• Will Grecian Formula Really Change Obama
• More On Saudi-Paki Nuke Deal
• Are U. S. Colleges a Waste of Time and Money
• MedIterranean Disarray and Dismay
• South Sudan Votes For Independence
• Bizarre Wheeler Murder Raises Issues

Depending on who you listen to  the CIA, Israel, Russia, or even China were responsible for developing a computer virus that has signifiantly slowed but failed to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Intelligence sources said Western agencies used the Stuxnet virus to hamper Iran’s nuclear weapons program, particularly the operation of gas centrifuges that reportedly went out of control spinning at overspeed damaging or destroying them. But they said the introduction of Stuxnet failed to block the program, much of which has gone underground - literally and figuratively — and is heavily supported by China.

“There was a success with Stuxnet, but Iran has many facilities that we have no idea where they are,” an intelligence source said. “There is so much redundancy.”

Quietly, both U.S. and Israeli officials have reported a significant slowdown in Iran’s nuclear program. The delays were said to have affected Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear warhead and produce highly-enriched uranium for weapons.

“I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated,” White House nonproliferation chief Gary Samore said.

But the sources warned that reports of Stuxnet damage were misleading. They said Iran has already developed a huge underground nuclear weapons infrastructure that was probably not affected by Stuxnet.

The underground program has included both unknown facilities as well as those situated in teeming urban centers, including Teheran. They said some of the facilities have been located next to mosques in an effort to prevent a U.S. air strike.

“This means that any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could mean the death of hundreds of thousands of Muslims,” the source said. “This is a decision that will not be taken lightly by any country, including the United States.”

The sources said the Stuxnet attack, which knocked out as many as 1,000 Iranian centrifuges, has been combined with the assassination and defection of senior Iranian nuclear scientists. They said technical difficulties have ruled out Iran’s goal of serial nuclear weapons production until at least 2014, an assessment shared by Israel. The “serial” qualifier is worth note since it does not mean Iran can cobble together a lower yield but still ominously destructive nuclear warhead

“A number of technological challenges and difficulties have postponed [Iran's] timetable,” Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said. The Institute for Science and International Security said Stuxnet probably disabled 984 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in 2009. An institute report released in late December 2010 said the failure of the centrifuges marked a “major problem” for Iranian nuclear program.

“Because the Natanz control systems are not connected to the internet, Stuxnet would have needed to travel on a removable drive from an infected computer to the Natanz control system,” the report, titled “Did Stuxnet Take Out 1,000 Centrifuges at the Natanz Enrichment Plant?” said. “Natanz personnel could have unknowingly transported Stuxnet after using infected personal computers. Perhaps the attackers first targeted the personal computers of Natanz personnel.”

The Stuxnet attack as well as other factors have resulted in a major revision of Israeli intelligence estimates of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. On Jan. 17, outgoing Mossad director Meir Dagan told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Iran might not be able to achieve a nuclear weapons capability before 2014. Earlier, Dagan had warned that Iran could produce at least three nuclear weapons by 2012.

But the intelligence sources said the released portions of Dagan’s testimony did not reflect the true Mossad assessment of the Iranian threat. They said Dagan’s publicized remarks marked an effort by Israel and the United States to coordinate intelligence assessments on Iran.

“The best way to reduce the pressure for an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran is to play down the threat,” another intelligence source, who monitors Iran, said. “The bottom line is that Iran, following the footsteps of North Korea, has already acquired the know-how to turn nuclear within a short time.”

The unsaid part of this is how much China is helping Iran build nuclear warheads even to using its cham of peaceful use. By 1953 the Chinese, under the guise of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, had initiated research leading to the development of nuclear weapons. The decision to develop an independent strategic nuclear force was made no later than early 1956 and was to be implemented within the Twelve-Year Science Plan presented in September 1956 to the Eighth Congress of the CCP. The decision to enter into a development program designed to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems was, in large part, a function of the 1953 technology transfer agreements initiated with the USSR. In a thirty-two-month period, China successfully exploded its first atomic bomb (October 16, 1964), launched its first nuclear missile (October 25, 1966), and detonated its first hydrogen bomb (June 14, 1967.

