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.