Mitt's Deflated Foreign Policy

Hey look, it's giant metaphor for Mitt Romney's foreign policy positions ahead of tonight's presidential debate:

An airship promoting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Florida drew attention for other reasons Sunday when it was forced to make an emergency landing just north of Miami.

According to WSVN-TV, the blimp, bearing the banner, “America Needs Romney,” was caught in high winds on its way back to a local airport, forcing it to the ground near a residential area in Davie, Florida.

“It was getting lower and lower,” one resident said. “It was totally going down, it was just losing altitude. The wind was just taking it and taking it.”

Team Romney took a double-whammy this weekend, as the Obama administration announced a major diplomatic breakthrough with Iran and the Republican version of the Benghazi attack collapsed under the weight of reality. Their foreign policy blimp went crashing down. Team Romney is furiously trying to spin good news into bad, but I seriously doubt anyone other than the base will bite. As is so often the case, good news for America is bad news for the GOP -- which means this weekend was a disaster for them.

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On Iran Sanctions, Thompson Fails Integrity Test

I don't know what to make of Tommy Thompson performance in the Wisconsin Senatorial debate last night, other than to wonder whether perhaps Tommy is not well. The political lion who was the state's longest serving governor is still in there somewhere -- you can see him at times -- but this is one confused lion. And that became very apparent. It was on the subject of Iran that things started to look a little shaky.

The Thompson campaign had leaked a story to the press earlier in the day that detailed opponent Tammy Baldwin taking $60,000 from an organization that opposed sanctions against Iran. That in itself is no big deal. You can agree or disagree with the sanctions approach to Iran. If you think an anti-sanctions position is worthy of criticism, go ahead and criticize away. It's a foreign policy debate that would be absolutely within bounds. We'll get into all that in a moment.

But consider, if Team Thompson had leaked the story ahead of the debate, that means the candidate spent the day -- at least -- preparing to discuss the issue. The result of that cram session? This:

It is necessary to prevent Iran and Ahmadinejan (sic) — who is an individual that is somewhat mentally impaired, who believes that the Holocaust never existed, believes that Israel should be destroyed, and has threatened America that they’re going to blockade the Gulf of Hormuth (sic), which would block all the oil going worldwide, and it would enter us into a world depression.

He can't remember the name Ahmadinejad or the real name of the Strait of Hormuz (in fact, he can't even picture it in his mind; a strait and a gulf are entirely different things). He'd had to have been going over this again and again -- it was, after all, pretty much the entire strategy to winning the debate -- and Thompson still couldn't get even the most basic facts down. Worse, he kept referring to the organization which made the Baldwin contribution -- Council for a Livable World -- as a "company," prompting an exasperated "Who are you talking about?" from Baldwin.

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Koch Crimes and Tea Party Chumps

We got a preview of how damaging an upcoming Bloomberg Markets magazine story on the Koch brothers would be last week. Salon's Justin Elliott reported that "an anonymous person or persons in the orbit of the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch try to discredit a forthcoming story in Bloomberg Markets magazine."

"Based on the prebuttal items appearing this week in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller, and U.S. News and World Report," he continued, "the Bloomberg story focuses on alleged malfeasance and/or fraud and/or bad behavior by the conglomerate Koch Industries."

That's right, prebuttals. They want to discredit the story before it ever even hits the newsstands. But this weekend, Bloomberg put up what Politico calls an "early glance" of the article up on their website and what's there is explosive. And detailed.

There's plenty there; illicit business dealings with Iran, bribery in Africa, India, and the Middle East, firing the company's internal investigators for not turning blind eyes to obvious wrongdoing ("They didn't know what to do with me," says one. "They were really kind of baffled that I had ethics"), and general corporate culture of lawlessness and corruption. If you want an idea of what the perfect corporate climate would be for the Koch brothers and the Tea Party, look no further. Just imagine nearly everything they're already doing, only made legal.

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McCain's Favorite Pork Product

Iran, late in joining us in celebrating the Fourth of July, shot off a few rockets yesterday. They plan to make up for their tardiness by firing off more today. According to the media and the right, the proper response to this news is, "Oh my freakin' God, oh sweet Jesus, we're all gonna die!"

Although some think the big news is that Iran apparently Photoshopped an extra missile in a photo released to the press, the actually story is that Iran shot off some rockets -- that's the big deal here.