Since John Boehner was elected speaker of the House of Representatives, favorable ratings for the Ohio congressman have risen to their highest levels to date. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, now House minority leader, remains the most unpopular congressional leader as she has been for the past two years.

 The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 45% now view Boehner at least somewhat favorably, including 17% who share a Very Favorable opinion of him. Thirty-four percent (34%) give Boehner unfavorable marks, including Very Unfavorable reviews from 12%.

On the eve of tomorrow’s State of the Union speech it appears Obama has found President Reagan’s stash of Grecian Formula to touch-up his graying hair that increasingly made him look more and more like a latter-day Uncle Remus.

Whether this cosmetic redux will keep him out of the figurative briar patch will be revealed tomorrow. Reportedly Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday, sharpening his response to Republicans in Congress who are demanding deep budget cuts, people familiar with the speech said.

.A new Fox News poll released last Friday finds almost all American voters think the country’s economy is in bad shape, and few see benefits from the Obama administration’s economic policies. In fact, slightly more voters think the policies have hurt rather than helped the economy — and many others think they have made no difference either way.

The Fox News poll found that more than 9 in 10 voters give the economy negative ratings: 40 percent rate economic conditions as “only fair” and another 51 percent say it is in “poor” shape.

Current views are almost identical to those held a year ago, when 39 percent said “only fair” and 52 percent said “poor” (January 2010).

The bright spot for the Obama administration is the large drop in the number rating the economy as “poor.” The week before he took office in January 2009, some 74 percent said it was in “poor” shape and now that’s down to 51 percent.

Still, only 8 percent of voters rate the current economy positively: 1 percent says it is in “excellent” condition and 7 percent says “good.” These ratings match those from a year ago exactly.

If Obama tries to sing a version of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah at tomorrow’s State-of-the-Union speech he will be rebuffed, and Americans workers will get the tar baby of all times.

 As I write this the thermometer on my front porch has gone into the 70 degree range as most of the nation is shivering in sub-freezing temperatures..

Saudi Arabia was deemed the most likely Arab state to acquire nuclear weapons in an effort to deter neighboring Iran, says a report by several leading U.S. strategist warned that Saudi Arabia could be working with Pakistan for the acquisition and deployment of nuclear warheads. Titled “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” the report said Saudi Arabia was the one Arab state capable of receiving significant support to acquire nuclear weapons. This is old news; more than a month ago I reported on four disguised Saudi cargo planes parked near a known Pakistani nuclear weapons depot awaiting order to fly nuclear warheads to Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi government is already pursuing a nuclear power capability, which could be the first step along a slow road to nuclear weapons development,” the report said. “And concerns persist that it might be able to accelerate its progress by exploiting its close ties to Pakistan.”

Authored by former U.S. ambassador Eric Edelman as well as strategists Andrew Krepinevich and Evan Montgomery, the report said Riyad would come under “tremendous pressure” to respond to a nuclear Iran. The report said Pakistan has been a leading ally of Saudi Arabia and facilitated a deal for intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China. The Saudis are known to have nuclear capable missiles awaiting nuclear warheads

“There are still rumors that Riyad and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees,” the report, published in the U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, said.

Pakistan could decide to sell operational nuclear weapons and missiles to Saudi Arabia, the report said. Another option was that Pakistan build an infrastructure in Saudi Arabia for the development of nuclear weapons.

The report cited the prospect that Pakistan could deploy its own nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia as a deterrence against Iran. This would allow the Saudis to certify that they were not violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and could meet approval of the United States.

“Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India,” the report said. “Regardless of India s reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing.”

The report, which urged Washington to prepare a military option, dismissed the likelihood that the United States could protect Saudi Arabia or other allies against Iran. The authors said Iran would eventually be capable of defeating the U.S. missile defense batteries, such as PAC-3, deployed in Gulf Cooperation Council stakes.

