*UPDATE - This is also odd, considering early this morning Iran ruled out suspending enrichment.

I don't post this as some "good news" breakthrough kind of story, because I'm not buying it just yet, but Fox is reporting a story apparently coming across the AP wires, that unnamed diplomats have said Iran is considering a temporary, two month, suspension to their uranium enrichment program.

First of all, I'll believe it when I see it. Second of all, what good is more stalling? They laughed in our faces over the first UN deadline. The EU gave them a new... deadline (shouldn't they have been dead after the first line?). Then we've just had more "talks", and suddenly this? What's the long-term outcome?

So he stops suspending for two months, and then what? He resumes. He's a couple years off from having "the bomb" anyway, so it really doesn't mattre to him. All it does is make him feel like he's a puppeteer of the world. Another great victory brought to you by the always useful and relevant UN, that is good for nothing but raping little girls around the globe. Way to go guys.

 

Great news! We're letting two of our most prominent enemies in the country to speak at the United Nations! Who decided that this was okay? Fox News reporting, though no link yet, but Drudge has us covered:

Ahmadinejad to Cuba, New York Wed Sep 06 2006 20:23:38 ET

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to attend the summit of Non-Aligned Movement countries in the Cuban capital Havana in mid-September, an official said Wednesday.

"The president will take part in the summit of Non-Aligned countries in Havana," said the official from the president's office, who asked not to be named.

The summit of the 116-nation grouping is to take place between September 11-16, and Ahmadinejad is also expected to attend the UN General Assembly in New York that starts on September 12, the official said.

MORE

Ahmadinejad said in Tehran Wednesday that his attendance of the UN General Assembly would be a "suitable opportunity" to challenge Bush in a television debate.

"My forthcoming visit to New York for the UN General Assembly would be a suitable opportunity to hold the debate and all world people, especially the Americans, could hear and watch it without censorship," the news agency ISNA quoted the Iranian president as saying in a cabinet session.

Developing...

I'm having trouble digesting this right now, and I'm too hungry to think a whole lot about it. But there is nothing good about this.

*UPDATE*
Newsmax is on it too:

UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. officials tell NewsMax.com "they expect" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to travel to New York City to attend the 2006 General Assembly.

The controversial Iranian leader attended the 2005 GA and held several "colorful" news conferences during that visit.

Ahmadinejad will be at the U.N. at the same time key members of the security council will gather to decide what type of sanctions to impose on the Iranian regime for its refusal to suspend its "enrichment" of nuclear fuel.

Iran's U.N. mission in New York City had no comment on the expected presidential visit, however late Wedenesday evening, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) confirmed that Ahmadinejad told his cabinet in Tehran that he intended to visit New York City and speak at the United Nations.

In addition to the Iranian president, the U.N. also confirms that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, another Bush antagonist, also plans to visit the Big Apple at the same time.

Both Ahmadinejad and Chavez will first visit Havana to attend the summit of non-alligned nations being hosted by Fidel Castro the week of September 11.

President Bush is expected to address the U.N. General Assembly on the same day as Ahmadinejad, September 19. Bush will address the U.N. at 11:30 a.m., the Iranian takes to the same podium at 7 p.m.

At least there's a bit of good news:

The 2006 General Assembly will be Annan's last.

The U.N. chief expects to end his 10-year term January 1, 2007.

Let's hope that seeing Annan leave means less corruption and less little girl raping at a level Warren Jeffs could never dream of. I'm not holding my breath though.

*UPDATE*
Allah seems to think (correct me if I'm misreading) that this will backfire in the sense that it will open up the eyes of other western countries, about what sort of organization the UN is. I'm not that confident, because most of the west is in appeasement mode already.

 

I don't know what to say about this, because I don't know what it really means? Is he going hippy and talking "karma"? What is all this "threat by the universe"? I don't know. I post this more because it's humorous, not to show concern about it.

Drudge Exclusive:

Iranian president issues veiled threat to Bush, official news agency reports Wed Sep 06 2006 11:30:01 ET

Iran's official news agency reported Wednesday what appeared to be a veiled threat from hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush.