In fact, the Photoshop story's not even secondary -- or tertiary or quaternary. It's trivia. "Authoritarian state releases propaganda" is not exactly earth-shattering news. No, the other story was the US presidential candidates' reactions to the Iran's action. Where Obama called for a diplomatic response, John McCain called on the US to shovel more money down a useless rathole.

Continued after the jump

Associated Press:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that Iran's missile tests highlight the need for direct diplomacy as well as tougher threats of economic sanctions and strong incentives to persuade Tehran to change its behavior.

John McCain, the Republican seeking the presidency, said the tests demonstrate a need for effective missile defense, including missile defense in Europe and the defense system the U.S. plans with the Czech Republic and Poland.

There are a couple of problems with McCain's whole missile defense idea. The most obvious is that no one thinks Iran is going to launch missiles at Europe. And the missiles launched yesterday have an extended range of 1,250 miles. If you're in the US, go change your pants, you've got nothing to worry about. McCain's offering a solution to a problem no one believes exists.

But the larger problem is that this missile defense system doesn't actually work. Ronald Reagan jotted the idea down on the back of a matchbook once, so Republicans believe it's divinely inspired. Ron came up with his big idea in 1983 (then called the Strategic Defnese Initiative or SDI) and, since then, it really hasn't gotten much farther. Even SDI true believers say that missile defense is "like hitting a bullet with a bullet." Not surprisingly, that turns out to be every bit as impossible as it sounds. The only "successful" tests of missile defense systems have been ridiculously skewed in favor of success -- missiles had GPS systems the interceptors could home in on, people on the ground had the precise trajectory of their targets, and they knew far, far in advance that the missiles were coming. Even then, in these insanely unrealistic scenarios, the success rate of tests have been mixed. Even when the tested are rigged, success is not guaranteed. The thing is just extremely expensive junk. Even these joke "tests" are expensive, costing taxpayers $100 million each.

And it's the "expensive" part that justifies its existence. We've spent $120 billion on missile defense since Reagan had his notion. By 2013, the annual cost will be nearly $19 billion. That marks 25 years of really expensive failure, with no end in sight. Missile defense is very lucrative busywork for defense contractors. The whole thing's been a scam on the American taxpayer.

And John McCain's been in on it. In fact, McCain's been trying to get one of these defense systems deployed in Poland. Poland -- knowing full well the "missile shield" doesn't do squat -- is holding out for military aid. After all, accepting the system alone would mean annoying Russia and getting nothing in return. That's not much of an incentive to help corrupt American politicians funnel money to corporations. They want something other than a pile of crap for their trouble. Poland wants some of that scratch too.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur:

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the daily Dziennik his recent trip to the US was important to clarify the Polish stance amid a deadlock in negotiations on a proposed American anti-missile shield in Poland.

Sikorski held talks with US presidential hopeful John McCain, and called them 'so cordial and precise that it surprised us.' Sikorski added that presidential candidate Barack Obama's skepticism about the shield is 'widely known.'

But McCain's opinion strengthens the Polish stance in negotiations, Sikorski said, and serves as an important point in talks.

'It shows the possible future president and one of the main strategists of that country thinks Polish demands are sensible,' he said.

Not only would McCain continue to blow money on this BS "shield," he'd actually spend more money -- in the form of military aid -- to deploy it. There is no part of that that makes any sense at all.

That is, unless you consider the obvious. "If you think of missile defense not as a military project, but as a... corporate picnic, it begins to make perfect sense," wrote Steve Lopez for the LA Times in 2001. "They spent $75 billion on Star Wars and got nowhere. Fifty Nobel laureates felt compelled to sign a statement declaring the whole thing insane."

That's exactly what it is -- a big pork picnic for corporations and the politicians who love them. In fact, John McCain's such a big booster he puts his love for this money vacuum right on his website. "Effective missile defenses are critical to protect America from rogue regimes like North Korea that possess the capability to target America with intercontinental ballistic missiles, from outlaw states like Iran that threaten American forces and American allies with ballistic missiles, and to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China," we're told. "Effective missile defenses are also necessary to allow American military forces to operate overseas without being deterred by the threat of missile attack from a regional adversary."

Too bad there's no such thing as "effective missile defenses" -- just this ineffective piece of crap people like John McCain have been screwing us with for the past quarter century.

