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Insider Report: Sharon: Israel Won't Bomb Iran Special From NewsMax's Most Informed Sources
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Sharon: We Won't Bomb Iran Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can't speak today. A stroke has incapacitated him. However, some six months ago he was speaking with a very prominent member of America's Jewish community. This person was someone Sharon would definitely want "on board" if Israel has indeed been planning a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear weapons sites.
Story Continues Below
This influential member of the Jewish community recently told NewsMax about a private conversation he had with Sharon. Asked if Israel would use military force to take out Iran's weapons program, Sharon said they would not. "We are not going to do the world's dirty work," the Prime Minister said, our source quotes the Prime Minister as saying. Make no mistake about it: our source says Israel views Iran's weapons program as a serious threat to the Jewish state. But our source notes that Iran also poses a risk to her Arab neighbors and the United States. The clear implication of Sharon's remark is that with Israel seeing this as an international problem, the burden of undertaking a last resort military strike should not fall on Israel. The United States would be left the responsibility to deal with Iran and to use military force, if necessary. Editor's Note:
2. Democrats Peeved at Kerry's Filibuster Move Sen. John Kerry's call for a filibuster of Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination left plenty of Democrats steaming and Republicans smiling. Before the Senate vote on the nomination, Democrats had agreed that they didn't have enough votes to sustain a filibuster, and they knew that Americans supported Alito by a margin of 2-1. But then Kerry "got his marching orders from the New York Times and the left-wing blog Daily Kos" and called for a filibuster, New York Post's Washington Bureau Chief Deborah Orin writes. The vote against the filibuster was 72-25, with just 25 Democrats joining Kerry. "Worst yet, plenty of Democrats who did vote for the filibuster left little doubt that they were livid at Kerry's stunt, since it turned into a dream come true for Bush political guru [Karl] Rove," Orin reports. The Democratic fiasco is the latest example of how Kerry, Al Gore and the "left wing of the blogosphere are all yanking the Democratic Party hard to the left, instead of the center (where most of the votes are)," Orin writes. Kerry's move was thought to have particularly vexed Sen. Hillary Clinton. She voted for the filibuster to appease the liberal activists who decide Democratic primaries. But that vote further enables the GOP to characterize the likely 2008 presidential candidate as out of the mainstream. Clinton didn't speak in favor of the filibuster. Republicans were also pleased that liberal blogsters were vowing to seek revenge against the "traitors" in the Democratic Party who opposed the filibuster, according to Orin. "The liberals in the party are marching like lemmings into the sea gain," complained a longtime Democratic activist. "Sometimes I think the left wing is turning into a cult. It just doesn't allow for disagreement. If you disagree, you're a traitor." Editor's Note:
3. Washington Lobbying: Payoff Is "Astronomic" Lockheed Martin has spent $55 million lobbying since 1999, and over that period has won about $90 billion in Pentagon contracts for what Fortune magazine calls a return on political investment (ROPI) of an eye-popping 163,536 percent. While that calculation assumes that lobbying is the only reason contracts are awarded in Washington, it remains true "that without a political salesforce' you can't close the deal," Matt Miller a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress writes in Fortune. During that same period of time, Boeing spent $57 million on lobbying and received $81 billion in contracts, for a ROPI of "only" 142,000 percent. In this context, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal is a reminder of a phenomenon that gets little notice, Miller writes a company's ROPI "is astronomically higher than any real investment it can make." Indian tribes could pay more than $20 million to Abramoff and his cronies and still reap a generous return on their investment, because extending their casino contracts and getting tax breaks were worth far more. Their ROPI was still huge, just not as great as is customary in Washington. Seen this way, Abramoff's "real crime was raising the price of political influence to market rates," notes Miller, who predicts: "These remarkable returns, not any inherent venality, explain why the pseudo-reforms likely to come in Abramoff's wake will do nothing to stop the meltdown from recurring."
4. Danes Unrepentant Over Muhammad Cartoons An editor with the Danish newspaper that ran cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad said the resultant furor was "worth it." Joern Mikkelsen, political editor of the conservative paper Jyllands-Posten, said the still-raging debate over who is or isn't entitled to criticize a religion only served to further legitimize the paper's decision to run the cartoons. The cartoons, first published four months ago in Denmark, included one showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a lit fuse. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, favorable or otherwise. The republication of the cartoons in a Norwegian publication on January 10 touched off a storm of protest in the Islamic world. Danish products were boycotted in Arab countries and protesters burned the Danish flag. Jyllands-Posten's office in Aarhus, Denmark's second-largest city, received bomb threats and its employees were flooded with death threats by phone and mail. But when the German magazine Der Spiegel asked Mikkelsen if publishing the cartoons was worth the controversy, he replied: "Yes, it was worth it." Tage Clausen, a spokesman for the paper, said it did not intend to anger Muslims by running the cartoons. "Instead we wanted to show how deeply entrenched self-censorship has already become." Other Danes who spoke with Der Spiegel in Aarhus supported the publication of the cartoons. "I can't imagine living in a country where I am no longer allowed to voice my free opinion," said Eminie Ehlers. Tonni Soerensen, pointing out that Denmark has welcomed many Muslims, said: "The Muslim reaction was exaggerated in the extreme. When these imams go around telling everybody how bad we are, it's like a stab in the back." And Anne Grethe declared: "If [Muslim immigrants] don't agree with freedom of the press, then they should go back home."
5. We Heard . . .
THAT citizens of the Caucasian republic of Georgia now believe that George Soros is an "enemy" of that nation. In 2003, Soros' money backed a group opposed to then-President Eduard Shevardnadze and also funded a popular opposition TV station. Protests eventually led to Shevardnadze's resignation. In the poll conducted by a group known as Anti-Soros, 80 percent said that Soros finances the country's ruling party, United National Movement, 57 percent said Soros' influence hampered Georgia's development and only 1.8 percent considered him a philanthropist. A spokesperson for Anti-Soros said Georgians' attitude toward Soros had "seriously changed."
Republicans have leveled that charge at the Nevada Democrat in an effort to tie him to the scandal surrounding Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to three felonies in connection with exchanging meals, travel and gifts for political favors, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee said Reid received more than $50,000 from four tribes with gambling interests between 2001 and 2004, after they hired Abramoff, but no money from the tribes before that. Reid's tied to Abramoff are "substantial," said GOP spokesman Tucker Bounds. The Washington Post recently reported that Reid had accepted thousands of dollars from an Abramoff client, the Coushatta Indian tribe, after interceding with Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton over a casino dispute with a rival tribe.
Bolton presided over the Council for the first time on Thursday but failed to get the 14 members to show up on time or back his request for daily briefings on U.N. peacekeeping operations and global hotspots, the Chicago Tribune reported. The U.S. took over the council's rotating presidency from Tanzania on Wednesday, and Bolton said he banged the gavel at 10 a.m. on Thursday when the meeting was supposed to begin. "I was the only one in the room," he lamented to reporters afterward.
"We started just before 10:15 a.m." Editor's Notes:
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