During the same speech Wednesday, Ahmadinejad reiterated a proposal from last month to debate Bush, suggesting on Wednesday that the United Nations would be the ideal venue, his official web site reported.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency said Ahmadinejad had warned in a speech that anyone who refused to accept an invitation would suffer a bad fate. It said the statement was a reference to Bush's rejection of an invitation by Ahmadinejad for a televised debate.

The official news agency did not provide any exact quote from Ahmadinejad containing those words, but reported that he said them. It quoted Ahmadinejad directly as saying: "This is not a threat by me. This is a threat by the entire universe. The universal trend is against suppression."

Developing...

 

Not a huge story, but Romney is worthy of praise for this decision, and I thought it warranted a post:

BOSTON (Reuters) - Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday said Massachusetts would not provide any security support for former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami's weekend visit, calling his planned speech at Harvard "propaganda."

Khatami is due to speak on Sunday at Harvard University in Cambridge on the "Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence."

Romney said Khatami will not receive a state police escort or any other state help. Federal officials will attend to his security.

Romney, a 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, called the visit "a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who lost their lives at the hands of extremists, especially on the eve of the five-year anniversary of 9/11."

"The U.S. State Department listed Khatami's
Iran as the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism," Romney said. "For him to lecture Americans about tolerance and violence is propaganda, pure and simple."

This doesn't appear to have stopped Khatami's visit to Harvard, but it does send a message that should have been sent by the federal government. Read the rest...

 

Who didn't see this coming? Anyone else getting Deja Vous?

LAPPEENRANTA, Finland (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Saturday to try to clarify Iran's stance on halting uranium enrichment within two weeks and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan held talks in Tehran to try and settle the standoff.

Annan's visit to Iran takes place two days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported Tehran had failed to meet the U.N. Security Council's August 31 deadline to suspend sensitive work.

The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking atomic bombs, said on Friday it was consulting European governments about possible sanctions against the Islamic Republic, but the EU signaled it wanted to see more dialogue with Tehran which says its atomic activity is aimed at producing power.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited about the prospect of more empty resolutions! My brother takes a tougher stance when one of his daughters doesn't share toys with the other. Maybe we should put him in the UN to put Iran in "time out" like he does with the girls. It would be tougher than what we're doing now.

But Solana told reporters: "There's no deadline, whenever we finish ... We are going to start in the coming days and I hope that it will be very short. We don't need many meetings."

So they had a deadline that they failed to meet. Now we've given them another 2 week deadline with absolutely no reason to believe anything will change, but even that two week deadline is really a non-deadline? Boy are we lucky to have the UN.

 

We all remember the Muhammad cartoon controversy that lead to countless riots all over the world, including the killing of Christians in Africa, the torching of fast food restaurants, etc. etc. I don't even feel like digging up links, you remember the insanity over a few stupid cartoons, only a couple of which were even offensive. You might also recall that the imams that got everyone worked up, used fake images that they themselves created to incite the Muslim community (as if they need a reason for violence).

At any rate, check out this Drudge exclusive, and tell me if you expect to see the same sort of reaction from Jews around the world:

Iran launches cartoon exhibition on Holocaust Mon Aug 14 2006 11:40:15 ET

An exhibition of more than 200 cartoons about the Holocaust opened Monday as Iran's response to last year's Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

The display, showing 204 entries from Iran and abroad, was strongly influenced by the views of Iran's hard-line president, Mahoud Ahmadinejad, who drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a "myth" and saying Israel should be destroyed.

One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other.

Masoud Shojai, director of the host Caricature House, said a jury looked through 1,200 entries received after the contest was announced in February by the co-sponsor, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri.

Developing...

Obviously Jews are civilized people and won't act out like the savages did over the Muhammad Cartoons, but I wonder if the left would defend their behavior like they did the Muslims by saying that they were "incited" and therefore somehow justified in their actions.

More from Dan Riehl...

 

(h/t HotAir)

Holy suicide bombs, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has started his own blog!!! If you look to the right side of the page you'll see 4 flags. Click the second from the left for his English translation.

Interesting points - Right now he has a poll question: "Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war?"

