On Saturday the Senate voted 65 to 31 to end the policy known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  The outcome of the vote was known for days since Republican Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) indicated that he would vote for cloture and in favor of the bill if it came to the Senate in a stand-alone piece of legislation.  It did and it passed, but the back-story is interesting since this could have been accomplished almost two years ago, but an even bigger story is what will happen to those people ‘wrongly fired’ since DADT became law?  I say they should go back and finish their contract.

But first, the story not being told very often is the repeal of DADT was brought to the Senate by an Independent thrown out of the Democratic Party by zealots, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Republican Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).  It came without a single Democratic sponsor and but for the tenacity of Lieberman and Collins, the moment to celebrate would not have come.

Once signed by the President it is up to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with an implementation process that will do away with this Clinton-era law.  And while I remain of the mind that we should have listened to the military leaders actually fighting the war, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Army Chief of Staff who told Congress they wanted the policy to remain, one question about implementation immediately comes to mind.

Should we not bring the people that did not complete their contracts, but received Honorable discharges for “coming out” back on active duty to allow them to finish their contract? They say it is all they wanted and that they were wrongly terminated.  Fairness says we must bring them back – unless all people used DADT as an easy way to an Honorable discharge and easy out.

Since 1993 about 14,000 servicemen were discharged under the DADT policy.  Of those the Department of Defense reports that approximately 88% were discharged for “homosexual admission” and received Honorable discharges. That means of the 14,000 discharged, 12,300 walked into their commander and said, “I’m gay” (or came out in the gay vernacular).

All 12,300 of them were volunteers and they did not complete their contracts.  They all knew that the act of those words, “I’m gay” would put them on a fast track out of the military.  More importantly, the argument from the beginning, at least by gay groups, was that these people were “fired” – none of them resigned for being because they were gay.  They were fired and fairness in wrongful termination is giving back the job.

Yes, lives will be disrupted and people will be inconvenienced, but that happens to Reservists and members of the National Guard all of the time.  We are only talking about a few thousand people and they all wanted to keep their jobs so there should be a groundswell of support by them to return. 

How better to remedy what members of gay organizations called the wrongful termination of thousands of our most patriotic troops?

Well, I agree.  The Congress proved me wrong on Saturday and I want to right this wrong.  This can be the 2010 equivalent of the 40 acres and a mule promise of 1865. I will agree they were fired if they agree to serve.  Give them their jobs back and let them start right back where they were the day they walked into their commander and came out.

These people were wronged and their careers unfairly cut short for telling on themselves.  How awful.  The way to right this wrong and to help remedy one of our ‘nation’s greatest embarrassments’ (not my words – the words of one of many gay groups that advocated for the end of DADT) is to bring them all back to complete their service.

The Pentagon should begin sending the notices the moment the President puts his pen to paper.  This will allow wrongly fired troops time to get back into fighting shape and for those that had their epiphany of their sexuality just before a deployment or right before it was time to go to sea – take them back first and reinstate the orders they were under to deploy.

It had to be that people who realized they were gay after receiving deployment orders or finding out that another float was coming up must was coincidence. I mean, just because every gay guy I knew that left the military by homosexual admission did so because he simply wanted out can’t be the reason that most people did.  I know the trigger for my own sexual epiphany was getting orders so why should that be different for anyone else?

Oh wait, no, I knew I was a homo pretty early on and did not go to my commander and tell on myself because I actually loved the military.  But I must be the anomaly and those in the military serving proudly today without slapping a rainbow on their HUMVEE must be oddities too.  Your experiences must be the ones that are overwhelmingly the norm. 

But it makes no difference now.  I say you should all be called back – and called back as soon as possible.  All of you want your jobs back and I, for one, would like to give it to you.

So pack your bags, kiss your husbands (or wives) and get ready to take on the enemies of freedom all over the world.  Little secret: gay people have been serving from the start and they have all been okay and but for being hurt, I’d still be there.

You deserve to go back and I cannot wait to see all 12,000 of you in uniform again.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host in southern California.  He is heard on AM 600 KOGO and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.comor steve@steveyuhas.com

On Wednesday another convert to Islam was arrested in what the F.B.I. is calling a real attempt to bomb an American Armed Forces Recruiting Center in Maryland. Antonio Martinez, who called himself Muhammed Hussain, is a U.S. citizen and was arrested by authorities after he attempted to detonate a bomb outside Baltimore.

There is no question that his action was an attempt to kill in the name of Islam.  As he attempted the fake detonation the words Allah Akbar flowed easily off his now radicalized tongue.  What is uncertain is whether or not what he did is a crime or an act of war and how he should be treated now.

America has been fighting the War on Terror since September 12, 2001.  Before the very public invasion of Afghanistan began there were already special operation troops and CIA assets on the ground in countries all over the world acting on America’s behalf to avenge the murder of thousands of people – also perpetrated by Islamic fanatics.

