The right wing has been apoplectic over President Obama’s words and actions while in Europe. A large amount of their outrage has been over the fact that Obama briefly bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Today on MSNBC, right-wing commentator Frank Gaffney joined in, boldly declaring, “I’m a member of Dick Cheney’s fan club,” alluding to the former vice president’s comments that Obama is making Americans less safe. Gaffney said that today, for example, Obama told our “Muslim enemies” that the United States is “willing to submit to them.”

When asked by MSNBC host David Shuster and Mother Jones’s David Corn for proof of this supposed submission, Gaffney pointed to a secret “code” Obama is using — which apparently only he, al Qaeda, the Saudis, and the Taliban understand:

CORN: Where in that speech does he say we’re going to submit to anybody?

GAFFNEY: I think what he is using is code — … When he uses the word “respect,” in the context of a waist-bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, for example, and talks about respectful language, which is code for those who adhere to Sharia that we will submit to Sharia. We will submit to the kind of program –

SHUSTER: We have to know the code? We all have to know the code to understand how we’re making ourselves more vulnerable? … David Corn was asking you for a specific example, and you’re referring to code. You’re referring to code!

GAFFNEY: I’m telling you the code as they receive it in the Taliban headquarters and in al Qaeda’s cave and in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They perceive this as submission.

Watch it:

The “respectful language” that most likely galled Gaffney was from Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament today:

Now, I have made it clear to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran that the United States seeks engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We want Iran to play its rightful role in the community of nations. Iran is a great civilization. We want them to engage in the economic and political integration that brings prosperity and security. But Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.

Apparently, the American public also doesn’t know this secret “code.” A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 82 percent believe that it is important for Obama “to try to improve U.S. relations with Muslim nations.” Additionally, two-thirds believe Obama will handle this diplomatic outreach “about right.”

Transcript: Read more

I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that Defense Secretary Gates’ announcement of his 2010 defense budget recommendations represents an appreciable shift in the way that the United States approaches the issue of military acquisitions. Applying lessons learned in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as signifying a recognition that the continuing economic crisis places real constraints on defense spending, Gates’ recommendations are an important — but by no means comprehensive — move toward a responsible re-balancing of America’s defense spending priorities.

Describing it as “the product of a holistic assessment of capabilities, requirements, risks and needs for the purpose of shifting this department in a different strategic direction,” Gates said that “this is a reform budget, reflecting lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan yet also addressing the range of other potential threats around the world, now and in the future.”

Gates laid a shot across the bow of those in Congress who are likely to try and reinstate beloved boondoggles like the Airborne Laser and the F-22 Raptor, (which Gates recommended canceling after 187 are built) saying “I know that in the coming weeks we will hear a great deal about threats, and risk and danger -– to our country and to our men and women in uniform –- associated with different budget choices. Some will say I am too focused on the wars we are in and not enough on future threats.”

The allocation of dollars in this budget definitely belies that claim. But, it is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk -– or, in effect, to “run up the score” in a capability where the United States is already dominant -– is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

In both his prepared statement and in the Q&A, Gates dealt with concerns that the rising profile of counterinsurgency practitioners in the Pentagon came at the expense of conventional war-fighting. Gates insisted that he wasn’t letting “irregular capabilities overtake conventional capabilities,” but that he was “just trying to get the irregular guys a seat at the table.”

Back in December 2008, the Center for American Progress released a report recommending specific defense cuts. Below is a list of how those recommendations compare with Gates’ own. Read more

In presenting his proposed budget for the Defense Department today, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that he planned to end production of the F-22 at the current 187 planes — down from the 381 planes the government was expected to order. The aircraft has been the subject of fierce lobbying in recent weeks, and members of Congress have suggested that they would resist efforts to downsize the F-22 program. As a result of ending production of the F-22, Gates explained that he would increase production of more advanced aircraft:

GATES: To sustain U.S. air superiority, I am committed to building a fifth generation tactical fighter capability that can be produced in quantity at sustainable cost. Therefore I will recommend increasing the buy of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. [...]