When the guy who tells you he's going to balance the budget in just four years tells you he's going to keep shoveling billions down a hole, you've got to wonder just how "straight" all of this straight talk can actually be. After all, he plans to do this all while keeping Bush's tax cuts and blowing money on occupying Iraq. If he's not going to cut BS pork like missile defense, what will he cut to keep it? What could possibly be less important than this corporate pork feast?

Someone should ask McCain that. Somehow, I doubt anyone in the press ever will.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iran; Poland; military; corruption; corporations; science; technology; John McCain loves missile defense -- mostly because it tastes like pork

If There's Nothing to be Afraid of, Would Anyone Vote for McCain?

I may be in the minority on the left in believing that we're not going to attack Iran. Yes, we've been doing a lot of saber-rattling. Yes, our leadership is insane enough to do it. Yes, we're stepping up covert actions against Iran -- to the point of funding the al Qaeda- tied Iranian People's Resistance Movement, hypocritically making the Bush administration a state-sponsor of terrorism.

But how long have we been frightened with the scarecrow of war with Iran -- one year, two, three? We fire on Iranian boats, we move carrier groups into the Persian Gulf, we hear that Israel's going to get the ball rolling with an attack of their own. But nothing ever happens. I'm starting to think all this "war with Iran" stuff is a diplomatic game of good cop-bad cop. Unfortunately for the cops, it only makes them look indecisive; "We're cooking something up, just you wait. It's gonna be really bad..."

That it also freaks people in the US out is probably not coincidental. Bush has turned the Republican party into the party of fear. As long as you're so damned afraid you can't keep your pants dry, you'll agree to pretty much anything. And you'll look the other way when it comes to crimes like torture. The GOP has also been using the fear card to give them a leg up in elections. They're the tough guys. Never mind that these "tough guys" always seem to get their asses kicked. The "tough guys" didn't stop 9/11, Iraq continues to be uncontrollable, and Afghanistan is going south in a big hurry. They talk tough, so that must mean they are, recent history be damned.

But what will happen to them when Iraq isn't an issue and we have no reason to freak out over Iran? Will they claim Raul Castro has a death ray, that Robert Mugabe's third-rate military power constitutes a "threat to America," that some nasty little far-flung dictatorship like Turmenistan has designs on world domination?

If they don't have a boogeyman to scare voters with, what will Republicans run on? The problem with Republican ideology is that their positions on most issues are pretty unpopular. Everything boils down to sink or swim. Their idea of health care reform is removing restrictions on the industry to make it even more dominated by faceless corporations. Social Security reform is privatization, which is basically abolishment. Their economic policies are apparent in our current situation, which even Republicans aren't happy with.

Take John McCain. Lose "war, war, war" and his signature issue is global free trade. Turns out that most people aren't fans.

CNN:

As John McCain prepares to promote the advantages of free trade during a high-profile trip to Colombia and Mexico, a poll released Tuesday suggests the issue may pose a political hurdle for the Arizona senator as the general election campaign heats up.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 51 percent of the Americans questioned view foreign trade as a threat to the economy — the first time in a CNN poll that a majority of respondents report holding negative views on free trade.

Not a huge majority by any means, but in an election, 51% is the magic number. Anything below that really doesn't give a candidate much to worry about. A lot of people brought up Hillary Clinton's "high negatives" in the Democratic primary, but I don't think I ever did. Mostly because she never got over 50% disapproval and that made those negatives irrelevant. 51% is the sweat number.

John McCain may wind up running without Iraq or Iran. For Iraq's part, the Iraqi Parliament is about an inch away from kicking us out. McCain might have reason to thank them for that -- his position on the occupation is killing him with voters. On the other hand, I don't see Bush leaving. Iraq would find it's a "sovereign state" whose sovereignty extends only so far as it's allowed to by the occupying force. Bush has said he'd leave if he were asked to by the government, but saying one thing one week and something entirely different the next has never stopped him before. There is no truth in this President.

But what about Iran? Well, there's good news for sane people and bad news for crazy neocon warmongers. There are signs that war with Iran may be completely unnecessary -- as opposed to just unnecessary -- and that they may stop being scary enough for McCain and the Republicans to use as a scarecrow.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Iran's senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six world powers to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, and he praised the package as "constructive."

The unusually positive remarks by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to a small group of reporters raised hope that a negotiated solution can be found to defuse the crisis.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend the enrichment of uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons, and the Bush administration has refused direct talks with Iran until it meets that condition.