Today we are in an unofficial state of war against terrorism.  A Lexis search is clear that legislators, the judiciary, and both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama refer to our action against terrorism as a “war.”  Given that, it should be asked whether or not the war is happening only at locations overseas where we have conventional troops and drones firing on the enemy or if the war can also be fought on American soil.

Last month a Somali-born man was apprehended after yelling Allah Akbar when he was dialing a cell phone he thought would detonate a bomb he planted near a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon.  The F.B.I. was involved in that case too and nobody was harmed.  The question here; however, is whether or not what the Islamic fanatic did was an act of war or a criminal act.

To put it plainly, we are either a nation at war or we are not.  If we are at war then these two should be in the custody of the United States military and being treated as enemy combatants.  Only if we are not at war should the F.B.I. and the Justice Department have control of the “cases” against these two Islamic fighters.

All one need do is look at how these two are being treated and it is not difficult to conclude that the War on Terror is a war that some would like to keep exclusively overseas.  Both men are in custody by the United States, but not the military.  If their acts were committed overseas we would not even debate who should have control of them, but because it happened here we’ve decided that the same people responsible for the prosecutions of Martha Stewart and Barney Madoff should be in charge here too.

It is absurd to keep referring to the struggle against radical Islam as a war and then, when you have an opportunity to treat actual enemy combatants to the rigors of military justice you back out and hand them over to civilians, give them lawyers, and allow juries to determine their fate.

Alarm bells should have sounded throughout government when last month’s trial of an al Qaeda member brought to the United States nearly ended in acquittal because of one juror who refused to convict.  We got lucky and he was found guilty of only ONE count out of nearly 300 because one juror was intransient in his obvious guilt.

Jihadists belong in military tribunals and when they are picked up in the United States when they are caught with a detonator in their hand with what they believe are bombs either around a Christmas tree or focused on a legitimate military target during war, Servicemen, they should be whisked away to a prison like Guantanimo Bay in Cuba (GITMO).  They should not be sent to the local lock-up where run-of-the-mill thugs and criminals are held.

Some will disagree with me that military installations are legitimate targets by people with whom we are at war, but if we are at war those are the only legitimate targets according to the many Conventions we, and most governments, are party to.  In the event we are not fighting a state it is even more obvious that we should treat perpetrators of acts of war upon the United States with no “official” foreign national backing to the same justice as we would a fighter picked up on the battlefield.

United States territory is no less or more part of the War on Terror than any piece of real estate in the world.  If it is an act of war to fire at an American Soldier or Marine in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, or any other place on earth then it is equally so to make the same attempt here at home.  It is even more an act of war to contravene every convention and treaty and make civilians the target as happened just last month in Oregon.

Radical Islam is now part of the American culture and we must begin to treat it like the scourge it is.  If we cannot stomp it out with the power of persuasion then we must begin to fight it the same way here at home as we would fight it in the caves and deserts overseas.  Not doing that puts us at a greater risk because as the radicalization of young converts to Islam occurs so too will their acts of war against us.

Martinez should be handed over to the military and the F.B.I. and all government agencies should be told and reminded that we are a nation at war and that the rules of war apply on U.S. soil as much as it does anywhere else in the world. 

People may not like it, but the blood of the American people and the treasure of our citizens should not be sacrificed in order to feel good about how we treat monsters who would just as easily detonate a bomb killing innocent men, women, and children at a Christmas tree lighting as they would fire on the position of Marines or Soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Either we are at war or we are not and in the event of the latter stop saying it and bring the troops home because all is lost when we will not fight them the same way they fight us.  With every last drop of our intensity with a willingness to sacrifice the niceties to the realities that people want to kill us in the name of Allah.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO in southern California.  He may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com

By the time my friends and I arrived at the Manhattan apartment of entrepreneur Peter Thiel, conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter was already there.  She stood casually near a table having a glass of wine looking at the list of us who thought it important enough to help sponsor this event.  The event was simple: have 150 men and women who are conservative in their thinking get together to hear Coulter speak and take questions.

The difference between this group of 150 and any other group of 150 is that the conservatives that gathered in Thiel’s apartment overlooking Union Square were mostly gay (thus well dressed, but nary a one to be found on break from his show on Broadway – odd huh?  True story).

By the time the mingling ended and the welcome started the room was so packed that I found myself sitting on a leather sofa – hoping that there would be at least some comfort brought from the supple softness of the chair.  Comfort was not to come because it was hot, but what did was exactly what I expected from Coulter – including her take no prisoners approach to convincing people that being a social conservative was as important, if not more, than being a fiscal one.

So imagine my surprise when I read news accounts of the evening when reporters (many of whom could not have been there) began talking about “nervous laughter” and pounding on the notion that the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution has to do with race and not every difference that makes us individuals (that’s true by the way, but why should details matter?).

