Leaked Gates memo: U.S. lacks policy to deal with Iran

In what should be considered a news bombshell, The New York Times is reporting that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote a top secret memorandum to top White House officials warning that the U.S. lacks a long-range policy to deal with Iran's quest for nuclear capability:

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

It should come as no surprise that the Times is willing to leak classified information, but he timing of the leak -the memo is three months old- to coincide with the gap between the Won's nuclear summit and the Sunday news shows is quite interesting.  Allahpundit muses:

Exit question: Why was this leaked now? The memo was written in January but only today are “government officials” finally whispering about it to the Times. Normally I’d assume that it was leaked by the White House itself in yet another naive attempt to pressure allied powers about the severity of the threat, but the story’s simply too embarrassing to Obama. Presumably the leakers are insiders who are worried that, three months later, we’re still not taking the prospect of an Iranian bomb seriously enough. We will be tomorrow.

Whatever the source and motivation for the leak, it sends a clear message to Israel (just in case Obama's arrogant  and dismissive treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't do the trick) that any meaningful effort to stop Iran's nuclear march rests on the Jewish state alone.

WaPo Milbank compares Obama Nuclear Summit to Soviet-era Moscow

President Obama played host to an international Nuclear Security Summit in Washington this week.  Obama sycophant, Dana Milbank at The Washington Post is not impressed with the President's attendant treatment of the international press:

World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.

They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.

In the middle of it all was Obama -- occupant of an office once informally known as "leader of the free world" -- putting on a clinic for some of the world's greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.

The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama's eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: "I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session."

Reporters for foreign outlets, admitted for the first time to the White House press pool, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they're cracked up to be.

Yasmeen Alamiri from the Saudi Press Agency got this lesson in press freedom when trying to cover Obama's opening remarks as part of a limited press "pool": "The foreign reporters/cameramen were escorted out in under two minutes, just as the leaders were about to begin, and Obama was going to make remarks. . . . Sorry, it is what it is."

Alamiri's counterparts from around the world had similar experiences. Arabic-language MBC TV's Nadia Bilbassy had this to say of Obama's meeting with the Jordanian king: "We were there for around 30 seconds, not enough even to notice the color of tie of both presidents. I think blue for the king."

The Press Trust of India, at Obama's meeting with the Pakistani prime minister, reported, "In less than a minute, the pool was asked to leave." The Yomiuri Shimbun correspondent found that she was "ushered out about 30 seconds" after arriving for Obama's meeting with the Malaysian prime minister. A reporter with Turkey's TRT-Turk went to Obama's meeting with the president of Armenia, but "we had to leave the room again after less than 40 seconds."

Even the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was more talkative with the press than Obama. Michelle Jamrisko, with Japan's Kyodo News, noted that Hu, at his session with Obama, spoke to the Chinese media in Chinese, while Obama limited himself to "say hello to the cameras" and "thank you everybody."

Obama's official schedule for Tuesday would have pleased China's Central Committee. Excerpts: "The President will attend the Heads of Delegation working lunch. This lunch is closed press. . . . The President will meet with Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey. This meeting is closed press. . . . The President will attend Plenary Session II of the Nuclear Security Summit. This session is closed press."

Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said it was the most restricted set of meetings they had ever seen in Washington. They complained to both the administration and White House Correspondents' Association, which will discuss the matter Thursday with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

This critical assessment by Milbank is extremely unusual on its own, but when considered in conjunction with recent news of the President's ditching of the White House Press Corps to attend a non-existent soccer game, and serious questions about his mental health, it seems particularly unsettling.

But news from the summit is not all bad.  I'm sure we will all sleep better now that President Obama has secured nuclear concessions from Ukraine, Mexico and Canada.

Maybe Switzerland and Belgium will be next.

New Obama nuclear policy: major shift or status quo?

President Obama isn't wasting any time implementing more hope and change in the U.S.A.  Unfortunately, it involves hoping our enemies won't strike the U.S. with unconventional weapons, and a change in our long-standing, deliberately ambiguous nuclear policy toward nonnuclear states.  From The New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

The Wall Street Journal minimizes the real impact of this change, and emphasizes the fact that Obama's strategy preserves (for now) the longstanding U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons first, even against nonnuclear nations  (I presume only the ones that are not in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty).

I find it somewhat humorous that The New York Times is calling the changes a "sharp shift" in strategy and The Wall Street Journal is describing them as "modest."  Clearly the Grey Lady wants to reassure the left wing Peaceniks that Obama is systematically dismantling the nuclear policies of the evil George W. Bush.  The WSJ has sifted through the jargon, and found there's actually not much there there.