Of course, this is nowhere near a done deal, but it does bring up the question; if John McCain can't freak out over Iran or Iraq, just what is his reason for existing?

And it doesn't help any that Iran has come to this point with the world because the world did something Bush and McCain argued was reckless and naive -- talking to Iran. Bush, before the Israeli Knesset, compared this to the appeasement of the Nazis, as if people were arguing that we give Iran the Sudetenland. John McCain agreed and upped the ante, comparing Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain. McCain also made a ridiculous argument about Reagan and the Iranian hostage crisis that ignored the plain historical fact of the Iran-Contra arms for hostages scandal. "He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran," Baghdad Johnny said, "he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home." Maybe Reagan didn't sit down with those religious extremists, but someone who worked for him did. Reagan basically paid a ransom. Which, of course, makes Ronald Reagan a Nazi appeaser.

The Nazi appeasers who've brought us to this stage are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and -- wait for it -- the United States. Iran has finally agreed to consider a two year-old joint offer that includes many appeasey elements -- McClatchy says it gives "Iran political, economic and security rewards if it 'verifiably suspends its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.'" McCain would call this a "carrot and stick" approach. Bush would say it's "rewarding bad behavior." People who aren't freakin' crazy would call this "productive."

So, not only are McCain's ideas for international diplomacy very close to being proven wrong, but his entire argument as to why he has to be president is in jeopardy. If there's nothing to be afraid of, what's McCain going to pretend he can protect us from?

There doesn't seem to be any place for John McCain in a relatively peaceful world. And that's a good reason to reject him right there.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; middle east; Bush; neocon; war; diplomacy; elections; 2008; Republican; Take away Iran and Iraq and what's John McCain got?

Appeasing the Neocons

It's typical of George W. Bush. He goes to Saudi Arabia to get their help in our energy mess and it doesn't go so well. In fact, the headline in the Telegraph was "Oil leaps after Bush's Saudi trip." Bush's mission did not achieve its desired effect. The Saudis agreed to produce 300,000 extra barrels -- a number the report calls "token." And it's only a token if you believe that Bush had any success at all. The Saudis say that decision had already been made and that Bush's visit had no impact.

Associated Press has a telling paragraph:

When Bush first ran for president in 2000, he criticized the Clinton administration for high fuel prices and said the president must "jawbone" oil producing nations and persuade them to drop rates. At that time, oil was nearing $28 a barrel — less than a quarter what it is now.

The Telegraph piece tells us that "investment bank Goldman Sachs [is] predicting an average price per barrel of $141 in the latter half of the year." The price per barrel is now $127.

No wonder Republicans don't see the value of diplomacy -- their guy sucks at it. Which kind of makes Bush's decision to take a slap at Barack Obama's foreign policy ideas a brand-new kind of ridiculousness. In fact, there are a lot of ridiculous bits to Bush's appearance before the Israeli Knesset. Not the least of which is going to the Israeli parliament to talk about Hitler. Doesn't really seem extremely appropriate to me.

For his part, Bush seems to realize that this election cycle is going to be about him and how much he sucks. So Bush has, apparently, decided that if Barack Obama is going to run against Bush, then John McCain should run against Hamas and Iran. McCain has no reason to thank the president for his help. As this campaign unfolds, the White House and Team McCain are going to find out that there are many things more popular Bush -- and that one of those things are Hamas and Iran. The average person is much more concerned with those who would appease Bush.

After all, it's not Hamas or Iran who are screwing up this country -- a vast majority of Americans agree that Bush is doing that. I don't think anyone's taken a poll on the subject, but I'd be willing to bet good money that if you asked people who they were most worried about, Bush would kick Iran's and Hamas' collective asses. So, if George W. Bush believes he has a role to play in this election, Barack Obama should applaud him, while John McCain should curse him.

McCain's problem is that he isn't cursing Bush and chasing him off the campaign trail. John McCain's joining in. The stupidity of this is hard to express in english. There just isn't a word for that mixture of insanity, stupidity, and contempt for your intelligence. McCain seems to believe that agreeing with Bush on foreign policy is a winner. It's hard to imagine how he could be more wrong.

Former dem prez candidate Sen. Joe Biden pointed out the hypocrisy of Bush's big "appeasers" speech.

ABC News:

Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, backed Obama's plan to engage in unconditional talks with the Iranians. "You either talk, you go to war, or you maintain the status quo," he explained. "What's the alternative to talking with a country that's building a nuclear weapon, attempting to, that, in fact, is helping kill Americans by supporting elements in Iraq that are killing Americans?"