Of course Hitler2000 means "world war", but what's funny is I answered "no" and I was surprised to be in the majority (53 to 47). I suspect this is due to conservative blogs, mockingly linking to him. Otherwise he's got to feel like a real ass if people who go there as "fans" vote against his premise.

So far, I have a couple criticisms for Mr. A's blog. I don't like his comments being held for monitoring. I asked him why he's such an a-hole, and still don't see my comment showing up. So then I used the comment box at the side, which I guess is for sending a message (rather than commenting on a post) and told him he's a huge douche. I can't wait to see if I get a reply.

 

(h/t Drudge)

AP via Breitbart

The U.N. atomic agency has found traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian site linked to the country's defense ministry, diplomats said Friday. The finding added to concerns that Tehran was hiding activities that could be used to make nuclear arms.

The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential information, said the findings were preliminary and still had to be confirmed through other lab tests. But they said the density of enrichment appeared close to or beyond weapons grade _ the level used to make nuclear warheads.

Developing...

 

For the first time in 27 years and Iranian President has written a letter to an American President. Now, I don't see this any huge breakthrough because Ahmadinejad keeps going back and forth (remind anyone of North Korea over the years?). One day he's all friendly and wants to work with the UN, etc. and the next day he's denying the holocaust and calling for the annihilation. We've seen this go in circles for a number of months now, and I think if anything is clear, it's that this guy needs to go.

Setting all of that aside for a minute, here's a little about the letter from the AP via MSNBC:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to President Bush proposing "new solutions" to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian leader to an American president in 27 years, government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Monday.

The letter will be sent via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran which has a U.S. interests section, Elham told a press conference. Initially it seemed the letter had already been sent, but later Elham told reporters it would be delivered Monday.

In the letter, Ahmadinejad proposes "new solutions for getting out of international problems and current fragile situation of the world," Elham said.

It is the first time that an Iranian president has written to his U.S. counterpart since 1979, when the two countries broke relations after Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy and held the occupants hostage for more than a year.

Asked if the letter could lead to direct U.S.-Iranian negotiations, Elham replied: for the time being, it's just a letter."

Read on...

As I said, I don't know that this means much more than any of the other seemingly cooperative statements we've seen from Ahmadinejad in recent months, but it is interesting that it's sort of a "breakthrough" in that it hasn't happened in almost 3 decades. I guess what I'm saying is cross your fingers, but don't hold your breath.

What I can't wait to see is how liberals handle this. Will they praise Ahmadinejad for being so diplomatic and trying to work with our "war criminal" President? Or will they be silent since many has said "Bush attacked the wrong country, Iran was the real threat? And why not N. Korea!?" The right has always argued that different situations call for different measures. While I agree with many that military action will probably be required to deal with Iran eventually, this just shows that the President is trying (like he and previous Presidents did with Iraq) to work the UN route and handle the situation peacefully.

I may not think this letter means much, but some might argue it's a sign that diplomacy and pressure are working a little. Again, this is a pretty unusual move. Could Iran be feeling like the heat is on them now? Who knows. But what I can say is that Saddam Hussein didn't operate like this. He was firing at no-fly zone patrolling planes regularly, and when UN inspectors were actually in country he never gave them unfettered access, and it was just a total runaround waste of time to even bother with going that route. I still believe the WMDs were there for many reasons, many of which can be found here, but that's another story.

This story is also today's liberal bias in the headlines case:

Now admittedly, I'm nitpicking here a bit, but I thought I should at least mention it, because I did notice it. Why is it "Iranian President" but only "Bush" Not "President Bush"? Of course it makes it shorter and sweeter, and they could argue: "everyone knows who Bush is, but they may not know the name Ahmadinejad", and that may have some merit, but I think the "Bush" thing is all too common. Headlines constantly read "Bush" not "President Bush", and I can't count the amount of times I hear news correspondents reporting from Washington refer to him as "Mr. Bush". I can't recall hearing "Mr. Clinton" very often though, and usually when they mention him he's referred to as "President Clinton" or "Former President Clinton". Libs would argue that this is in my head, but the simple fact is it's disrespectful that these reports insist on calling him "Mr. Bush", and it's an obvious "he's not my President" dig.

