Snookered--Again.

Earlier in the week, our brilliant president got one-upped by third world countries and the canny Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And in the process, we seem to have lost any influence we had with one of our former allies. Turkey is now spitting in America's face as part of a growing Islamic coalition, with the help of socialist Brazil. Well done, Mr. Obama.

The growing crisis of Iran and its influence with its neighbors requires the talents of true experts in diplomacy, particularly the iron fist in the velvet glove. Instead we have the most lily-livered president since Jimmy Carter and a diplomatic corps made of morons, cowards, liars, and an occasional America-hater. It has been reported by multiple sources that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had put her faith in the perfidious Lula da Silva of Brazil to mediate an effort to turn Iran away from further sanctions, and was caught "completely off-guard" when he failed utterly.

One of the weakest and most exploitable traits of this administration is its ridiculously high expectations in its own ability to influence, and its complete lack of backup plans when their expectations are not fulfilled. Not only should Clinton not ever have relied on da Silva to broker any kind of decent deal, but she should have been prepared to tell Iran that if this UN-backed effort failed, we would be forced to act independently in consultation with our NATO allies to force Iran to rid itself of fissionable material, nuclear bomb plans, and missile delivery systems purchases.

But given Obama's track record so far, that threat would have meant absolutely nothing. Obama's knees are weak, and he's well-known for avoiding personal failures by abandoning and humiliating former allies (personal and international). Ahmadinejad has exploited Obama's weaknesses at every turn. He knows that Obama's policy is to speak softly, and carry a nerf bat. The Three Stooges were more dangerous and more believable than anything that is coming out of this White House.

Of course that other canny tyrant, Vladimir Putin, pushed his puppet president Dmitri Medvedev into setting the stage for guaranteed failure by by having Medvedev announce that "Brazil's efforts were the last chance to avoid sanctions." That worked very nicely. And when may we expect those sanctions to go into effect, Mr. Medvedev? At the same time, China didn't even have to pretend it might support sanctions.

Meanwhile, back at the tent, former ally Turkey hopped into the game and announced that in the interests of world peace (God help us), Turkey would accept low-enriched uranium from Iran in exchange for selling Iran fuel-rods of uranium for use in (get this) a Tehran medical research research reactor. Ahmandinejad keeps upping the ante, and with each threat finds an even cleverer way to outmaneuver the wimpy and incompetent Obama State Department.

Obama, a devotee of the United Nations, is going to have a hard time knocking either Brazil or Turkey for stabbing America in the back. The two nations have alternating rotating seats on the UN Security Council, and have innate clout with Obama because of his UN worship. Once again, thanks to the amateur from the South Side of Chicago, America has painted itself into a corner. Even the pro-Obama Los Angeles Times recognizes what a foolish move has been made. Says the Times: America is now in the position of having to "face a choice of rejecting the deal and appearing intransigent, or accepting it, potentially allowing Iran to defuse mounting international pressures through an infinite delay."

Clinton, on the other hand, learned everything she knows from the former Philanderer in Chief, husband Bill Clinton. Thanks to similar diplomatic detours, North Korea today is not only armed with nukes and missile delivery systems, they also have an excellent computer network. A few more Democratic administrations like this, and America will be entirely without a nuclear arsenal to protect itself, and the penguins in Antarctica will be launching 100 megaton hydrogen bombs at us within a couple of decades.

An old and honored diplomatic rule is "never back your opponent into a corner from which he cannot retreat, and from which he cannot advance without all-out attack." Ahmadinejad knows that Obama will retreat all the way into that corner, cower for awhile, and then attack--verbally and verbosely. On the other hand, Clinton-style diplomacy leaves Iran half-way around the world from any corner, and Ahmadinejad would be more than willing to launch an all-out attack to bring on his Islamic version of Armageddon.