When you’re a leftist, the truth apparently hurts a lot. Yes, the inconvenient truth is that Chuck Hagel was in fact endorsed by Iran. In addition to being incompetent.

Obama is going to pontificate on non-proliferation tonight after the North Koreans tested a miniaturized nuke. Because his speeches are always so effective:

It’s not a pretty picture to present to the world at the start of Obama’s second term. Vietor, asked about the apparent failure to halt either Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs, replied: “How is that different than four years ago?” On the broader issue of nonproliferation, Vietor also noted that the U.S. and Russia had signed a New START pact in 2010. Yet Republicans in Congress have resisted further cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, suggesting this effort signals U.S. weakness, especially after Obama was heard telling Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, over an open microphone that “after my election I have more flexibility” in making concessions on America’s missile-defense program. The North Korean test is likely to only stiffen GOP resistance.

As it should.

Thoughts from Spengler:

Muslim civilization is in catastrophic decline. It is passing from infancy to senescence without ever reaching maturity. Iran has one last bulge generation of military age men, born before the fertility collapse got underway. It perceives one last historic opportunity to achieve Shi’ite dominance. It won’t have another.

It is too much to hope that the establishment will draw the appropriate strategic conclusions from this “mysterious” trend, as Ignatius obtusely characterizes it.

The point of my 2006 studies in Iran’s demographics was not academic: I argued that a demographic cataclysm helped explained the apocalyptic mindset of the Iranian leadership, which felt that it had nothing to lose by betting everything on a Shi’ite resurgence under the umbrella of nuclear.

It’s certainly too much to hope that an Obama administration will get it, particularly with John Brennan as DCI.

What really happened?

I think he is ashamed. Here’s what I’ve been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours…. When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?

You lie, apparently. And I don’t think he’s ashamed at all. I’ve seen little evidence that he has any sense of shame.

Is he a secret Muslim?

Given some of his statements in the past, it wouldn’t shock me.

[Update a while later]

Brennan’s evasions. Even if he’s a Zoroastrian, there are many reasons to not confirm him.

Is he toast?

Besides sitting on the board of a foundation that funds the NIAC, Hagel has had an ongoing relationship with the NIAC (and its precursor organization, the American-Iranian Council). As Ken Timmerman notes in the Washington Times, this has included giving speeches that rail against sanctions imposed to pressure Iran on its nuclear program, call for unconditional negotiations with the mullahs, etc. The NIAC, in kind, avidly supports Hagel’s nomination.

It was a monumentally stupid pick, even for Barack Obama. Of course, so is Brennan.

Why are the feds stocking up so much?

According to one estimate, just since last spring DHS has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm. That’s sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times. Including illegal immigrants.

To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, DHS is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war.

At the same time they want to disarm the rest of us.

[Update a while later]

This seems related, somehow. Would Lincoln have droned Robert E. Lee?

As applied in practice:

Ed Morrissey is incredulous as is Ace over the statements of the head of the Joint Chiefs of staff (as well he should be) but for all of that incompetence of man with the stars and all the snark of the Leon “Global 911″ Panetta there is only one story here:

The story is that on 9/11 during an attack on Americans in Benghazi (including a person he knew personally) the President of the United States was disinterested.

Hey, he had to plan his Vegas fundraiser, and try to talk Bibi into going along with his plan to dismantle Israel.

Of course, the other implication of all this is that the White House was lying all fall when they said they ordered people to do everything possible to help.

[Update a while later]

The president gave no direction in his one call to Panetta.

Egypt’s government (such as it is) tells its people to eat less:

We are watching something unique and terrible in modern history, namely the disintegration of a society of 80 million people, with the prospect of real hunger–a self-made famine brought about by social and political disaster rather than crop failure or war. It is horrific and dangerous. Those (like the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Cook) who maliciously accuse me of wanting Egypt to fail might as well accuse oncologists of wanting their patients to die of cancer. No-one proposes to cough up $20 to $30 billion a year to bail out Egypt — the taxpayers have enough troubles of their own. Instead, the establishment goes through the motions of prescribing macroeconomic measures to the Egyptian government which imply starvation at the micro level — and wonders why all the parties in Egyptian politics won’t play together nicely.

Sadly, Egypt isn’t the only country with problems in the Arab world.