“Because existing defense systems cannot discriminate between nuclear and non nuclear warheads, such attacks could exhaust the missile defenses of the United States and its allies, leaving those countries vulnerable to follow-on attacks with nuclear weapons,” the report said. “Missile defense systems cost far more than offensive ballistic missiles, and so building more of the former to keep pace with Iran as it builds more of the latter would place the United States at the wrong end of the cost equation at a time when fewer resources are likely to be available to the Pentagon.”

Hanging over the whole thing is concern that the U. S. is seen as increasingly a less relaibale ally.

MSNBC’s acerbic uber-liberal Keith Olberrman, 51, is out of MSNBC again.  Reportedly Olbermann’s agent recently went to NBC complaining that Keith — who has the most popular show on MSNBC — was underpaid at $7 million per year. NBC execs told Olbermann’s agent they would not cough up anymore money.

Network execs were well aware that Comcast (that bought NBC) wanted Keith gone because he was “a loose cannon that could not be controlled.” It became clear to both sides that Olbermann’s days were numbered and they began negotiating an exit. His leaving ends a rocky 8-year time at MSNBC. Apparently Olberman won’t go elsewhere because his contract forbids that.

A new study of 2,300 college students provides disturbing answers to questions about how much students actually learn in college- for many, not much- and has inflamed a debate about the value of an American higher education. 45% of those students showed no improvement in critical thinking skills. The reason critics say is undergraduate professors are concentrating on research and less on teaching.

College should not be a four year party with a $100,000 cover charge.

Those facts are reflected, to some extent, in a contracting job market for new college graduates. A degree is by no means a guarantee of entry into a career.

Of at least equal concern are the facts that college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families. The default rate on federally incurred student loans has doubled to over 40%

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

Iran has banned all Valentine’s Day gifts because it promotes Western culture. It’s actually a crime to buy roses for Valentine’s Day in Iran. As opposed to the U.S., where it’s a crime what they charge for roses on Valentine’s Day. — Leno

The young Iranian man who “admitted” on Iranian TV last Tuesday, Jan. 11 that he had acted for the Israeli Mossad in the murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi is revealed in real life by Iranian sources as Majid Jamali Fashi, a champion kick boxer and member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ secret reserve unit of brawny sportsmen used to cut down opponents of the regime and break up protest rallies.

In the summer of 2009, the young sportsman was employed in the brutal break-up of the mass street rallies protesting the rigged election which gave Ahmadinejad, who he admires, his second term. He was involved in the murder of the scientist - but on behalf of his own IRGC unit after the professor had thrown his support behind the Iranian opposition.

The Republican House repealed Obamacare now arch-liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich (D) Ohio wants to replace it with a single payer full socialized Medicine approach including making doctors government employees. Keep in mind  47% of all medical bills are paid by a government check now.

Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in a military coup.

On Friday, Jan. 14 he fled his riot-stricken country in the middle of his fifth term as Tunisian president, handing interim authority to Prime Minister Mohammad Ghannoushi.

Sources report Arab regimes were dismayed by the fall of the Tunisian president, the first Arab ruler to be overthrown by street demonstrations and possibly making way for a military coup.

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is serving his fourth term as president and despite his advanced age of 82 is contemplating running for a fifth. Jordan’s Abdullah II imposed a news blackout on the serious riots which Bedouin tribesmen staged against the throne in the southern town of Maan last week. The Tunisian street protesters’ success in winning the army over to their side and overturning the regime may will ignite similar anti-government disturb

The  sarcastic anti-Semite Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Reports,  comments “FBI arrests 100 Italian mobsters. Hey FBI, wrong mob, try the Kosher Nostra not the Cosa Nostra.”

With most votes counted in Southern Sudan’s referendum, 99% of people have opted for independence from the north, officials say.