As for this specific headline, I don't know if MSNBC or the AP is to blame. My guess is the AP since I see similar headline when I do a few news searches.

For something along the same lines, Expose the Left has video of two segments from ABC's This Week in which host George Stephanopoulos refers to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as "Speaker Pelosi". Stephanopoulos first "slipped" during his interview with Tom Delay, and again later with Howard Dean. Wishful thinking Georgyboy?

And for all the liberals whining about the "Bush mouthpiece" Fox News, and citing Bush's hiring of Tony Snow as an example... I haven't heard you whining about Stephanopoulos hosting a supposedly non-partisan program, even though he is the former senior political adviser press secretary, and communications director for former President Clinton. Selective outrage? And by the way, Snow was a "Fox News commentator" and a columnist, and former speech writer for Bush 41 and this was never a secret. And as I'm finishing this, I just heard Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends say that Stephanopoulos "slipped" 4 times! Honest mistake, right?

***QUICK UPDATE***
Props to India Daily for writing a proper headline: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly written a letter to U.S. President Bush to propose new ways to resolve tensions"

***UPDATE***
Hot Air has posted on this, and sums up the entire Iran situation as it stands today.

 

That's right folks, the newly nuclear nation that wants to wipe Israel off the map, denies the holocaust, and claims to have 40,000 suicide bombers ready to attack British and U.S. targets if their nuclear facilities are attack have been elected as VICE CHAIR OF THE U.N. DISARMAMENT COMMISSION!!! Shouldn't we instead be commissioning the dimarament of Iran!?

I can't believe I missed this story that is already a couple days old, but it made O'Reilly's most ridiculous item tonight. Crosswalk.com has the story (excerpt below):

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Under threat of United Nations Security Council sanctions for its own nuclear program, Iran has been elected to a vice-chair position on the U.N. Disarmament Commission, whose mission includes preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

The commission's deliberations began last Monday and are scheduled to continue until April 28. On the first day of the commission meeting, Iran along with Uruguay and Chile was elected as one of three vice-chairs.

Like I said... "WHAT!?" O'Reilly's right, when are we going to wise up, boot the UN out and build some condos there!? The UN only exists to undermine the United States, create an NWO/One world government because the rest of the world can't stand us being a lone superpower, and they don't serve our interests. Get the UN out of NY.

Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. said that electing Iran to a leadership position on the UN Disarmament Commission was like asking the "cat to guard the milk."

Dude, come up with better metaphor before you speak. I mean, you're on the right side of this thing, but what are you talking about with this cat/milk noise? Not to mention that for the rest of my life, whenever I hear about cat and milk in the same sentence, I'm reminded of British politician George Galloway's little incident.

Back to Iran...

The commission was established by a U.N. General Assembly resolution in 1952 to pursue "effective international control of atomic energy" and make sure that atomic energy was used only for peaceful purposes.

Yaeh, I'm sure that's why Iran wants the vice-chair seat here...

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently referred Iran to the Security Council, where the U.S. is pushing for sanctions to be leveled against the Islamic Republic.

Exactly. So again, why are we appointing them to high positions in the U.N. Disarmament Commission!?

Read the rest here.

By the way, if you haven't already seen the photos of anti-American paintings on the outside of the American Embassy in Tehran, that I posted earlier, check them out now, in this post.

 

Ah, our good ol' buddy Russia, right? WRONG! Not only are many insisting that Russian military helped Saddam move WMDs to Syrian in days before the war, not only do documents reveal that Russian and Turkish scientists were in Iraq hiding from UN weapons inspectors, not only do documents reveal that Russia was tipping Saddam off about our military strategy, but they are still openly arming Iran including air defense systems.

Now, I don't believe that this is illegal, but it's certainly not good news. A hat tip to the Drudge Report for leading me to this story from the Russian News & Information Agency:

MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) - The chief of the General Staff said Wednesday that Russia would honor its commitments on supplying military equipment to Iran.

"We discussed supplies of military equipment to Iran, including the Tor M1, in the framework of bilateral cooperation, but it does not fall into the category of strategic weapons," Army General Yury Baluyevsky said after talks in Moscow with NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General James Jones.