Then I realized that I was not reading news accounts of Coulter’s speech to GOProud, the gay conservative group that sponsored the event; rather, I was reading news accounts of what people on the right and the left wanted Coulter’s speech to have been about. 

Press outlets on the left and the right wanted nothing more than to be able to use Coulter’s speech to give a big fat I told you so to the gays that brought her to Manhattan.   So invested was the right in Coulter not being Coulter that World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah dumped her from some speaking engagement that she was not confirmed to speak at to begin with.

The left was invested too because showing that gays can stand in a room and not melt when Coulter arrives is something that they could not tolerate.

Perhaps most invested in the failure of the event were left-wing gay groups who believe that political discourse amounts to selecting beef or chicken at either an event at one gay leftist organization or another.  For all of the talk, dyking on biking, and the over-abundance of parades and rallies designed to enforce “diversity” in every possible way – no gay group is willing to believe that there is any diversity of thought in the gay world.

Being gay means one thing to many gay people: voting for Democrats and surrendering your right to rational political debate with anyone, let alone other gays, that may disagree with the big government, high spending ways of the current (or to be fair) or previous majorities in Congress.

What the event that GOProud proved is that you can have Ann Coulter, the darling of the right and whose collection of books is the bedrock that any conservative bona fides is built, in the same room as 150 of her closest gay friends and there would be no booing, throwing of pies, cakes, desserts, or anything of value.  It was amazing and to the political left, gay and straight, it was political anarchy because gays are not supposed to think that way.

Amazing to me is not the coverage (I expected it to be the way that it turned out), not the fact that nothing was thrown (we gays tend not to throw things at parties because 90% of us had a manicure that day), and booing is only done in NYC when Versace or D&G make a mess of their collection during fashion week.

On a whole the night with Coulter was great.  I was able to spend it with my friend who is a manufacturer in his own right, who simply wants to be left alone.  Michael Lucas was there too – he is a conservative who was born in the former Soviet Union and knows a thing or two about tyranny.  I hung out with them and loved it.  Some on the right will say that they are not conservative because they are not a doctor or a lawyer, but I’ll tell you this: you won’t find them preaching to a mega-church one day and having iPhone pictures in tight red t-shirts the next.

Conservatism is more about the perfect union than it is what you happen to do to make a living.  Unless it is illegal I can think of nothing that would make someone’s occupation incompatible with being a conservative.  None of my friends are as conservative as I am – I am both socially and fiscally conservative, but what is most important today?  Fiscal issues or social ones?

For me it is both, but for the vast majority of the country it’s the economy stupid and so long as some of my friends are conservative on those issues – I’ll let Roe v. Wade and the notion of judging a man by his occupation to the people who are comfortable with a sliding scale of sin.

I’m not that guy.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO in southern California.  He may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com and steve@steveyuhas.com

Whatever you think about Ann Coulter one thing is true – the woman is not “phobic” of anything. In fact if she is anything she is a true Christian open to spreading her faith and speaking to people that she believes can be solidly on the side of good. We are all flawed, but in the mind of at least one person, gay people are more flawed than anyone else. Lucky for gays like me, who lean right and are self-identified conservatives, Coulter does not think that way.

She was invited and accepted an invitation to speak to a gay Republican group called GOProud. The event is called Homocon and it will take place in New York City on September 25.

Shamefully, it was anger from right that was the loudest with one person in particular: Joseph Farah, editor of the World Net Daily. Not only was he opposed to Coulter speaking at the event, but he felt so strongly about it that he announced (via a press release, how classy) that he had to dis-invite Coulter from speaking at his conference about taking back America. Since then his public relations campaign lasted weeks with press releases offering him up for interviews about Coulter straying from Christian values by speaking to gays.

Sadly, I wasted my listeners time by booking him and I’m sorry I did for I saw a part of American politics that I’d never seen before: the absolute hate of gays by a few on the right.

Before our interview, Farah wrote on WND’s website: “Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about 'taking America back' when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very 'unconservative' agenda represented by GOProud.”

Don’t you love principle? He wants to take back America, presumably with all of the constitutional protections that people have like freedom of assembly and speech, but they don’t apply to him or his conference. Speech he dislikes is something he cannot abide. The man is like Canada with a website. Declare Coulter a bad Christian before she even speaks and demand she not speak at an event that is on the side of conservative victories. What a shame.

Still, taking America back from those who want to change it by lurching it to the left is a good cause. His dis-inviting Coulter shouldn’t damper his own little rally in Miami. Since she was “fired” by him (during an appearance on Fox News program Red Eye she told the audience that she was not confirmed and looking at the archives of the event, she’s not been on the website and you’d think she’d be the draw since she could draw thousands to any venue) he became the headliner at his conference and there are others there to prop up his speech.

Conservatives line up for a chance to talk about what is happening in America all the time, but for some reason Farah can only get a D-list of conservative America. I wonder why that is. Could it be because he does not represent real American thought about what it means to be conservative? Could it be that having a D-list group of others wanting to take America back will not be the draw that Coulter will be to Homocon.