Biden also said that Bush should fire Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being so-called "appeasers." "They both -- Gates, as recently as a week ago -- said, we've got to sit down and talk with the Iranians directly," Biden said.

When asked if the president's comments were hypocritical, Biden explained he was "trying to be more polite, but I shouldn't be. It was ridiculous."

Of course, Bush's "appeasement" argument only works if you allow for a horrific abuse of the english language and a complete ignorance of history. Barack Obama has not, after all, suggested we let Iran annex Czechoslovakia. In fact, he hasn't suggested we give them anything at all. "Appeasement" requires some demand to be appeased. Something on the level of leaving Lebanon because terrorists demanded it. Kind of like what Reagan did.

Of course, I've always defined war as a three step process. First, there's a failure of diplomacy. Then, there's a period of irrational human sacrifice. Finally, there's a return to diplomacy and a diplomatic solution. Any sane person can see that there's a pointless and stupid step in there -- Bush and McCain think it's the first one. After all, you can't count on the diplomacy to fail and if it doesn't, then where are you? Up the creek without a war, that's where.

In the Bush/McCain universe, foreign policy consists entirely of being bullies and dicks. Talk is for weaklings and cowards, leaders get right to the fighting. Diplomacy is war's weak sister. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever," could just as easily have been said by the neocons. George Orwell's party loyalist only beat them to it. Stupid and brutal people only understand force and violence and, sadly, they also believe everyone is just as stupid and brutal as they are. They use themselves as their models and conclude that diplomacy is guaranteed to fail.

What McCain, who called Bush's "appeasement" speech "exactly right," is saying is that he'd approach the world in the same way Bush has -- with a bomb in one hand and a flag in the other. Baghdad Johnny is telling everyone that he'd be four more years of George W. Bush.

It's hard to see how that'll be a winning argument.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iran; neocon; elections; 2008; Israel; Somehow, I don't think that running as Bush v.2.0 is going to be a winner for John McCain

Baghdad John

I came across something a few days ago that put me a bit at ease. Crooks and Liars tells us that, on FOXNews Sunday, founding neocon, editor of The Weekly Standard, and New York Times Columnist William Kristol said that Iraq would be good for John McCain.

...Politically, I think this is good for McCain for this reason: What’s the main challenge of the next President? Dealing with Iran. Dealing with Iran’s attempts to get mutual hegemony. Dealing with Iran’s attempt to destabilize Iraq. Dealing with Iran’s attempt to get nuclear weapons. Who do you want dealing with Iran over the next four years? McCain or Obama? I think that’s good for McCain.

Why does this assessment by a well-respected pundit make me -- an Obama backer -- feel better? Simple; Kristol's a freakin' idiot who has a near-perfect record of never being right about anything. Given a choice between Senator Bomb-bomb's or Barack Obama's idea of statesmanship, the vast majority would choose Obama's. The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll shows that only 18% of respondents thought military action against Iran would be a good idea. This shows two things; one, John McCain is completely outside the mainstream and, two, 18% of Americans are dumber than stumps.

McCain's reputation of a "maverick" and an independent is almost completely unearned. "The independent label sticks to John McCain because he antagonizes fellow Republicans and likes to work with Democrats," writes Libby Quaid of Associated Press. "But a different label applies to his actual record: conservative."

Actually, calling his record "conservative" is more than a little unfair to those rational people who still wear that label in the age of Bush. John McCain is right wing. And, on the issue of war, he's crazy right wing. The first tool in Sen. Bomb-bomb's toolbox is the military.

To get an idea of how little thought McCain gives to matters non-military, we only have to look at his statements about the war we're in now. McCain constantly confuses Sunni and Shia, Iran and al Qaeda, Sunni and Iran, Shia and al Qaeda. We can only assume two things here -- either he's amazingly ignorant of the facts in the middle east or he's lying. Let's be charitable and assume he's just an ignoramus when it comes to global politics.

In the recent crackdown by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government on Basra, McCain insisted that Muqtada al-Sadr waved the white flag. The opposite was true -- Maliki's government was hopelessly outmatched and it was Maliki who accepted terms, not al-Sadr. In fact, the Iraqi government recently fired 1,300 police and soldiers who "failed to fight in the offensive, which was the biggest operation the government had launched without backing from large U.S. or British ground units."

