The video above is from Speaker John Boehner’s YouTube channel. Frankly, I think Boehner has been an awful Speaker of the House. However, I give him credit for inviting Netanyahu to speak before Congress.
Check out Invitations at 
Whether our sacred Dear Leader was informed or not of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress is a side issue of little consequence. We should not be conducting our foreign policy just to soothe our Dear Leader’s feelings and to prevent him from having temper tantrums.
What will Iran do with a nuclear bomb? The evidence indicates, based upon their current and past behavior, they will used nuclear bombs to intimate, bully, and attack other nations, particularly Israel and us. Yet our Dear Leader seems have no intention of trying to stop Iran from getting the bomb when it seems quite likely that he could stop Iran.
To defend his nation, Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to go anywhere, speak to anyone, and do whatever is required. What we should be worried about is why our president and our leaders in Congress refuse to behave with the same dedication and loyalty to their country. (from a comment I left here)
If Obama had not made an issue out of his supposed right to approve Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, no one would have even noticed that that was a problem. As it is, because Congress is a separate and coequal branch of government, Obama does not have any right to approve the people who speak before Congress. Hence, the ruckus Obama made over the speech just proved to be yet another grab for power, an effort to silence opposition.
Citizen Tom 
@scatterwisdom, who wrote:
I would disagree. The same sort of thing might have been said of any number of serious conflicts throughout history, but many of them have receded into obscurity.
There are serious problems … really, one serious problem. But Ataturk was able to get a handle on this. He closed Turkey’s Islamic courts, ended its caliphate, modernized the nation from law to headgear (abandoning the fez in favor of the derby and fedora) and completely revamping education to stop the Muslim teaching of hatred of non-Muslims. As he put it,
He succeeded, and his success worked for most of a century. Alas, it was not permanent, as the Islamist Erdogan has dragged the country back to the jihadist ideology.
scatterwisdom wrote:
You’ve blurred together two separate effects, it seems to me. Much of the Muslim world hates the Jews and Christians and the decadent West in general, a problem only fixable at the education level. It is a tough job, but possible. The “parties” here are the Ummah (Muslim world) and everyone else. It is not just Israel at stake.
But Israel indeed has a lack of trust of their jihadist enemies. No hatred, just education based on constant and recent history. Remember when Israel was pressured into pulling out of the Gaza Strip on the nominal promise of peace (and considerable compulsion by the US at the time)? When this 2005 pullout happened, which involved Israeli military people evacuating their own citizens by force, it took only hours before the missiles started.
So much for peace. They wound up having to set up a blockade, and walls, to protect themselves.
scatterwisdom wrote:
This phrasing is interesting to me. What are you thinking of as the previous “travesty and folly in human history” that this would be “another” of?
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
The perfectibility of man is an interesting subject. Each of us has our own attitude toward self-improvement. Some have almost no regard for the subject. For others it is all that matters.
To be born-again Christian, the Christian must look to God as the author of our perfection. Each non-theist, of course, has to look elsewhere.
How each of us seeks to perfect ourselves defines, I think, the nature of our moral character.
You’re quite right about that, Keith. The self-imposed inhibition against speaking of Israel’s nuclear capability was so strong that occasionally a US official, even low ranking, would slip and make some public allusion to Israel having the capability and lose his job as a result. This was a very strong taboo for a long time. I wouldn’t read too much into DOJ coughing up the 1987 report in the court action. It is very dated at this point and they were going to lose the disclosure issue in any event, partly because the report is so old that it is hard to maintain that it has any national security significance at this remove.
Keith – one possible reason the 1987 report is hedged in its language is that there was an understanding between the United States and Israel (or at least between President Nixon and Golda Meir) that the U.S. would not discuss Israel’s nuclear capability publicly. It led to some fairly awkward, at times almost goofy, circumlocutions coming out of the White House and Pentagon in ensuing decades because the “secret” wasn’t really very much of a secret in any other part of the world.
Understood, except that this was a classified document for internal consumption only. And still it dances carefully — though not too much; it’s just less than blatant.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Incidentally, Google[Israel nuclear arsenal] and look at images for literally hundreds of political cartoons on the topic dating back many decades. They get a “mention,” it seems.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Lots of cartoons. Got to admit cartoons are my favorite art form. Dumb, I suppose, but it what it is.
I hate to suggest this. We should tell Iran if they develop a nuclear weapon, the US will supply nuclear weapons to Israel and aid Israel with nuclear reprisal missiles technology in event of an attack.. Iran needs to understand the risks and consequences of nuclear weapons. Maybe the US should ask the UN to approve a another nuclear bomb test in the Mediterranean so both Iran and Israel can witness. first hand what is in store if one irresponsible party starts a nuclear war. .
