Friday, April 30, 2010 – Cliff May, Thad McCotter, Bill Gertz

Frank introduces the show with a monologue on the new START treaty, and why the Senate should reject it.  Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells Frank about the Committee on the Present Danger’s recent call for President Obama to define our enemy in the War on Terror.  Congressman Thad McCotter (R-MI) shares his thoughts on the United Nation’s coddling of the Iranian regime.  SFR regular and Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz finishes off this week with news on how the Obama Administration has buried its head in the sand when it comes to the threat from Communist China.

MONOLOGUE – April 30, 2010

But an update from me on the START treaty: the first hearing was held in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Former Secretaries of Defense William Perry, a Democrat, and Jim Schlesinger, a man who served both Democrats and Republicans, engaged in what has been described as a “love-in” about the START treaty; a little bit of a surprise as Jim Schlesinger is generally fairly skeptical about these things and properly so. But also, I think indicated in his prepared testimony (not so much apparently what he said but his prepared testimony) that he has some real concerns about this treaty and what is in the offing next.

This comes as our friend John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the United Nation, has a powerful piece on the cover of National Review dissecting this treaty and exposing it for what it is: really part of the theological approach of the Obama Administration to denuclearizing the world, but as a practical matter, denuclearizing us. John says, among other things in this cover story in Nation Review, “Substantively, the most appalling aspect of the Obama-Medvedev treaty is not its specific provisions, but what it reveals about President Obama’s national-security psychology. He has repeatedly said he believes lowering U.S. nuclear-warhead levels will encourage support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s weapons prohibitions on non-nuclear-weapons states.”

That’s probably a lot of gobbledygook for people who aren’t living inside the Beltway as John and I do; but basically this is the theory that if we disarm, that somehow that will cause people who are not supposed to get nuclear weapons to say, oh never mind we don’t need them (people like the Iranians, for example, or the North Koreans). Do you buy that?

Well John goes on to say, “This is the purest form of theology, since the empirical evidence is entirely to the contrary. As the Cold War ended [he goes on], Moscow and Washington made dramatic reductions in warhead levels, huge in percentage and absolute terms. Nonetheless, nuclear proliferation continued, and the pace is quickening.” Indeed it is. And that’s really my biggest concern here: the pace is quickening, we seem to be determined to ignore it (least the Obama Administration is); and instead he wants us to focus on this START Treaty.

This treaty that has serious problems with it to be sure: it does encumber our missile defenses, it does have verification shortcomings, it does have serious loopholes it appears: Christopher Ford of the Hudson Institute, a valued colleague of ours, formerly a senior member of the Bush Administration’s State Department points out, “it seems as though Rayo-Mobile long rage missiles which the Russians have made a serious investment in aren’t even counted at all in this treaty”—sound incredible? Well it is but it’s one of things that we’re hopeful the United States Senate will do serious due diligence on.

But here’s the really serious, most worrisome piece of this so-called denuclearization agenda of Barack Obama and that is: there is no modernization worthy of the name of our nuclear forces! The President has told us, oh yes he wants to rid the world of nuclear weapons but it isn’t going to happen in his lifetime, it could be you know what —40 years from now? In the meantime he wants us to rely on old, obsolescing, increasingly unsupportable nuclear deterrents that were designed in some cases, thirty, forty years ago.

Now we’re going to hear about a modernization program that will be accompanying this legislation pursuant to a requirement in the Authorization bill for the Defense Department last year. But ladies and gentlemen, the President has said there aren’t going to be any new nuclear weapons authorized by him. No new designs for nuclear weapons, even though the weapons that we have may be not only obsolete and impossible to sustain, but totally inappropriate for today’s deterrent challenges.

But going forward, he’s also saying we’re not going to test the old weapons that we have to ensure that they work, and the fixes that we’re going to have to make to keep them remotely viable actually work. And worst of all, as I’ve said before and I’m going to say again and again; we are saying to these scientists, to these engineers, to these technicians who are critical to maintaining our nuclear deterrent, keeping it safe, keeping it reliable, keeping it effective: we don’t value you or what you’re doing.

Well ladies and gentlemen, that is a formula for disarming the United States. That is one reason, not the only one, but one reason why we must defeat the START treaty. We need a real modernization program, we need a real commitment to nuclear deterrence, and we need to stop the danger that this whole idea represents that we are going to find ourselves increasingly saying to the world, you’re on your own, America is no longer a nuclear superpower, we are committed to denuclearizing frankly whether anybody else does or not. Lunacy I call it! Let’s see if these Senators will get their head around that and talk to you honestly about it and do the due diligence that’s required by them to ensure that we don’t enact a defective treaty and thereby put the Senate’s imprimatur on this larger, reckless unilateral nuclear disarmament program.

Those are my views. Welcome yours as always. The best way to get in touch with us is on our website here or on the Frank Gaffney facebook and twitter accounts. Let me know what you think. What would you like to hear about? Whether it’s with respect to START, denuclearization, or any other topic.