Remember, we're being charitable here and assuming John just doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. In fact, McCain shares this trait with Bush -- on far too many issues, the only options are that they're ignorant or they're lying. He claims, for example, that Iran is trying to destabilize Iraq -- for reasons he never gets around to explaining -- while apparently being entirely ignorant of the fact that Iran backs Maliki's government.

That'd be the same government McCain supports. Iran wouldn't just be John McCain's enemy, they'd be his sorta-kinda ally. You'd think that big Mr. Foreign Policy Expert would know these little details. Either John McCain has no idea what's going on or he's the second coming of Baghdad Bob.

Again, we're being nice about this and assuming he's a dope, not a lying propagandist.

Sometimes, this charitability is hard to maintain. The level of cluelessness required to make these statements reaches beyond credibility. Columnist Cynthia Tucker reminds us of just one such episode.

Of course, you'll remember that infamous episode last year, when McCain returned from a trip to Baghdad and declared to a talk show host that some of its neighborhoods were safe enough "you and I could walk through." It turned out that the senator had ventured out of the Green Zone only with 100 U.S. soldiers accompanying him and two Apache gunships and three Blackhawk helicopters overhead.

Still, I guess you could say he didn't notice all these soldiers and flyin' contraptions all around him -- they were camouflaged, after all. And he's old, so maybe his hearing's so bad he didn't catch the deafening chucka-chucka-chucka of helicopters overhead. Maybe he didn't notice the big, heavy bullet-proof vest he wore.

It could happen.

So William Kristol and John McCain are in the same boat -- they're completely wrong about an amazingly large number of things. And McCain and Bush are likewise in the same boat -- when they're wrong on so many basic facts, the nicest thing you can say about them is that they're just ignorant as hell.

I'm starting to think that maybe the nicest assessment isn't exactly the truest. Either way, neither is a very good trait to have in a president.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; war; military; elections; 2008; Republican; propaganda; Sunni; Shia; Iran; You make the call; is John McCain lying or stupid?

Politics, Power, and Basra

Sometimes, we need to be reminded that people actually live in Iraq. As much as we try to pretend otherwise, nearly all the violence in that country stems from our invasion and occupation. In removing a dictator, we totally destroyed the power structure. The result was immediate chaos.

But people are orderly creatures who dislike disorder. The impulse toward order isn't always an impulse toward law -- or, at least, human law. People join street gangs not to commit crimes, but to enjoy the safety in numbers. In a lawless area, any order is welcome and if that order comes from dominance, then so be it. The street gang, the vigilante, and the dictator all come from the same place -- the need to make order from chaos.

So the neocon dreamers who foresaw a shining example of democracy in the middle east ignored basic truths; that authoritarianism is seen as better than lawlessness and that when governmental structures fail, people turn to secondary social institutions. These institutions can be gangs, they can be religious orders, they can be political movements, and they can be any combination of these.

When the pendulum swings to the farthest extremes of lawlessness, the human reaction is to swing it back using the farthest extremes of lawfulness -- authoritarianism and dominance. If people won't live orderly, you make them live orderly. If people won't obey the law, then at least they'll obey you. Strength becomes law and force becomes order.

Of course, there will always be disagreements over what constitutes order. Western liberal democracies don't seem very orderly. The list of things you're barred from doing is much, much shorter than the list of things allowed. People can hold different ideas and work at cross-purposes to the government and fellow citizens. Subversion and dissent are allowed. Groups are free to insult and hate each other.

From the outside, democracy doesn't look a lot different from chaos.

So, even in a democratic context, the authoritarian impulse survives. Especially in response to recent disorder. In these conditions, democracy becomes only a pretense of legitimacy. People are free to vote, but those they vote for are already chosen. Power, out of fear of a return to chaos, protects itself. In even the very best case scenario, the authoritarian turns to oppression. In the worst, violence.

This is the case in Iraq and the Dawa party's recent skirmish with the Medhi Army. If -- as the simpleminded bumperstickers tell us -- freedom isn't free, then neither is authoritarianism. Governments protect themselves first and their citizens second. In fact, when the individual person is sacrificed to protect the collective government, this is called "the common good" -- even when that sacrifice serves only the government.

