This week's ups and downs

Man, this week has had more rise and fall of anticipation, than a young mans libido in the back seat of a 56 chevy.

First, you had the UN General Assembly. A chance for Obama to really put his foot down about Iran.

But, he didn't. And, according to Charles Krauthammer:

“Right up until now, he has nothing to show. I think he indulged himself in his speech at the General Assembly, which started out as sort of adolescent utopianism and then it went downhill. . . . What do our allies think when they hear that and when they hear . . . Obama denigrating his own country and presenting himself as the man who will redeem America from its wickedness? And he said that those of you who doubt the character of America should look at what we, meaning I, have done in the last eight months, including a bunch of gestures — including joining the Human Rights Council at the U.N., which is a body which we should take no pride in being on. I thought it was a sorry performance. It did not advance our interest in the least.”

In the end, Sardosky showed he has a couple and Obama had ED.

The Geneva talks:

America is getting hustled

This week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has agreed to transfer most of his country's acknowledged low-enriched nuclear fuel out of the country for purposes of further enrichment, and Iranian negotiators have signaled a willingness to engage in further talks. All of this sounds like good news, and it is. Unfortunately, it is also extremely good news for Iran and Ahmadinejad, who has managed to buy still more time to build his weapons program.

There's little doubt that the Qom facility is just part of a vast network of secret nuclear facilities that the Iranians have been building for years to evade inspectors. It solves the "puzzle" of why the Iranians haven't been able to account for large amounts of uranium from one of their mines. Imagine a conversation with Iranian nuclear officials offer the missing uranium: "Oh, well, we use it as part of a traditional Persian headache remedy." While international inspectors sought full access to Iran's Potemkin nuclear program, the Iranians, having learned the lesson of Iraq's Osirak facility, destroyed by an Israeli air attack in 1981, have created a hardened weapons program that will be difficult if not impossible to destroy.

Commentary
As the Wall Street Journal’s editors observe, the Geneva talks have revived the reputation of the despotic regime:

Responding to an overture from the Obama Administration, the Iranians even talked about the future of the U.N. and other nonnuclear issues. Meanwhile, Washington was “buzzing” (as one newspaper put it) that a one-day visit by Iran’s foreign minister might signal more detente to come. Back in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad floated a tete-a-tete with the U.S. President. In short, this engagement conferred a respectability on his regime that Mr. Ahmadinejad could only have imagined amid his vicious post-election crackdown.

And like the missile-defense capitulation, we’ve gotten precious little for this. We’re now sucked into a process of meetings, and the inspection of Qom will take place with plenty of time for the Iranians to “clean the place out.” We now begin the familiar dance of endless talks, quibbles about inspections, and compromises on verification–all culminating in the realization (eventually) that a secretive, despotic regime is on track to engage in nuclear blackmail.

Of all this Obama seems blissfully unaware. We’re finally engaging! We’re getting down to business. This is constructive, he gushes. Well, for Iran certainly. The mullahs are getting what they want (the limelight on the world stage and plenty of breathing room), now with a nod of approval from the president. As the editors note, Geneva gives Iran “new legitimacy, and new hope that they can have their bomb and enhanced global standing too.” And to boot, it’s all been made possible by the American president, who gave the Iranians all the breathing room they needed, welcomed them to Geneva, lifted not a finger to aid (rhetorically or otherwise) the democracy protesters, and now praises the regime for doing nothing concrete at all to halt its nuclear program.

So while the Iranians will hand over low-enriched nuclear fuel they've said they have, they're not about to give up the nuclear they haven't said they have. Get it? As for the further talks, the United States wants to talk about ending Iran's nuclear program. The Iranians want to talk about… virtually everything else, ranging from "creating a world filled with spirituality, friendship, prosperity, wellness, and security" to "the management and fair use of space" to, yes, abolishing all the world's nuclear weapons. Suffice it to say, this is a fairly broad agenda. Indeed, it is so broad that one wonders if the Iranians are taking this process as seriously as we'd like to think.

Yesterday, Obama remembered his little blue pill:

"Today's meeting was a constructive beginning, but it must be followed by constructive action by the Iranian government," Obama said during a brief White House appearance following the talks held in Geneva. He gave Iran two weeks to allow IAEA inspectors into its recently revealed second uranium enrichment facility at Qom.

Unfortunately, he grabbed the wrong bottle and soon fell asleep.

Because today, a State Department spokesperson signaled the president’s mandate that Iran has two weeks to permit inspections of its recently unveiled uranium refinement plant was not “written in stone.”

But hey, there was some good news today:

Seems the IOC doesn't get that "tingle" when the One steps into the room. Chicago didn't even make it to first base. Of course most of us out here did not allow our hopes get up too high. We know Obama doesn't have what it takes to turn Iran on. In the end, all he got was an Olympic size kiss on the forehead and the girls are giggling in the bathroom.