"And I can assure you it will be delivered under the control of the relevant organizations," he said.

At the end of 2005, Russia concluded a $700-million contract on the delivery of 29 Tor M1 air defense systems to Iran.

The Tor-M1 is a fifth-generation integrated mobile air defense system designed for operation at medium, low and very low altitudes against fixed/rotary wing aircraft, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle), guided missiles and other high-precision weapons.

Thanks buddy! What would we do without freinds like you? This is really nothing new though. Russia is our enemy, it's as simple as that. I don't know if it's money driving them, or that they hate us being the only super power and they have some long term plan to elevate their own status by any means necessary, or what... But they are certainly not a friendly nation to the United States.

Let's not forget that in recent years Russia has been holding joint military exercises and war games with China, India, and... Sweden(huh?). I don't know that these are the exact stories I am remembering, but I couldn't quickly dig up the links, so these are what turned up from 3 quick searches. They're probably just different coverage of the stories I'm remembering though.

On a side note, I found an interesting link at the bottom of this story, the text of which read: Iran: a cradle of mankind, home to one of world’s most powerful historical empires and one of Asia’s most original national identities (33 photos). Clicking through takes you to a Russian language page so I didn't have a clue what it said, but there is a numberd link list below the photo, that allows you to navigate a slideshow.

So despite not knowing Russian, I figured I'd take a quick glance through this little slide show to see what I could see and found 3 rather interesting photos of paintings that are apparently on the walls of the American Embassy in Tehran. I used the AltaVista Babel Fish Translator to translate the captions included with the photos below. The photo credit for all photos (translation) reads: RIA Of news. Photos The Yevgeny Bugas.

My first thought when I saw this one was that I was looking at some American college kid's dorm room.

Fragment of painting on the building of American embassy in Teheran.

"We Will Make America Face A Severe Defeat"? Really? You don't believe that do you? First of all, that's ridiculous, second of all, why so hostile at this early stage? Thirdly, who painted that? I didn't realize Baghdad Bob's cousin Tehran Tom was such a talented artist.

Walls around the building of American embassy in Teheran.

I just think this third one is stupid.

Fragment of painting on the building of American embassy in Teheran.

Anyway, it's good to see that Iran, the country that wants to wipe Israel off the map, (sarcasm) appears to be open to diplomacy (/sarcasm).

 

Could Iran really make a Nuclear weapon in 16 Days? Yes, according to the U.S. State Department based on reporting from the AP. Via Bloomberg.com:

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.

Of course this comes a day after Iranian President Ahmadinejad delivered the "good news" that Iran has successfully enriched uranium and joined the exclusive club. Yah!

Interesting how Iran's announcement came just a day or two after the spun report that the Bush administration was planning nuclear attackson on Iran. Drudge, discussing this on Sunday's Drudge Radio, hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that Seymour Hersh delivered this story the way he did, specifically to make worldwide headlines, that would obviously do nothing but hurt the country. When you get down to the meat of the story, it's about one (of many) contingency plans, that don't involve "nukes" the way you think of them.. but smaller tactical/bunker buster type weapons such as the b61-11.

Basically Hersh knew that the he could make the rest of the world hate America when they were all waking up to headlines "American Plans to Nuke Iran". But when you get down to it, it was one Pentagon plan discussed as a possible way to penetrate deep bunker facilities in Iran. It doesn't mean that this is going to happen, or that any military action will happen. But obviously we have to have contingency plans, and that is all that is going on here. The difference is, the leftwing press went crazy with it, just like Hersh knew they would. But the real outrage would be if we didn't have contingency plans in the works, and having people drawing up ideas for the best way to quickly take out important targets. This is discussed a little bit in this AFP article via Yahoo! News.

"There are always operational planning endeavours ongoing whether it's in Korea, whether it's in Southcom, whether its in Eucom, or Centcom," said Moseley, referring to the US military's combat commands around the world.

He added: "It's not appropriate to comment on particular military options."

Among the many challenges US military planners face in Iran is that its nuclear facilities are scattered and some are buried in undergound bunkers, raising the question whether they could be destroyed with conventional weapons.

