Now Syria a nuke target? AFP: "The United States said Wednesday it considered 'all options' on the table if Syria is found to have supplied Scud missiles to Hezbollah, posing a major threat for Israel." http://tinyurl.com/2b4fqpd
Tepid and a couple of years late, but ABC's "This Week" shows signs of journalism -- Jake Tapper asks Bill Clinton: "One of the things that President Obama is pushing for is regulation of derivatives, and also with a thing called the Volcker rule, he’s trying to separate commercial banking interests from investment banking interests. These were things that were the opposite policies of Treasury Security Rubin and Summers at that time, do you think in retrospect they gave you bad advice on these issues?"On the roundtable, Donna Brazile shows the militarism of the the establishment of the Democratic Party should anyone be blind: "Well, you know, I think the president continues to try to reach out through third parties and others to get Tehran to pay attention, but Tehran has its own agenda. And you saw it during the nuclear summit, that the president sat down with the leader of China to try to get China once again back at the negotiating table, because that's the key to opposing tough sanctions, what they call one of the big options and the last of many other options.
"But this week, the House and Senate will sit down to try to strengthen that bill that they've put together that will impose even more tougher sanctions on Iran.
"I think, at the end of the day, the administration has to lay it all out on the table. They said they would do it in January. It's now April. I don't believe, you know, much activity has gone on. And this memo is a reminder that Iran is proceeding to form that bomb." [emphasis added]
Both Obama and Bush urge Israel to sign the NPT without acknowleging that Israel has nukes. Hmmm... Why do they hate us?
Obama: "…as far as Israel goes, I'm not going to comment on their [nuclear] program ... we have urged all countries to become members of the NPT. ... That's been a consistent position of the United States government, even prior to my administration."
QUESTION: Does the United States, then, feel that the Israeli nuclear program, which is now out -- Avner Cohen has written a full book on it, Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in jail because of it. It's obvious that they do have such a nuclear program. Does the United States consider that that's absolutely essential to Israel's security?
BOUCHER: I'm not making judgments or presumptions about that. We've had a view on the universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that we've expressed many times, that applies in all cases.
QUESTION: But Israel is not a member, has refused to be a member. BOUCHER: That's right. We encourage all nations to be members and adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At U of Md - today
"It's my hope that if we're aggressive over the next several years, we can substantially cut our energy use in every sector while still maintaining our high levels of economic growth. So, for example, at the announcement where I talked about offshore drilling, I did so in front of an F-18, a fighter jet, that is actually going to be run half on biomass."