The question I have for the people speaking at Farah’s conference is not whether or not they think America is on the wrong track, that is obvious, but it is if they believe gays to be the root of evil like Farah does.

A lot of gay people are conservative. They may not all sign on to every conservative social issue, but I know plenty of gay people who do, myself included. But, like many at GOProud, I want to be around people who believe in some basic conservative values. A strong national defense, not bowing down to dictators or giving up our national sovereignty to the United Nations, making certain that the national debt doesn’t bankrupt our country, and a litany of other things is important to me and other gay people as much as the straights who will be at Farah’s gathering.

If Farah were a true Christian he would welcome the opportunity to talk to gay people. Instead he chooses to ignore the sins of some on the right and embraces those who peddle in pedantic arguments about Kenya. Forget those on the right that get hookers on the weekends or tap dance in the men’s room at an airport – open gay conservatives are worse because they are, well, gay.

Farah also misses a very basic mathematic principle: many elections are decided with hundreds or thousands of votes. Those could be the very gay people he wants to ignore in the political process. If you are a politician going to Farah’s event you should ask yourself if you are willing to give up gay money, gay support, and gay votes.

If you don’t share Farah’s view that gays are the biggest sinners on the planet maybe you’re speaking at the wrong conference.

The shame of it all is I understand Christianity better than Farah does (and I’m a Jew!) and the claim to have cancelled the never-confirmed Coulter because she is not living up to your idea of what a being a good Christian is is truly shameful.

Your deciding that talking to gays is anti-Christian is silly, but then again, so is the fixation on Kenya. I wish you luck. Headlining your own show is tough, but Glenn Beck drew hundreds of thousands to his just yesterday. We’ll see how well you do in comparison.

But I am going to ask if your other speakers want gay money and support. If they don’t, I’ll be the first to let the world know. I’ll start with Michelle Bachmann because she’s talked to me and I’m an evil homosexual. I doubt she shares your view, but you made it so clear by comparing talking to gays like talking to the KKK that I just have to ask.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host in southern California. He can be heard on AM 600 KOGO from San Diego to Santa Barbara, Los Angeles to Arizona. Reach him at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com

As Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was making the talk show rounds on Sunday to talk about the terrorist attack against the United States on Christmas she came out with a most curious tale: the “system worked” as it should have.

On Christmas Eve, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam bound for Detroit, MI.  Stitched into his underwear was an explosive device that contained a powerful explosive – pentaerythritol (PETN).  He began his excursion in Nigeria with only a carry-on bag, no checked luggage, and without so much as secondary screening when he arrived in Amsterdam.

Napolitano went on to claim that investigators did not have sufficient information to keep the radical Islamist off of the U.S. bound aircraft.  The Secretary is apparently unaware that Abdulmutallab’s own father contacted the American embassy in Nigeria to report his own son’s radical views and the possible threat he posed to the United States.

If a father reporting on his son is not sufficient to raise red flags for flying in the United States one really has to wonder what it would take to keep a dangerous person off of an American flagged aircraft.

The only thing that worked on the flight was that after a 20-minute restroom visit and after passengers saw smoke and fire after hearing the pop pop pop coming from the terrorists seat was that passengers sprung into action to subdue the radicalized Nigerian.  Moreover it was luck – not luck that passengers acted; rather, lucky that the device, apparently the product of an al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen, did not work the way it was intended.

Had the plan been successful we would have been looking at a Christmas Day tragedy and the first attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.  There were 289 people on board the Detroit bound airplane and but for their courageous actions and a bomb that did not properly work they would not be here today.

Now come the questions.  Why wasn’t he stopped either in Nigeria or in Europe after his own father complained to the United States government that his own son was becoming radicalized?  Why did all of the terror watch lists that he appears on not automatically merge with the no-fly list?  Is the fact that aircraft still seem to be the target of choice for terrorists a fluke or is there something bigger planned and this was just another run-through?

So many questions and Congress will undoubtedly wade into the process of asking them.  Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will hold hearings to find out what happened to the information after the initial report from the terrorists father in Nigeria. 

What I would like to know is how can the Homeland Security Secretary say that the system worked when a bomb made it onto an American flagged airliner?

White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that the terrorist was put on a 500,000-name watch list, but it did not make it onto the no fly list.  I suppose that will be another six month review, but in the meantime – how safe are we on U.S. airliners?

Now the airlines are beginning to act on their own: on some you will be prohibited from getting out of your seat the first and last hour of the flight.  Others are saying that you will not be permitted to have a blanket over yourself during that same period.  None of these things will stop a truly devoted terrorist from doing harm to a jetliner full of innocent people.

What needs to happen is something that we should have done a long time ago.  We need to adopt the Israeli method of security screening where highly trained personnel begin the screening process miles from the airport and everyone goes through screening that ranges from invasive personal interviews as well as using cutting edge technology to ensure the safety of the people flying on any aircraft out of or into Israel.