Official results are due next month but correspondents say the outcome of the week-long poll is not in doubt.

However, the former rebels now running oil-rich Southern Sudan have urged people not to celebrate yet.

President Omar al-Bashir has said he will accept the result of the vote, which was held after years of war.

The BBC’s Peter Martell in Juba says this is the news many in the south have been waiting to hear - that the number of votes cast in favour of independence has passed the required 50%.

The results w ere published on a website published by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, and officials have confirmed they are genuine.

It says that 83% of votes in the south have been counted, along with 100% of those in the north and the eight foreign countries where polling was held.

Just 1.4% of people have voted for continued unity with the north.Those results have statisticians chortling about it as an anomaly.

More than 3 million ballots have been counted so far, with several hundred thousands still to come.

The new Republican leaders in the House have raked in millions of dollars in fresh contributions from banks, health insurers and other major business interests, which are pressing for broad reversals of Democratic policies that affect corporations, according to disclosure records and interviews.

The impetus behind such largess is simple: Many companies and industry groups hope that House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans will succeed in rolling back Democratic policies they find objectionable, including environmental and Wall Street regulations

The bizarre case of the body of John Wheeler III, 66, a military expert who served in three Republican presidents Reagan, HW and GW Bush, that was found dumped in a landfill over the New Year’s weekend, and investigators said Monday they do not know who might have killed him.   Various news videos show a disheveled Williams  wandering, seemingly disoriented near the Amtrack station, carrying his shoes and then he disappeared only to have his body discovered in a Delaware landfill. Wheeler was special assistant to Air Force Secretary during the 2007 B-52 nuke incident at Minot, was found dead in a Delaware landfill. Authorities have publicly called his death murder. Last seen on Amtrak from DC on Dec. 28. The USAF has ordered a clam-up.

Imagination quickly links with the 1990 assassination of Canadian arms designer and dealer Gerald Bull in his Brussels apartment. Bull was involved in weapons projects involving Iraq, China, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Spain, and Israel his murder was quickly laid to Mossad. Bull designed the Project Babylon “supergun” for the Iraqi government. Reportedly the supergun could launch a prorjectile into orbit.and as a consequence it could strike regionally or even globally. He was killed before he could do so.

There is nothing to link the Bull or Wheeler deaths except imagination  and it will remain so until authorities find motive and murderer.

The 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident occurred at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base on August 29-30, 2007. Six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were reportedly “mistakenly” loaded on a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot and transported to Barksdale SFB in Louisiana.. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before taking the missiles from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for a period of 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions required for nuclear weapons. One wag commented that a kid with a little redwagon and a basic craftsman tool box could have made off with the nukes.

The warheads vary but both have the same basic size and shape and weight: 11.8 inches in diameter, 31.4 inches long, and weight of 290 pounds. The W80-0 had a variable yield of 5 or 170-200 kilotons.and are amount the world’s most sophisticated.

What if anything the Minot incident has to do with William;s death is unclear. The USAFcommissioned  a Blue Ribbon committee that investigated the temporarily misplaced thermo nuclear weapons.

Authorities say Williams was scheduled to be on an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington on Dec. 28. Police say it’s now not clear if he ever made that trip. In any case his body was found three days later, on New Year’s Eve, as a garbage truck emptied its contents at the Cherry Island landfill. His death has been ruled a homicide.

A sidelight is that VP Joe Biden’s 41-year-old son Beau who is Delaware AG has quietly taken control of the investigation. At least one report is that Beau who is a an Army reserve Captain and member of the Judge Advocate Generals staff has muscled the FBI away from the case raising the specter of deeper national or even international involvements

Wheeler, who served as an Army staff officer in Vietnam, later worked in the Reagan and both Bush administrations and helped lead efforts to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington. He also was the second chairman and chief executive officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Williams body was discovered Dec. 31 as a waste management truck as emptied its contents at the Wilmington-area landfill. His death has been ruled a homicide. But, details remain sketchy. Williams was reportedly distressed that an home being built on an adjcent lot blocked his cherished views and reportedly Williams set off a smoke bomb inside the structure causing slight damage.