Baghdad Observer:

This is the tale of two Shiite fighters buried in the same cemetery in the holy city of Najaf. In the Valley of Peace, the largest Muslim cemetery in the world, these men’s bodies buried, blessed and mourned. One was an Iraqi soldier. The other was a Medhi Army fighter from Muqtada al Sadr's army.

Mohammed Sami was a father of three little girls and a boy. His wife will now raise them alone. Iraqi Security Forces descended on Basra last week to wrest control of the city from Shiite militants. The Medhi Army fought back and the battle spread to Baghdad and neighboring provinces. Sami, a militia member, was killed in battles in Karbala with the Iraqi Security Forces.

His cousin, Ahmed Moussa Hassan, buried him in one of the 100 graves dug for dead fighters by their Medhi Army peers.

"Mohammed was defending himself when they came to detain him, and the Sayed (the honorofic title for Muqtada al Sadr) told us that to defend one's self is a duty," Hassan said. "All the blood that has been shed is upon the conscience of Maliki and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, because it is them who caused this strife."

President Bush basically congratulated Maliki on this attack. He called it a "positive" moment and told everyone that Maliki was cracking down on lawlessness. Muqtada al-Sadr, the Medhi Army leader, had called for "civil disobedience" in protest of arrests of Medhi members and a lack of security in Sadr city. Maliki reacted badly, killing at least 50 peaceful protesters. This escalated into a full-scale battle over days -- a battle that Maliki seemed to be losing.

The real reason for all of this was government's reflex toward self-protection. Maliki's nation wasn't in danger from the Mehdi Army, his position was. Juan Cole explains in Salon:

Three main motivations [for Maliki] present themselves: control of petroleum smuggling, staying in power (including keeping U.S. troops around to ensure it), and the achievement of a Shiite super-province in the south. A southern super-province would spell a soft partition of the country, benefiting Shiites in the long term while cutting Sunnis out of substantial oil revenues, both licit and illicit. But all of the motivations have to do with something President Bush established as a benchmark in January 2007: upcoming provincial elections.

The Sadr Movement leaders themselves are convinced that the recent setting of a date for provincial elections, on Oct. 1, 2008, and al-Maliki's desire to improve the government's position in advance of the elections, precipitated the prime minister's attack. It is widely thought that the Sadrists might sweep to power in the provinces in free and fair elections, since the electorate is deeply dissatisfied with the performance of the major incumbent party in the southern provinces, the Islamic Supreme Council of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

As I said, for authoritarian governments, democracy becomes only a pretense of legitimacy. Sure, you can vote, but you can only vote for candidates who have the advantage of being alive and for parties that enjoy the benefits of existence. Likewise, Bush's reaction to all of this was pretense -- he tried to spin a politically motivated mass assassination attempt into a triumph of law and order.

Of course, on the other side of the conflict are other deaths. Baghdad Observer tells us of one of them.

Across the cemetery a poor Shiite family from Najaf laid their son to rest. The 28-year-old's job as an Iraqi soldier supported his sisters, brothers and his parents. His father, Malik al Shimmeri, paid a $500 bribe to get his son, Zuhair, his job. Now he is riddled with the guilt that the job ultimately killed his son.

"He never wanted the job, he hated the violence," said Al-Shimmeri. "I wanted him to help with money. I made him do it and now he is dead."

His son’s death filled him with both guilt and anger at the Shiite Mahdi Army that many people now support more out of fear than love.

"My son, Zuhair, was martyred at the hands of the criminal terrorists in Kut," he said. "Maliki must pursue the criminals and execute them."

And thus is generations of unrest and violence born. In the end, it was a third authoritarian force who brought about a ceasfire. Iran. The US pretends that Iran had backed only the Mehdi Army, but it also backs Maliki's government.

All of these governments and parties protected themselves -- the US included. And the people they've killed or sent to die didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. They'll keep killing and keep fighting, but the people they send to do it are just tools to them. They aren't as real as the Dawa Party or the Mehdi Army or the neocon dreamers.

People may have to live in Iraq, but all of the big players there believe people also have to die. War crimes in the name of law, mass killing in the name of safety, assassination in the name of democracy.

Iraq stopped making any damned sense a long time ago.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Nuri al-Maliki; Muqtada al-Sadr; Mehdi Army; Dawa Party; Bush; neocon; propaganda; The people in Basra were sold out for the government of Iraq

What If Fallon's Just The First Of Many?