The politically correct screening process where random searches are done on the whim of the security agents in chare at the time at the airport are insufficient to detect a dedicated terrorist.  I cannot tell you how often I am subjected to secondary searches, but I sit and watch as a multitude of people who meet the description of terrorists simply remove their shoes and walk through the metal detector.

It takes longer for me to go through security in the United States than it ever did in Israel and yet I feel safer there than I do here.  It is time that we get it right and adopt a method of screening that targets the people who are more probable to be terrorists than those who are not.  Terrorists today are typically young Middle Eastern males.  They should all be subjected to increased scrutiny and the randomness kept for the rest of the people going through security.

Does that mean that only Arabs are terrorists?  Of course not, but we must do better than just searching random people or those whose name appears on the no-fly list.  As we saw this weekend you must have to do something pretty amazing to get on the no-fly list since not even a report from the father of a would-be terrorist was enough to keep Abdulmutallab off of a plane bound for the United States where dumb luck and the action of passengers are the only things that avoided catastrophe.

Steve Yuhas is a radio host in southern California on AM 600 KOGO (San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles) and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com

Some are asking what is happening in the Republican Party today, but I pose the question about what has been happening in the GOP over the last four!  Since Democrats took control of Congress and in the latter years of their control Republicans in the House and Senate seemed like little more than mice among rats. 

Today the North Koreans launched a long-range missile over the sovereign territory of Japan.  Much like the Bush Administration before it, the Obama Administration sent war ships to the Sea of Japan and told the world that there would be “consequences” if North Korea launched the missile.  They did and America is showing the world her teeth: they’re having a meeting at the United Nations.

That is something to be terrified about.  Oh, wait, there’s more – on the same day that a missile was launched from North Korean soil that has the ability to hit the west coast of the United States President Obama was giving a speech in Prague.  During that speech he told the crowd that he wanted to get rid of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Huh?

North Korea and Iran are working to get nuclear weapons and both are working toward a nuclear weapon and delivery system and the response from the President of the United States is to call a meeting, issue a statement “condemning” it (what does that even mean?  “I condemn the launch,” how silly) and his response is to read a statement from his teleprompter that said it is time for the world to get rid of nuclear weapons.

That is like telling the world to get rid of cigarettes or liquor.  Even the most observant Islamic terrorists were drinkers and those responsible for September 11, 2001 went to a strip club during the brief stay in America prior to the attacks.  Should we really believe that the people of the world who lead regimes that are set on the destruction of Israel or the United States would respond to a call from America to get rid of nuclear weapons?

Of course there are some who cried in the crowd in the Czech Republic who listened to Obama talking about ridding the world of nukes, but their tears came because just prior to calling for that he spoke of getting rid of the anti-missile systems that were agreed upon by the United States during the Bush years.  How can they trust us?  How can the people of the world believe the United States if they, countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, risk everything to side with us and then have a president come and give a speech only to turn his back on them?

If you were living in Eastern Europe today – a stone’s throw from Russia (a new Soviet-style country) – would you begin asking yourself who you could count on to keep their word? 

I would. 

How can anyone believe the United States when in the time it took to give a speech the safety and security of two countries that survived the U.S.S.R. was taken away with questions about whether or not America will keep her word.

Add the issue of the economy to the issues of our failed foreign policy, a foreign policy that failed under the Bush Administration as it related to Iran and North Korea, and you have a recipe for disaster.  When a carrier group or war ships are sent to a region of the world and a warning issues saying that we are prepared to shoot down a missile fired from North Korea and we don’t all we do is run into the trap of Osama bin Laden and are the paper tiger of his dreams.

Americans are angry about a lot of things: whether it is the economic downturn and bailouts, trillions of dollars in spending and new taxes to pay for things for years to come one has to ask whether or not we can afford to be weak in the world today.  Our foreign policy is now linked directly to our economic uncertainty.  Would China buy the bonds to fund the government expansion if we shot down the North Korean missile?  Probably not, but the question is did they tell us so?

If they did and we listened they will have become the de facto foreign policy advisor to the United States.  Our foreign policy is inexorably linked to our economy and is during good times and bad.  But it is during bad times that we have to worry about our foreign policy being dictated by foreign governments. 

As Americans begin to gather for tea parties around the country it is time for us to rise up and say enough is enough.  We have a right to revolt against a tyrannical government and the government has lost touch with her people.  President Obama and the latter years of President Bush have become the equivalent of our fight with King George.

King George dismissed the anger of the American people too and one bets that in the portrait that hangs of him in Buckingham Palace the only thing Queen Elizabeth thinks when she stares at it is what a great thing America would have been to have as part of the UK.

Then she turns on her iPod and listens to a speech from Barack Obama.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO in southern California.  He may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com.

