Opinions

The Post reports:

In November, the tide of daily cable traffic to the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan brought a chilling message for Ambassador Matthew Bryza, then the top U.S. diplomat to the small Central Asian country. A plot to kill Americans had been uncovered, the message read, and embassy officials were on the target list. . . .

The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The targets have included two Saudi officials, a half-dozen Israelis and — in the Azerbaijan case — several Americans, the officials say.

This is just the latest incident in Iran’s war against the West, and against the United States specifically. Iran has facilitated deaths of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. It plotted to kill a Saudi diplomat on our soil. And now this.

On ABC’s “This Week,” host Jake Tapper had this exchange with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:

TAPPER: There are massive mandatory budget cuts heading your way — I know you’re more than aware of this — if Congress doesn’t come to an agreement on deficit reduction. You’ve said that defense cuts would lead to a hollow military but in a recent interview, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this: “So now see the Republicans scrambling to do away with the cuts to defense that would be required by this agreement. I will not accept that. My people in the state of Nevada, and I think the country, have had enough of whacking all the programs. We’ve cut them to a bare bone and defense is going to have to bear their share of the burden.” Is that language okay with you, that language from the Democratic leader of the Senate?

PANETTA: Well — my view is that when you’re facing the size deficits and debt that we’re facing, that obviously defense has to play a role in trying to be able to achieve fiscal responsibility. We provided a budget that, we think, meets not only the goal of savings but also, more importantly, protects a strong national defense for this country. The thing that does concern me is the sequester which involves another $500 billion in defense cuts.

TAPPER: That’s these automatic cuts I’m talking about.

PANETTA: These automatic cuts that would take place that I think would be disastrous in terms of our national defense. And I would say this.

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester. That’s what they ought to be working on now.

Wait a second. What is Panetta’s boss, the commander in chief, doing about this? Why has President Obama opposed an alternative to sequestration? Why no administration alternative to prevent devastating cuts in our defense budget?

The Post reports: “The U.N. Security Council on Sunday blamed the Syrian government for most of the deaths in a massacre of 116 civilians in the village of Houla, issuing a unanimous statement condemning the killings that was supported by Syria’s staunch allies Russia and China. The killings on Friday, which included at least 32 children, represented one of the bloodiest single incidents yet in the 14-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule and have served to highlight the failure of a U.N. monitoring mission to halt the violence, which appears to be steadily rising again.” Is there anyone who believes another empty condemnation will mean anything to Bashar al-Assad?

Israel released this statement: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses his revulsion over the ongoing massacre being perpetrated by the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad against innocent civilians, which continued over the weekend in Houla and included dozens of innocent children. ‘Iran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities and the world needs to act against them,’ the Prime Minister said.” Israel has long realized that the devil the world knows in Damascus is worse than most anything that would follow his removal.

Meanwhile, the level of inanity among administration officials increases daily. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week pronounced: “The Assad regime’s brutality against its own people must and will end, because Syrians know they deserve a better future.” If they gave awards for insipid rhetoric, she’d be hard to beat. But, of course, Assad’s reign of terror will end only if he is forced to leave or is killed, and right now Clinton has nothing but finger-wagging to offer.

Not too long ago pundits were arguing that Mitt Romney’s path to 270 electoral votes was “narrow.” We didn’t buy it.

Lo and behold, conventional wisdom has now changed. The Associated Press writes: “Warning signs for Obama on tight path to 270.” The AP explains:

Obama’s new worries about North Carolina and Wisconsin offer opportunities for Republican Mitt Romney, who must peel off states Obama won in 2008 if he’s to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to oust the incumbent in November.

Iowa, which kicked off the campaign in January, is now expected to be tight to the finish, while New Mexico, thought early to be pivotal, seems to be drifting into Democratic territory.

If the election were today, Obama would likely win 247 electoral votes to Romney’s 206, according to an Associated Press analysis of polls, ad spending and key developments in states, along with interviews with more than a dozen Republican and Democratic strategists both inside and outside of the two campaigns.

Seven states, offering a combined 85 electoral votes, are viewed as too close to give either candidate a meaningful advantage: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.

Among that group, you have to like Romney’s chance in Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, with Iowa and Colorado going to the President Obama. That puts Romney’s total at 276.

The New York Times,likewise, puts Romney’s current total at 206.

Who’s benefiting from the Bain attacks? Yahright takes the cynical approach: “Obama is benefiting because the Bain game plays to his strength, a campaign of a sleight-of-hand shell game. He covers his bloated, cynical record with the largest of contorted, twisted shells while the media horde focuses on the Chicago shells that manipulate the transparent shells over the Bain record. Bain backfire? Hah, that assumes honest media brokers.”

SmallisBeautiful argues likewise, writing, in part:

However, in the longer term, the attack will hurt Romney, which is why the Obama campaign is sticking to it. The same way names get tarnished with baseless accusations repeated often enough in the press, Romney will get associated in the public mind with predatory business practices, even though such an association is unfair and inaccurate, for the simple fact that it will be repeated by the MSM for months on end until the election in November.

The Obama campaign is trying to do the same thing with the whole issue of runaway spending: throwing out an entirely misleading and cynically inaccurate claim that Obama has presided over a record of fiscal responsibility, with little increase of spending.