Boulder Has Its Own Foreign Policy Take 2

Mark Udall once joked that the difference between Colorado Springs and Boulder was that Boulder has its own foreign policy.

Then, he proceeded to announce that he would be introducing a bill requiring the President to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendations, forgetting that foreign policy is the prerogative of the president.

Of Course, Mark Udall has now also introduced a bill that ties the President's hands on Iran. Iran could detonate a nuke on the Mexican side of the Mexico Border and the President could not respond if this short sighted legislation were to pass.

Now Jared Polis, author and patron of the Polis Amendment (aka Amendment 41) is making his own foreign policy as reported by USA Today. He has declared us invaders and occupiers and claims to be embarrassed to admit it. Since he doesn't have the clout to talk to a real ambassador, he bestowed the title on the first guy he met (think Kentucky Colonel = Iraqi Ambassador):

Polis arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday, local time, and has already done an online chat at Colorado Confidential and blogged at his campaign website about his first day there. In the blog post, he discusses a conversation he had with an Iraqi intellectual he euphemistically refers to as "the Ambassador:"

As we conversed, I didn't want to say "our occupation" or "our invasion" because even though we both knew that was true, I didn't feel it was polite to remind them by overtly stating it. So early on in the discussion when I was searching for words to ask what they were respectively doing 'before the, er, before the ... ." The Ambassador, observing my pause, kindly offered up the more diplomatic term "regime change" and we thereafter used that term liberally."

The Polis candidacy is an attempt by one left wing foreign policy flake who sees no value in the constitutionally mandated separation of powers to exchange places with another.

Mark Udall: The Modern Michael Dukakis

For those too young to remember, Michael Dukakis lost credibility and the election in 1988 when he stumbled on the first question of the first debate.

That question presupposed the rape and murder of his wife and asked what he would do. He made it look like it was an academic exercise where the criminal had more rights than his wife did. Almost any husband who loved his wife and wanted to protect her would have answered differently. At the end of the debate, Dukakis' body language signaled his knowledge that he had blown the election on that one question.

Now comes Mark Udall with much the same mind set towards Iran. He wants to completely tie the hands of this and future administrations with regard to that country and has proposed a law to that effect.

Udall makes the claim that he loves the soldiers. As with our observation about Dukakis, almost any politician who loved "the soldiers" would do his utmost to protect them.

When they go to Iraq, they face very sophisticated shaped charge roadside bombs.Shaped charges can not be made from parts picked up at the local junkyard or ammo dump. They have to be machined out of copper. None of these shaped charges can be or have been made in Iraq.

It is reported that about 80 per cent of our casualties are due to shaped charges. Most, if not all of these weapons are shipped in from Iran. Iran is at war with us.

Now comes Mark Udall, the modern day Michael Dukakis who wants to protect the criminals in Iran more than the soldiers he claims to love. Of course, Daily Kos is cheering him on.

A Historical Perspective

A two sentence "aside" in an item about Baby Boomers observes that Mark Udall's latest Congressional bill repeats a historic mistake.

The war lost support, and in retrospect deserved to lose support, because it was mismanaged by that part of the WWII generation that had moved into leadership positions. Johnson and McNamara were afraid to win the war and didn't understand that a war will inevitably be lost if the enemy is allowed sanctuaries. Johnson and McNamara never disrupted the import of war material, either through Haiphong or by bombing the railroad bridges on the China border. For some time, even the Ho Chi Minh trail was off limits to bombing.

As an aside, the latest bill that Mark Udall has put forward in Congress repeats this EXACT historical mistake. It makes Iran into an untouchable sanctuary.

Protecting Identity Theft Rings In Iran

Tonight, on Dateline, it was announced that a major identity theft ring was moving its operations to Iran so as to be beyond the reach of US authorities.

Iran is at war with us, and Mark Udall, (D) Boulder, wants to make its territory a safe haven for every criminal and terrorist activity that it can direct our way. If Udall wants to aid, abet, and protect this kind of activity from any kind of retaliation, and H.R. 3119 does just that, then he has no business running for a Colorado Senate seat.

If Udall thinks that his bill doesn't create a safe haven for identity theft directed at the US, or that Iranian based identity theft can be stopped once his bill passes, we would like to know how.

Tying The President's Hands

There is little doubt that the Israeli Air Force put Saddam out of the nuclear bomb business in 1981.

Peace Activist Mark Udall (D) Boulder introduced a bill on Thursday which ensures that the US will never be able to take any effective action to prevent the development of nukes by Iran.

The guts of H.R. 3119 read:

(a) Prohibition- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no funds appropriated or otherwise made available by any Act, including any Act enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act, may be obligated or expended for military operations or activities within or above the territory of Iran, or within the territorial waters of Iran, except pursuant to a specific authorization of Congress enacted in a statute enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Strategically, this is about as dumb a bill as could be conceived. Recall that the perceived threat of invasion, never expressed, caused Lybia to surrender the nuclear weapons plans it acquired from Pakistan. That was a good thing, but would it have happened if Mark Udall had submitted his bill in 2000 and substituted "Lybia" for "Iran?"

It is entirely possible that the bill also prohibits military action by Israel to protect itself, reactively or preemptively.