The New York Times is reporting that the Bush Administration scuttled plans for an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz.  The Times’ report says that Israel requested and was denied permission to fly through Iraqi airspace in order to rid the world of a nuclear facility that will surely be used to produce a militant Islamic nuclear weapon. 

Israel was forced to act on her own once before and the world saw her foresight a decade later and it would do us well to heed a lesson of history.

On June 7, 1981 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to strike the French-built Osirak reactor, located 18 miles south of Baghdad.  The air strike was criticized by the entire world, including the United States, and the UN Security Council called the strike a “clear violation” of the UN Charter.

Not surprisingly a decade after the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor the world leaders wrote letters of thanks to the Israeli government for ridding Saddam Hussein of his ability to achieve a nuclear weapon.  One thing that must be said of Israeli intelligence – it’s good.  Compared to that of our own and the world Israel’s robust espionage program runs circles around that of Western nations, including the United States.

The USA had our security apparatus neutered many espionage programs in order to please the political left at the expense of missing the human intelligence that is vital when conducting war and public diplomacy.  The world knows that Iran is producing nuclear material – that is a fact and is not disputed by even Iran.  What is disputed is how to deal with Iranian ambitions and thus far the world decided that chatting about it at the United Nations and the European Union is how best to deal with a nuclear threat.

If the Times’ piece is accurate and the Bush Administration is itself skeptical that the unconventional manner it is taking to stop the almost certain creation of an Islamic fundamentalist bomb will fail.  Interruption of the supply chain to Tehran, sabotage of the materials used for the reactor (including parts and supplies) and other covert actions are having no effect on the mullahs who issue fatwas and prayers for the destruction of the Jewish state.

What did Israel want?  According to the report she wanted to purchase bombs capable of destroying, totally, the nuclear facility in Iran and the ability to fly over Iraq to get to the site.  She did not ask for American bombers or pilots (although I know a few who would have volunteered), Israel did not ask for American support in what would surely be a diplomatic nightmare that would follow.  What Israel wanted was for America to allow her to do what the entire world is too frightened or timid to do itself.

Israel wanted to destroy a nuclear reactor that is producing the material aimed at her destruction and the Bush Administration said no.  The rejection of an Israeli plan to rid the world of what is perhaps the single largest military threat is nothing short of disaster and we cannot blame President-elect Barack Obama if Iran develops a bomb within months of taking office.

There are few things that can plunge the world into a world conflagration, but one of them is an exchange of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.  There is the continued threat of an arms race in that region because of the instability that a nuclear Iran would create in a region where stability is the only thing that keeps one country from invading another.

Bush should have allowed Israeli planes to fly over Iraq and the Administration should have provided Israel with the weapons she needed to do what the world will not.  Now we sit on the precipice of an Iran capable of destroying Israel and creating a conflict that will make the current operation in Gaza look like a picnic.

The legacy of the Bush Administration will be left to history and one can only hope that historians do not have to footnote every mention of a nuclear Iran with a footnote that it happened on the watch of a President of the United States who coined the term “war on terror.”

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO www.kogo.com in southern CA.  He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com

One million Israelis faced what became a daily barrage of rocket attacks in southern Israel over the last three years.  Now Israel is fighting back with air strikes on terrorist training facilities, weapons caches, tunnels used to transport fighters and explosives and terror leaders in the Hamas.  It took years for Israel to respond, including during a period of calm that was used by Israel to discuss peace with the Fatah leader, Abu Abbas (himself a terrorist, but a more moderate politician) but was used by the Hamas to fortify and re-arm. 

Palestinians are hostage to the Hamas in Gaza and that is sad, but what is angering is some of the coverage and some of the political rubbish coming out of the mouths of even American leaders.  Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the man who never stops running for the Democratic nomination for president, called for a United Nations investigation for what he called Israeli war crimes.  In a statement he called Israel’s Gaza operations a “…disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law. Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”

Seems that Kucinich decided to take the crazy pill and jumped on the bandwagon of Cynthia McKinney (another former Democrat who ran for president) and others who believe that the Hamas was knitting when Israel began her campaign to liberate her people from a constant barrage of attack.

McKinney made news on Tuesday when she claimed the Israeli Navy fired machine guns into the water then rammed the boat that she was on.  McKinney’s boat, the Dignity (registered in Gibraltar and allegedly carrying medical supplies donated by Cypress) was trying to land on the beaches of Gaza during a military conflict – the group says that they feared for their lives.  Amazingly the evil Israeli Navy not only offered help to this idiotic band of terrorist sympathizers, but also escorted them back to where they came from (except McKinney headed to Lebanon so that she could start calling news outlets – after all it has been a long time since anyone wanted to talk to her – she hadn’t hit a Capitol policeman lately).

Why is it that the terrorist sympathizers all seem to come from the far left?  That is not to say the normally wrong on most political issues left, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) support Israeli actions to defend her people, but the far left lives under the misconception that protecting the Hamas is good and that Israel protecting her people is evil and a war crime.  Only on the far left does that kind of logic live.