No one wants to even mention this because of the Apocalypse prophecy.. But does anyone really believe Israel is going to sit idly by and not procure a nuclear bomb once Iran has one?
Regards and good will blogging
Lots of people think Israel already has the bomb. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.
If the Iranians think Israel has the bomb, then rightly or wrongly they have already decided Israel won’t use it.
In any event, I don’t think what drives the Iranian leaders is what we think of as rational.
I checked the Thesaurus for the word you used (Rational) and its Antonym and found these two corresponding word descriptions
Rational – Wise
Irrational – Foolish
Yes, you made a good choice of a word in your reply to describe the root cause of all the turmoil in the Mid-East.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Israel has nuclear weapons, and has had them for many years.
Do you have any proof of your statement? I doubt it. Israel would not want to state they have a nuclear bomb because if they admit it, it would be an incentive for all the Mid East countries to want one to protect themselves from Israel.
Regards and good will blogging
@scatterwisdom,
As it happens, Obama’s pettiness has provided this proof. For decades Israel, one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet, maintained a careful “nuclear ambiguity.” Anti-nuclear and anti-Israel activists (often the same people) had fought for years to get US intelligence reports on Israel’s weapons programs released. A lawsuit was filed to this end last year, but the US Department of Defense fought the release because of the very substantial harm it would do Israel.
During Obama’s spat with Netanyahu, he ordered the DOD to release the report; it was handed over last month. As of 1987, Israel had fission weapons and long-range delivery, and were working on fusion capability which the DOD assessed they were on the verge of but had not yet achieved.
Obama is an ass, willing to put millions of people at risk of death and increase the chance of a new world war to assuage his hurt feelings.
==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Thanks for the info update. I was not aware of it. Start the nuclear clock again. It won’t be long before all the Mid East countries will now want nuclear weapons.
Regards and good will blogging
You sound for all the world as if this was new information. It has been well known, and assumed true, to all the Middle Eastern players and interested parties for half a century or so. Israel was actively working with South Africa and France from the beginning, and appears to have conducted a bomb test in the 1950s. But it has been their policy to not talk about this, which is a long way away from saying “they don’t have a bomb.” Remember that many of the creators of the US nuclear weapon and energy programs were in fact Jewish supporters of Israel.
An example: They offered Albert Einstein the job of President of Israel, and he declined. This was right about the time of their preparations for the first bomb test. Einstein wrote back:
Notice the “our Israel” reference.
As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, it seems to me that your concern should be focused on Iran, not Israel. Of course, the jihadists and Shariah and dictator nations of the Middle East have desperately wanted nuclear weapons since 1945. Many, topped by Iran, are quite prepared to use them, and unconcerned about “deterrents.” Sadly, their lack of concern seems justifiable.
The Islamic Republic (of Iran) with a nuclear weapon would be like a squirrel monkey with a nail gun — except that to the extent that Iran thought they could get away with it, they’d simply hand off a weapon to one of their many terrorist proxies and do the job remotely, claiming ignorance.
Iran already has an intercontinental bomb delivery system capable of reaching most of the US population: freighter ships. But if they denied responsibility, it would be hard to imagine Obama launching a nuclear strike at Tehran in return.
In fact, it would be hard to imagine any US president ordering this these days, in the face of strident media defense of Islam and condemnation of America. “We deserve it,” they would tell us again, but even more quickly and more widely than was done last time. Now they have the drill down pat, and we probably would be too emasculated to even offer a conventional weapons-based response. We’d just lick our wounds and go on blaming ourselves for jihadist atrocities. No doubt, Obama would call the situation “deplorable” again, as in “that dinner guest has deplorable table manners.”
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
@Keith
I suspect being hit by a nuclear weapon would produce a stronger reaction than you think, but heaven help us if we have a president like Obama in charge. Like as not, Obama would try to surrender.
@scatterwisdom
The fact Israel has nukes has never much frightened the other nations in the Middle East. Considering the source it is an odd form of flattery, but I think those other nations trust Israel not to use their power to attack or bully other nations with them.
What will set off an arms race is the knowledge Iran is likely to get nukes, and that is because they know what Iran will do with nukes.
Lord only knows what the people we elected must be thinking.
I just realized that our mutual acquaintance John Zande left a further reply on the DeHavelle site on the “New, Original or Useful” post, some days ago. I just now answered.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
You have my sincere sympathies.
😉
wonder why the US newspapers never mention Israel has a nuclear bomb. Would Israel use it if attacked by an unformed Iranian military force? I think so considering there are 49 mil Arabs surrounding 800,000 Israelites.
If you google “does Israel have nuclear weapons,” you will get some hits in the major media, but they did not cover the story Keith mentioned.
