The Next Phase in Obama's Rush Towards Unilateral Disarmament

First Obama announces in Prague his goal of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Now, as part of arms control negotiations, he is nominating someone who wants the U.S. to eliminate our *conventional* arms, as well.

More facts and entertaining analysis below this news story to determine if this is just a simple left-wing agenda or something more.

http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy-direct/secure/2009/04_15/ba.asp

Obama nominee favors combining strategic, conventional arms

The Obama administration’s nominee to be assistant secretary of state for verification said last week confirmed that she favors lumping U.S. conventional weapons with U.S. nuclear arms, a position critics say could lead to international restrictions and controls on conventional weapons.

Rose Gottemoeller, the nominee, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 26.

Gottemoeller was asked by Sen. Jim Demint about an article in the publication Arms Control Today she had written advocating the combining of conventional and nuclear arms.

She stated that while her views outside government do not necessarily reflect what she will do inside she admitted that “we would not be paying any particular price at the negotiating table if we should count conventional weapons of that kind as nuclear.”

Critics of arms control say that combining conventional long-range strike weapons with nuclear arms could lead to agreements that restrict one of the most strategic weapons in the U.S. arsenal and plans for long-range conventional ballistic and cruise missiles that can be used against terrorists or arms proliferation targets.

Gottemoeller also testified at the hearing that the Obama administration plans a new round of arms talks with Russia on strategic arms. “If confirmed as assistant secretary, as part of my responsibilities, again, … I would head up the START follow-on negotiations on behalf of the United States government,” she said, noting that she will also seek to resolve problems with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.

The Obama administration is planning to re-launch Cold War-style arms negotiations with Moscow as part of its focus on diplomacy.

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Here's something Rose Gottemoeller wrote directly relevant to this story: http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/media/78982.htm
It discusses her desire to reduce/eliminate conventional forces.
Who is she? Often background research turns up damning evidence:

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/experts/index.cfm?fa=expert_view&expert_id=101

Rose Gottemoeller Senior Associate Russia and Eurasia Program

Rose Gottemoeller is assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance. Gottemoeller was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008 and from 2000 to 2005, she served as a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C.

Formerly deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the U.S. Department of Energy, she began her work at the Endowment in 2000.

Previously, she served as the department’s assistant secretary for nonproliferation and national security, with responsibility for all nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States. She first joined the department in November 1997 as director of the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security.

Prior to the Energy Department, Gottemoeller served for three years as deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. From 1993 to 1994, she served on the National Security Council in the White House as director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs, with responsibility for denuclearization in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Previously, she was a social scientist at RAND and a Council on Foreign Relations International affairs fellow. She has taught on Soviet military policy at Georgetown University, and is currently teaching on Russian security in Eurasia, also at Georgetown University.

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Looks kinda like Rosa Klebb, doesn't she? Remember "From Russia, With Love"?

Rose speaks Russian and worked in Moscow for years till this new post. In 2002, she wrote an article for the LA Times (http://articles.latimes.com/2002/sep/13/opinion/oe-gott13) objecting to increased visa screening and emphasizing the importance of foreign technical exchange programs, etc, especially those pertaining to people involved in chem-bio warfare, which could be legit or not. My red flags are waving....

Ms. Rose Gottemoeller
Moscow Center Director
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
16/2 Tverskaya St.
Moscow 125009
Russia
Telephone: 7.495.935.8904
Email Address: rose.gottemoeller@carnegie.ru
website: www.ceip.org
A specialist on defense and nuclear issues in Russia and the other former Soviet states, Gottemoeller’s research focuses on issues of nuclear security and stability, non-proliferation, and arms control. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment in October 2000, Gottemoeller was deputy undersecretary for nuclear nonproliferation in the U.S. Department of Energy. As the department’s assistant secretary for nonproliferation and national security, she oversaw for all nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States.

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Ton of stuff on her here http://www.carnegie.ru/en/search/advsearch.asp?search=Rose%20Gottemoeller&searchCatalogue=0&cP=2
She also leans heavily against the idea that Iran is a threat. http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/media/73634.htm, loves Medvedev, and is content to let North Korea be whatever the hell it is -- rogue state, most despotic regime on the planet, nuclear arms proliferator and world's largest counterfeiting operation in U.S. dollars. Except the U.S. Treasury, of course.

Here's something juicy from 1999 (http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=50430890-309C-4E16-9C3A-5B92A4D4C164):

In fact, the current national-security crisis may be said to have begun when President Clinton appointed an anti-military, environmental leftist Hazel O’Leary to be Secretary of Energy in charge of the nation’s nuclear-weapons labs. O’Leary promptly surrounded herself with other political leftists (including a "Marxist-Feminist") and anti-nuclear activists, appointing them as assistant secretaries with responsibility for the nuclear labs. In one of her first acts, O’Leary declassified eleven million pages of reports on 204 U.S. nuclear tests, a move she described as an action to safeguard the environment and as a protest against a "bomb-building culture." Having made America’s nuclear-weapons secrets available to adversary powers, O’Leary then took steps to relax security precautions at the labs under her control.

She appointed Rose Gottemoeller, a former Clinton National Security Council staffer with extreme anti-nuclear views, to be director in charge of national-security issues. Gottemoeller had been previously nominated to fill the post—long-vacant in the Clinton Administration—of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. But her appointment was successfully blocked by congressional Republicans because of her radical disarmament views. The Clinton response to her rejection on security grounds was to appoint her to be in charge of security for the nation’s nuclear-weapons labs.

I know someone very well who had intimate connection with security for the nuclear weapons labs during the Clinton years, who told me how bad it was, with Russian, Chinese, North Korean, more Chinese, Libyan, more Russian and every other nationality on the planet having almost free-reign in those labs. My acqaintence had a LOT of very derogatory things to say about Hazel O'Leary at the time, and tried to do something about the flood of intelligence being given outright to foreign countries. A list of something like 1000 of these foreign nationals was presented to the head of security for Dept. of Energy, who refused to do anything about it and told my acquaintence, "drop it". Maybe my acquaintence knows Rose first-hand.

You know me. Commies doing dead-drops under every Bush. Most of Rose's writings display a strong sympathy for Russia -- she writes like she works for them -- but her writing is weak and mushy, like a career left-wing civil servant and stolid Democrat who comes from Dearborn, Michigan who wants good relations with the enemy. I candidly admit, I dunno if I can place her as a well-positioned double agent. For sure, the wishy-washy writing is consistent circumstantially (if you're really important to the enemy you don't do anything too revealing, but just enough to give you plausible deniability), but I can't construct a good conspiracy theory about her from the little I find on the web (hell, she could even be CIA -- she works in Moscow in an area that the spooks are closely involved in -- arms control and verification).

If I had to put my money on anything, it wouldn't be much more than a plugged nickel on "well-intentioned fool", but I'll hold back a fiver for something more. The evidence is likely coming before the year is out. (Her goal is a major arms reduction treaty by the end of the year.)

But this column can't leave you with such a wishy washy answer. We have a committment to inflaming the masses. I'm firmly of the conviction that the evidence is overwhelming that Obama is an ideologically committed communist working in concert with foreign powers and dedicated to bringing down the United States as a superpower, so the best I can offer is this --

1.) Obama nominated her;
2.) he nominated her for a post that can critically affect the future security of the country;
3.) and Rose has got a long history with the Russians.

As Auric Goldfinger would say, Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, Three times is enemy action. Sometimes it's a deep cover mole, sometimes it's just happenstance, but in this case, dangerous either way.