Police have determined that all the stops made by the garbage truck on Friday before it arrived at the landfill involved commercial disposal bins in Newark, several miles from Wheeler’s home in the historic district of New Castle.

Newark, Del. police say investigators had been to Wheelers’ house, which AP says was roped off with police tape after his death, but that it could not be considered a crime scene.

“We don’t have a crime scene at this point in time,” said Farrall, adding that investigators still do not have any leads in the case.

Farrall said initial police reports that Wheeler was last seen getting off an Amtrak train in Wilmington last Tuesday were incorrect.

“The information that we have is that he was scheduled to take a train from Washington, D.C., to Newark on the 28th. We don’t know if that occurred,” Farrall said, adding that investigators don’t know how long Wheeler might have been missing before his body was found, or where and when he was last seen.

Asked why Wheeler had not been reported missing, Farrall said the family was not in town at the time.

“That’s why there was some delay in notification,” he explained.

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Wheeler went on to study at Harvard Business School and Yale Law School.

Richard Radez, a longtime friend who also graduated from West Point and Harvard Business, said he exchanged e-mails with Wheeler on Christmas. On the day after Christmas, Wheeler sent Radez an e-mail expressing concern that the nation wasn’t sufficiently prepared for cyber warfare. That has lead some to speculate he could have been involved in the Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran making him a target for Iran.

“This was something that had preoccupied him over the last couple of years,” Radez said.

James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, wrote an article on the magazine’s website that he had known “Jack” Wheeler since the early 1980s. A photo on the website shows a youthful, businesslike Wheeler in a dress shirt, tie and suspenders, in front of a map.

Wheeler, Fallows wrote, had spent much of his life trying to address “what he called the ‘40 year open wound’ of Vietnam-era soldiers being spurned by the society that sent them to war.”

Fallows told The Associated Press that Wheeler had been focused recently on getting ROTC programs restored at prestigious universities such as Harvard and Stanford.

He also exchanged e-mails with Wheeler over Christmas, and said Wheeler was concerned about the separation of the military and educational institutions that stemmed from the Vietnam War and continued through the debate over the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

With the recent Senate vote to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Wheeler saw no further impediments to restoring ROTC programs on college campuses, Fallows said.

The son of a decorated Army officer, Wheeler followed in his father’s footsteps at West Point. His military career included serving in the office of the Secretary of Defense and writing a manual on the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons, which recommended that the United States not use biological weapons.

Author Rick Atkinson, whose 1989 book “The Long Gray Line” featured Wheeler as a prominent member of West Point’s Class of 1966, called him an extraordinarily intelligent and intense man who relentlessly pursued causes.

“Some of his pursuits were quixotic but others were magnificent,” Atkinson said, citing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Wheeler’s greatest achievement. He said the monument wouldn’t exist had Wheeler not used his organizational skills to steer the project through a brutal political fight.

Wheeler retired from the military in 1971, and went on to serve in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also was a special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force under President George W. Bush. He recently worked as a consultant for The Mitre Corporation, a nonprofit based in Bedford, Mass., and McLean, Va., that operates federally funded research and development centers.

“He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill,” said Bayard Marin, an attorney who was representing Wheeler and his wife, Katherine Klyce, in an ongoing legal dispute with a couple wanting to build a home near the Wheelers’ in the historic district.

Wheeler was described as a very aggressive kind of guy, but nevertheless kind of ingratiating, and had a good sense of humor.

Wheeler’s last known location, has had heroin problems on its city streets, as can be seen through online searches of crime and news reports with the local police department and newspapers (and the confiscation of a whopping 17,000 bags of heroin there in November of last year).

Some of this will be cleared up when autopsy and toxicology results are known.

An IRS snitch program promises to pay 30-50% of what it collects from someone you turn in for not paying your taxes.