Presumably Israel has nukes. Would Israel use nuclear weapons? I think Israel would use nuclear weapons if its survival depended upon using those weapons. However, so long as Israel only has to fight neighbors armed with conventional weapons, Israel’s survival does not seem to be an issue.
@scaterwisdom, who wrote: “wonder why the US newspapers never mention Israel has a nuclear bomb.”
They mention frequently, and have for decades, that Israel is assumed to have nuclear weapons. It had not been “confirmed”; and in fact, even the newly released 1987 intelligence assessment dances around it a little bit, describing Israel’s weapons capability as being the equivalent of America’s in the mid 1950s. Of course, we had nuclear weapons then (and in fact, both the US and the Soviet Union had tested H-bombs by 1953), but the report doesn’t quite explicitly say that. An odd sort of barnyard dance to preserve the official fig leaf.
An article from the Economist this year casually mentions Israel’s weapons and talks about their delivery systems, from long-range missiles to their submarine-launched nukes. But this sort of thing has been common for a long time, because the Left has stridently campaigned against them for a long time. The fact that many of the top atomic scientists were Jewish is no surprise, but has given rise to a half-century of nuclear conspiracy theories.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Here is a description of the lawsuit against the Department of Defense about that classified information, and a list of the allegations:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/israel-should-pay-for-weapons-grade-uranium-smuggling-site-cleanup-in-pa-irmep-lawsuit-300041239.html
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
One more subtlety: Around the same time, in 1987, the NYT published an article about the lawsuit by Israel’s Ariel Sharon against Time Magazine for libel. They had asserted “that he had encouraged the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.” Of course it was not true, but Time Magazine got away with it. As the article put it: “Time was found guilty of defamation and falsity but not of actual malice.”
It’s perfectly fine to lie and falsify the news … as long as you really don’t mean anything by it. Here’s the article, which also includes a suit by General Westmoreland over a story on the Vietnam War, and discusses a book about the two suits:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/05/books/declarations-of-victory.html
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
That is strange. Here was my first thought. Where does the New York Times get the gall to accuse other Liberal news outlets of lacking integrity? But then I look at who wrote that piece. I guess that is sort of like a letter to the editor.
Thanks for the info. I have to admit my
naivety on this matter. I only read the local news and TV sources like the majority of ill informed Americans. No wonder the US is always engaged in the middle of war.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Our news media is not to be trusted. It has always been biased, but now too much of it is controlled by people of the same stripe.
In my opinion, there is no hope ever for a lasting a Mid East peace solution. The hatred and lack of trust between the parties is too ingrained. What is going to happen with nuclear weapons in time will be another and even bigger travesty and folly in human history unless they all wise up.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
The Bible is fairly clear that by ourselves we cannot bring world peace. Sometimes it looks like we are getting close, and then we find a way to flub it.
Because the hatreds are so ingrained — because their worldviews are so far apart — it is plainly foolish for the big powers to let the nations of the Middle East have weapons of mass destruction. Our problem is that we really are not any better than they. If we need proof, we just have look at the people we put in the White House, Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Only a small portion of those people can we rightly describe as admirable. And the funny thing is is that is something upon which we all agree. Where we disagree is which of our leaders can be described as admirable.
Admirable is an though provoking word you chose. In my opinion, every political candidate should provide a list of their admirable accomplishments when they run for office instead of all their opposition’s unworthiness.. if only……………
Regards and good will blogging.
Hah! Wikipedia has lots of details of the program. So much for “ambiguity”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel
==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Is it not interesting that the major media has avoided this subject?
You’re the only one who doubts it, SW. I don’t have “proof” any more than I have proof that I got up on the north side of my bed this morning. However, I don’t know anyone who knows anything about Israel of the Middle East, particularly from a military perspective, who doesn’t believe Israel has had nukes since the late 1960s or early 1970s. You are right that they have maintained a policy of what they call “opacity” on the subject for a lot of reasons, including, as you suggest, not wanting to give surrounding countries added incentives for arming up if Israel were to be overt about their capabilities. Other reasons for ambiguity are that the United States has laws that forbid certain kinds of aid and assistance to countries who have or are trying to acquire nukes. Israel would be subject to those restrictions if they openly admitted what everyone has known for decades.
By the way, here is the actual declassified 1987 report:
Click to access 071987_CTAIIANN.pdf
Israel was, in some areas, about two years ahead of the US at the time. And behind in others. Even this report is cagey and careful, as if certain things can’t quite be said outright.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Thank you for posting this speech in its entirety. The mainstream news always cuts important issues to bits. Here in Canada, I thank God for PM Stephen Harper’s wisdom with regard to Israel. We need to continually pray for our leaders and keep ourselves informed. I’ve pinned and shared this post publicly on my personal fb page 🙂 ♥ ❤
Thank you.
I enjoyed his speech. I wish our own president had that kind of clarity in regard to Iran!