly what's happening in Britain as we speak. As for those who wish this whole bad dream will go away or describe it as insignificant, you're out of luck.

The events in London today should be cause for alarm for us in America as well:

Police have confirmed that not one, but two massive car bombs were set to explode in the heart of London's West End.

The first car, in Haymarket, was a metallic green Mercedes packed with petrol, gas cannisters and nails, and was defused after police were alerted by an ambulance crew called to an incident at a nearby nightclub in the early hours of Friday morning.

The second bomb was in a car that was illegally parked nearby and towed to the Park Lane car pound.

These bombs were intended not to hit infrastructure but to be pure terror weapons. They were set in highly congested areas and were built for maximum casualties. Fortunately the police and security services defused them.

In the U.S., we don't take security as seriously as the Brits. The Fort Dix Six were planning to attack out military and it didn't even rate an entire news cycle. Some even scoffed that it was a bunch of idiots who could never have pulled it off. I thought such inane thoughts would cease when 19 Muslims did the unthinkable and crashed four planes using only boxcutters, but I digress.

We've come a long way since 9/11, our security apparatus, including Homeland Security, the FBI and local police have been trained to spot and take down terror operations. We've been very effective as we have not been hit since 9/11 and that has had the effect of making us complacent.