Stipulating that he was talking about general capabilities and not an Iran scenario, Moseley said the air force's ability to destroy buried, hardened targets using conventional weapons depends on how deep they are.

"There are a variety of weapons that can penetrate concrete and steel structures, and there are variety of weapons that can penetrate a mix of concrete and steel and sand and rubble structures," Moseley said.

"It depends on how deep and it depends on how the structure is put together," he said. "There are potentials I would suppose of things so deep and so hardened that it would be hard to get through with anything."

Also, you might want to keep in mind when Seymour Hersh breaks a story, that he's the same Seymour Hersh that, in 2004, made unsubstantiated claims before the ACLU that our military took Iraqi women and boys, sodomized the children, and filmed it! That's right, He claims that our troops raped boys and filmed it and that the Pentagon has the tapes. Of course the KOS Kids ate it up. It's one thing for these POS liberals to attack the President unfairly and dishonestly, but it's another to accuse the troops of being child rapists Seymour. And It's disgusting to see the sick KOS troop haters buy this all the way, without a shred of evidence, simply because Hersh said so.

 

Working the other day with Fox News on the TV in the background, I heard the wicked witch of the White House Press Corps' voice like a drill in my brain. I turned around for just a second to confirm that it was in fact Helen Thomas and that she was in another unhinged rant on Scott McClellan, this time concerning pre-emptive strikes. As usual, Scotty remains cool despite constant interruptions and obnoxious and childish behavior out of Thomas.

I know Ian at Expose the Left likes to post these type of exchanges so I shot him a quick email to let him know what was going on. As usual he was quick to the web with the video, and after being able to watch it, I see Helen delivers a quote that might just make a great new slogan for the Democratic Party. I'm going to pitch it to Howard Dean later.

"The Law Is You Have To Be Attacked First."

Also, rumor has it Helen is one half of a budding White House Press Corps romance....

If you haven't already watched the video, check it out at Expose the Left now. Classic stuff.

 

Remember when the Bin Laden tape came out a few weeks back, in which he offered a truce? It was weird enough with out the French President of all people threatening the use of nukes against terrorists! I posted on it here. Well its seems they've secretly upgraded their nuclear capabilities, so Chirac isn't just talkin' tough... But what's going on? I mean, it's France!

(article excerpt, read the whole thing from The Guardian)

France has secretly modified its nuclear arsenal to increase the strike range and accuracy of its weapons. The move comes weeks after President Jacques Chirac warned that states which threatened the country could face the "ultimate warning" of a nuclear retaliation.

A military source quoted yesterday by the Libération newspaper claimed France had tinkered with its nuclear weapons to improve their strike capability and make this threat more credible.

The source said there had been two major changes: the bombs can now be fired at high altitude to create an "electromagnetic impulsion" to destroy the enemy's computer and communications systems; and the number of nuclear warheads has been reduced to increase the missiles' range and precision.

Of course at the same time France is apologizing for publishing the oh so outrageous Mohammad cartoons.

France has apologized for the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in some French newspapers, the official SANA news agency reported on Tuesday.

"We in France understand that these publications are raising Muslims` anger and that attacking any people`s faith lacks any feelings of responsibility," said French ambassador to Syria Jean- Francios Girault in a meeting with Syrian Minister of Religious Trusts Ziyad al-Ayoubi.

I'd now like to resurrect my image from my older post I mentioned earlier...

 

Hey Ahmadinejad, ya hear me now?

via AP by way of Yahoo! News:

VIENNA, Austria - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency agreed Saturday to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its suspect nuclear ambitions.

The decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board sets the stage for future action by the top U.N. body. The council is authorized to impose economic and political sanctions.

Still, any such moves were weeks if not months away. Two permanent council members, Russia and China, agreed to referral only on condition that no council action be taken until at least March.

Yes I hear you?

I guess you aren't familiar with the commercial... nevermind. But anyway, just wanted to call and personally let you know that you've been reported to the security council fella.

Yes whatever, we knew this was coming. But tell me about this commercial, I don't get it.

Well see there's...

I'll field this one Mr. President