One has to ask the question that Israeli leaders have been asking all week, but that no American politician has yet sufficiently answered: How many rockets would have to fall in southern CA, AZ, NM or TX or anywhere along the northern Canadian border before America took action against the group responsible?  My guess is very few – maybe one or two depending upon who is in the White House at any given time.  If you agree that any leader of the United States would take bold and decisive action against any form of aggression aimed at America by another country how can anyone argue that Israel is not doing the right thing?

The problem for Israel is context.  American reporters grew tired of standing in southern Israeli towns to report on the two thousandth rockets that smacked into an Israeli town or village so they retreated into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv so they could live a normal life while a million Israelis lives knowing that once they heard the siren they had about 30-seconds until a rocket would hit.  The context is journalists being lazy and not providing the American people the whole story: a story that includes illegal tunnels, a massive arms build-up in Gaza and the fact that Palestinians could have turned Gaza into the beginning of their own country, but chose instead to install a terrorist group as their leader.

While New Year’s Eve parties were cancelled all over the Middle East to show “solidarity” with the people of Gaza another question comes to mind: if all of these countries canceling multi-million dollar fireworks displays at five star hotels and palaces built from oil wealth felt such solidarity with the Palestinians – why not allow the Palestinians in to live in their country?  Simple: they would rather have a conflict than a solution because it keeps their own people from wondering why their leaders drive a Rolls Royce, live in luxury and behave in ways that they chastise their own people for indulging in while their people are forced to live in squalor with rationing and small paychecks.

Having an enemy of Israel is good for all of the despots who call Israel a Zionist Entity and question her right to exist on one side of their mouth while kissing and hugging the leaders of the Western world with the other.  Lesson one in Mid-East politics is never listen to what a leader says in English, but listen to what they say in Arabic – you’ll find they are seldom the same.

The next step, after pinpoint bombing of targets inside Gaza (bombings that happen to civilians because the Hamas hides behind civilians and in hospitals, schools and residential neighborhoods – Israel does not target them; the Hamas uses them) will most likely be a ground offensive to route out the terrorists and to destroy their leadership and weapons.  Israel is typically good at that sort of thing.  My prayer is that Israel doesn’t lose her political stomach for such an attack and go into it without the will to win.

Learning from the mistakes made by the United States in Iraq and by Israel herself during the Second Lebanon War are important today.  If you want to change the reality on the ground you have to change what the ground looks like.  Let us hope that Israel is able to wipe the slate clean and to give the Palestinians to make good on their second attempt to create in Gaza what they should already have created: the beginning of a Palestinian state.

A quote by the Consul General of Israel, Jacob Dayan, from my radio program comes to mind that all Palestinians (and some US representatives and attention seekers) should consider, “If you go to bed with a rocket launcher on your roof you should not be surprised when you do not wake up.”

Indeed.  It is time to be rid of the Hamas and their leadership; then Israel and the world must move on to the real problem: Iran.

The words of President George W. Bush were not new, but the visceral (and comical) reaction by the Obama campaign was. In a speech to the Israeli Knesset to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state Bush told the Israeli lawmakers what he has been saying for years. Simply put: talking to terrorists and the leaders of states intent on the destruction of both the West and Israel is and will always be a futile measure.

Senator Barack Obama is the likely nominee for the Democratic ticket to face John McCain (and hopefully someone more like a Republican) in November and in an amazing moment of grandeur Obama believed that the words to Israel were meant specifically for him. They could and should have been, but the White House denies any such intention.

So what terrible thing did Bush say about Obama without naming him? Did he mention that Obama sat in the pews at a church run by an anti-Semite for 20 years? Did he take issue with the fact that the Obama campaign falsely denied for more than a month that it had direct contact with people responsible for the death of Israelis (Hamas) and who continue to fire rockets in order to kill them?

Did he say that Obama’s own anti-Semitic, anti-white, everything is about me and other blacks is a danger to America or that many believe that he is a “sleeper cell” styled Manchurian candidate who is waiting to get to the White House in order to sell out our nation to Islamic fanatics? Not even close and no to all of the above.

All Bush said is that talking to terrorists and the leaders of rogue states is not only a futile effort, but would legitimize their position in the world. Something that Obama is very openly touting as his vision of American foreign policy under his leadership.

As Knesset members sat transfixed to a message of hope for the only nation on the planet that is the target of madmen and nuclear seeking despots – the biggest applause line came after Bush told them something that all of them already know (well, maybe not the few Arabs who help govern a state that Arabs don't even like to admit exists):

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

That is the Obama vision of the future! Bush did not mention his name; he did not have to, because so many people on the left believe that just talking to people will solve problems.