We will end production of the F-22 fighter at 187. Representing 183 planes in the current program plus four recommend for inclusion in the FY2009 supplemental.

Later, Gates said, “[W]e have fulfilled the program. It’s not like we’re killing the F-22. We will have 187 of them. … The military advice that I got was that there is no military requirement for numbers of F-22 beyond 187.” Watch it:

The decision is welcome on two fronts. First, the F-22 contributes little to U.S. national security. It has not flown a single mission in the Iraq or Afghanistan campaigns. Further, as the Center for American Progress’s Larry Korb explained in 2005, the F-22 was designed to address threats that the U.S. last faced during the cold war:

The F/A-22 Raptor is the most unnecessary weapon system being built by the Pentagon. In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to do away with it in the summer of 2002 but backed off when his Air Force secretary threatened to resign over the issue. It was originally designed to achieve air superiority over Soviet fighter jets, which will never be built.

Second, the F-22 has become increasingly costly to operate even as the number of planes on order has decreased. The Pentagon recently announced that they would need $8 billion to upgrade 100 F-22’s which are already in use. The aircraft is “proving very expensive to operate … and it is complex to maintain,” the Pentagon explained. The aircraft’s readiness rate fell to 62 percent last year, which the Pentagon called “unsatisfactory.” Ending the production of the F-22 will free up scarce resources to fund programs more in line with our current security needs.

And ending the production of the aircraft will likely not result in massive jobs loss, despite claims to the contrary. As David Axe recently noted, the firms that produce the F-22 have many other clients. “A year ago the industry was worried about huge labor shortages. Shutting down the Raptor line would see thousands of workers snapped up for active production lines churning out F-16s, F-35s, C-130s and modernized C-5s for Lockheed,” Axe wrote.

Since the new administration took office, there has been a clear and concerted effort by the Iraq war’s architects and supporters to present post-surge Iraq as a success, to be either preserved or squandered by President Obama. In reality, however, the continuing violence in Iraq speaks for itself.

Anthony Shadid reports today that a series of six car bombs “struck markets, a police convoy and a gaggle of workers in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods Monday, killing 32 people and wounding more than 120 in one of the most violent days in the capital in months.”

Last week Alissa Rubin reported that “Iraqi and American security officials say that jihadi and Baath militants are rejoining the fight in areas that are largely quiet now, regrouping as a smaller but still lethal insurgency.”

A non-comprehensive list of other attacks in Iraq since January 2009:

- 23 killed by a suicide bomber in Youssifiyah on January 2.
- 38 killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad on January 4.
- 16 killed by two car bombs at a bus terminal in Baghdad on February 11.
- 8 killed by a suicide bomber in Karbala on February 12.
- 40 killed by a suicide bomber in Musayyib on February 13.
- 13 killed by a car bomb in Hillah on March 5.
- 30 killed by a suicide bomber at a Baghdad police academy on March 8.
- 38 killed by a suicide bomber in an Abu Ghraib market on March 10.
- 32 killed in a series of attacks on March 23.
- 16 killed by a car bomb in Baghdad’s Shaab neighborhood on March 26.

As Eric Martin writes, “412 Iraqi civilians were killed in March, up from 346 in February which was itself up from 296 in January” according to Iraq Body Count. By any definition, Iraq remains in crisis.

Looking at last week’s battles between Sunni Awakenings forces and Iraqi government troops, CAP’s Brian Katulis noted the “shaky foundation constructed by the 2007 surge of U.S. troops — a foundation that largely glossed over long-standing political rivalries.” Katulis also stressed that the “tension between the central government and these independent militia groups is less dangerous than the growing tensions between Arab and Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.”

This is the Iraq in which Dick Cheney claims “we’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do,” and Bill Kristol insists “we have succeeded.” Leaving aside the myriad ways in which such claims are preposterous, given Kristol’s new effort to present himself as a bipartisan supporter of President Obama’s Afghanistan effort, I’ll be interested to see whether he interprets similar levels of violence in Afghanistan as an Obama “success” four years from now.