Obama Scraps Missile Defense

Obama will spend money funding such groups as ACORN and hundreds of billions to insure his friends in the auto unions maintain their power and now absolute control on many American auto makers despite the fact that past union demands have virtually destroyed that industry and now he is beginning to strip the military of weapons deemed necessary by the previous administration to defend western Europe and the United States from future Iranian missile attacks. He does this in the face of continuing Iranian buildups in their missile forces and a march toward nuclear weapons. Its the old liberal Democratic Party stance of spending wildly on domestic programs that prop up their base at the expense of cutting military expenditures. But what makes this appalling at this time is that we are in the mist of two wars against Islamic fascism and face a growing threat from the Islamic radicals in Iran. Why to go President Hussein Obama!


Pentagon Confirms Major Adjustments to European Missile Shield
Jan Fischer, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, one of two countries where the system was to be built, told reporters that the United States is shelving the missile defense plan.

An Iranian surface-to-surface Sejil 2 missile is seen in front of a banner featuring Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The words on the banner read, "We are alive and we are warriors." (Reuters)

The Pentagon confirmed Thursday that it has made a "major adjustment" to plans for a missile defense system in eastern Europe, after a U.S. ally said the Obama administration is shelving the system altogether.

The proposed system was pitched as a way to fend off potential attacks from Iran but it became a major irritant in relations with Russia. President Obama faced the dilemma of either setting back the gradual progress toward repairing relations with Russia or disappointing two key NATO allies, the Czech Republic and Poland, that agreed to host components of the planned system.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell declined to give specifics about the new changes, but said: "This improvement to the system has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with Iran."

He said the "adjustment" was made because the "latest intelligence" shows Iran is more "fixated" on short- and medium-range missiles - the prior plans were developed with long-range, intercontinental ballistic missiles in mind.

"While the Iranian threat has developed, so too has our technology," Morrell said. Details were expected to be announced later Thursday. read more from FOX News

Will Obama Give Away the Store?

Obama is preparing for his upcoming trip to Moscow. He has indicated a desire to cut the United States strategic forces by reaching some sort of agreement with Russian President Medvedev. Obama earlier had expressed a desire to stop the deployment of missile defences in Poland. So actually he has already given away one of our bargaining chips to the Russians. I am concerned that this weakling will give away far more than he gets from the Russians and that we will come away far weaker than before. This next week bears watching.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday the United States must compromise on its plan to build a missile defense system in Europe in order to reach a deal on reducing nuclear warheads, Reuters reported.

The Russian leader said in an interview that a deal on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) and the United States' plan for a missile defense system are linked. Moscow believes a missile defense system is a threat to its national security.

"We consider these issues are interconnected," Medvedev said. "It is sufficient to show restraint and show an ability to compromise. And then we can agree on the basis of a new deal on START and at the same time can agree on the question of how we move forward on anti-missile defense."

President Obama is aiming to rebuild relations with Russia as part of his weeklong trip abroad this week, anchored around a yearly meeting of leaders from the world's industrial powers in Italy. He departs for Moscow Sunday night.

Obama set a tone for the Moscow meeting by saying in an Associated Press interview Thursday that he was off to a good start with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. But, Obama added, Vladimir Putin -- Medvedev's predecessor and the current prime minister -- "still has a lot of sway in Russia."

Obama has separate meetings with them.

"I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new," Obama said in the interview. Putin responded Friday by poking fun at Obama's imagery and saying the new U.S. president is wrong about him. A Putin spokesman said Obama would change his mind after meeting Putin.

"Putin knows that, given Medvedev's position, he's the guy who deals with foreign leaders," said Stephen Sestanovich, a Russian expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But Putin wants to find ways of reminding everybody who's really in charge. And I don't doubt that he will find ways of doing that."

The rhetoric leading up to the summit reflects the complex relationship between the countries.

Putting down a friendly marker of his own before Obama shows up, Medvedev noted that conditions had worsened in recent years but now there is "only one road to follow -- the road of agreement."

Obama expects to emerge from Moscow with a framework for how the U.S. and Russia will go about reducing their stockpile of nuclear warheads. He and Medvedev stated their intentions toward that goal in April during a London meeting that had both leaders talking of a fresh start.

Any tangible progress now will be held up as proof of better U.S.-Russia ties, and a step toward broader cooperation on ridding the world of nuclear arms.

Yet there is harder work ahead to determine how many weapons both sides will give up and how those steps will be verified. Both sides hope to have a final deal in place before the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires in December.

Obama plans to give a major address on U.S.-Russia relations and meet with a range of civic leaders, hoping to turn around Russian attitudes of the U.S. FOX News