Tell that to FDR (WWII was not avoided when the British sent Neville Chamberlain to Hitler’s office and returned with a pledge for no attack). JFK, another Democrat, faced down evil and it was done with ships and planes – not polite diplomatic teas between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Believing their position to be so secure the Obama camp and his surrogates even trotted out Ronald Reagan as an example of a “talker not a fighter.” Unfortunately they bastardized his message and acts and while Reagan did talk to the Soviets that talk did not come quick. It took a huge expansion of American military power in order to bankrupt the Soviets into coming to the table.

So how did Obama respond to the painfully obvious? A press release that not only talked about how wonderful Israel is (a great change from what his preacher taught him), but words (as usual) that took what Bush said out of context and applied it to himself (as if the world revolved around his every word). Nobody in Israel cares about Barack Obama (well except Arabs and those who’d like to see her pushed into the sea – yes there are Israeli equivalents of Cindy Sheehan even there) – the majority fear his coming to the White House. It is not because he is black (don’t start the race card thing) it is because he is endorsed by terrorists and to a nation like Israel having an anti-Semite in the White House would be bad enough, but an anti-Semite that terrorists like would be even worse!

Said Obama’s release, “It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack.” He fails to point out anything false about what he considered an attack on his campaign. There was nothing new in what Bush told the world in Jerusalem – the only new kid on the block in Obama and his foreign policy expertise is going to school in the Far East and taking a couple trips to Hawaii (I guess it is foreign since he went to the best school there and it has a palace).

Obama said in October that he would engage in direct talks without preconditions with some of the worst leaders on our planet. Iran is responsible for a significant number of US military deaths in Iraq – yet Obama said if he was President of the United States that he would have tea with a man who wants Israel wiped from the map and who leads a nation killing our troops. Maybe they will have a discussion on anti-Semitism and the commonality they share about whether or not Israel should or should not exist, but one thing is certain, even if Bush was talking about Obama, nothing he said was untrue.

The best the Obama campaign could do is point out their love of Israel and how bad it is that Bush took to the stage in Israel to rally Jewish leaders and to reinforce our national commitment as an ally of the Jewish state. America was, after all, the first country on earth to recognize her and there are still countries that deny her right to exist (including people that are invited to the White House for cupcakes if Obama is elected). Obama cannot point to a single false statement in the speech given by Bush to the Knesset, but he re-affirms his position almost daily that in order to win against an enemy we have to chat with them first.

Tell that to FDR, JFK or Reagan. Did Obama learn nothing from his Ivy League education or does he take everything that Jeremiah Wright said during his weekly visits to the anti-Semitic, anti-White and anti-American church as gospel truth? It seems the latter (or it could be both since the Ivy Leagues are not what they used to be).

Obama believes that everything said in any forum to any group and with any intention is about him. It is not strange that someone who has the ego to run for leader of the free world would think that every word against his “policy” is an attack on him – what is strange is that he would run from his positions. Instead of a press release calling Bush’s words false he should have issued a release that said everything Bush said was bunk.

If Barack Obama cannot stand up to President Bush when all Bush is doing is saying the policy being advocated by Obama will not work then how will Obama stand up to leaders in the world who will not be moved by the empty rhetoric of an inexperienced Senator who got lucky in the world of politics? The only reason Obama is where he is today is because the people in the early voting primary states did not know him – they only knew what they heard. Ask the people of Pennsylvania or West Virginia; Kentucky or Ohio what they think of Barack Obama today and the answer is much different than before.

Today the people of West Virginia know who Barack Obama is and the media, albeit by force from talk shows and blogs, are covering what Obama actually believes. What he believes is that you can talk a killer out of killing or a terrorist out of terror. He is wrong. It has never worked in the past and will not work in the future.

Bush should have stepped up to the plate and said, “Yeah, I’m talking about Obama. He and his dangerous policies of appeasement will get us all killed. They’d make September 11, 2001 look like a fender bender.” Unfortunately that is not proper protocol for a sitting President. Maybe when President Bush is former President Bush he can go abroad and do what former Presidents Carter and Clinton do today and bash America and our leaders by pointing out that the leftist ideas for foreign policy will be to our detriment.

Until then Obama can just pretend that the world revolves around him and that every word uttered by any person opposed to what he believes is meant as a campaign endorsement for another equally undesirable candidate, but one who would at least think about America first - John McCain. I may dislike McCain's policies on everything from taxes to the environment, but at least I know that he will not watch Israel pushed into the sea and that the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House will never host a terrorist like the leader of Hamas or Hezbollah.

Of course there is a Democratic precedent for hosting terrorists at the White House. Not so long ago the most frequent guest in the White House was good old Yasser “kill the Jews” Arafat. Oh wait, we talked to terrorists then and where did that get us? That’s right – the Intifada and dancing in the streets when 3,000 Americans were killed by al Qaeda terrorists on 9-11. 

Great strategy on the left for dealing with terror folks and you want that repeated? I don’t.

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO in southern California and may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com