The thing about news stories is that they're artificially reduced to stand-alone sort of things. In political news, the whole story is wider in scope than the news can cover. Politics and government are ongoing stories, with each news item merely a facet of the wider narrative. To look at a single newspaper piece or network news report and think the headline tells you everything is like thinking "The King is Assassinated" is all there is to know about MacBeth. You've got your witches, you've got the grasping power-lust of Lady MacBeth, you've got the guilt over the murder of Banquo -- there's a lot more to it than just one dead king. The story goes on in both directions, before and after Duncan's death.

Sometimes, the background to the stories we see reported by the media goes back a bit. And sometimes. as in MacBeth, events foretold come to pass. In two stories, we see the larger story. Like they say, past is prologue. A news story that's been making some waves lately has been the "retirement" of Adm. Fallon:

Bloomberg News:

Admiral William Fallon's resignation as U.S. commander in the Middle East provoked criticism that President George W. Bush won't tolerate dissent and fed speculation his Iran policy could become more confrontational.

"Congress needs to determine immediately whether Admiral Fallon's resignation is another example of truth tellers being forced to the sidelines in the Bush administration," said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who lost to Bush in the 2004 election. "His departure must not clear the way for a rush to war with Iran."

After a series of interviews critical of the administration's "war at any minute" attitude toward Iran, Fallon's out. An article in Esquire was apparently the final straw. "I want to go through something positive rather than a negative like Iran, which is a real problem," Fallon says.

"This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful," Fallon told Al Jazeera last year. "I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions." With the White House itching for war -- to the point that Dick Cheney is actually supporting anti-Iran terrorist groups (who are also anti-US). This makes Adm. Fallon something other than a "team player."

William Fallon's departure explained, right? He's gone the way of other military commanders who've had the misfortune of giving this administration good advice. Add him to the list of people like Gen. Eric Shinseki who can now all write books with the same title -- See? I Told You So.

But, as I say, the story is rarely so self-contained. The present spills into the past as much as it does the future. The events of today were preceded by the events of yesterday.

Or last year. February 25, 2007, to be precise.

The Sunday Times:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

Of course, you'd expect that a military man resigning in protest would actually protest. But the story's still fairly fresh -- he only resigned tuesday -- so the possibility exists that the story's not over. Does this mean that war with Iran has been "ordered?" I don't know. Maybe it's just Shinseki all over again. Maybe it's just an administration that constantly tells us they "will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders" disregarding that sober judgment and firing that military leader. Maybe it's just the Bushie hypocritical asses being typical Bushie hypocritical asses.

But it pays to consider the other possibility -- that Adm. William Fallon is just the first to make good on the threat of last year. That sober judgment has once again been tossed out the window by an administration hellbent on making sure that cooler heads never prevail. From where we sit, it's impossible to tell. Fallon would never come out and say, "There's a secret plan to invade Iran."

But watch for other high-profile brass to quit in the near future. If that happens, get out on the street.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Bush; Cheney; White House; middle east; military; neocon; terrorism; Does William Fallon's resignation signal war with Iran?

Scarecrows at Home, Friends Abroad

The dominant color in the ad is "Matrix green," suggesting a shadowy, high tech issue that you probably wouldn't understand. Mr. Million Dollar Voice Guy tells us the House of Representatives went on vacation rather than renew Bush's FISA retooling and "new surveillance against terrorists is crippled." We're supposed to "tell the House of Representatives to do its job and pass 'the Senate's terrorist surveillance bill' and keep us all safe."

That's a new ad from Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (see the ad here). 2008 is an election year, which means the GOP are dusting off their favorite campaign slogan -- TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO KILL YOU IN YOUR BED!!

Of course, as propaganda so often is, the ad's a big steaming pile. Even the extremely right wing Washington Times tells us that the "expiration of certain temporary domestic wiretapping laws will have little effect on national security" and that the original FISA law, which is still in effect, "provides the necessary tools for the intelligence community to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists." In short, the ad's a lie. All the FISA retooling really does is provide amnesty to telecoms who've broken the law.

Under the current version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, you don't even need a warrant to begin a wiretap. You have 72 hours to get the warrant. The argument that feds can't listen in on anyone without the FISA retooling is another lie.

Of course, there's no requirement for propaganda to be true. In fact, the vast majority of propaganda are lies and that small percentage of it that's not are gross exaggerations. If you don't like being lied to and treated like a child, then you're not going to like the months between now and November.

Washington Post:

The [FISA propaganda] reflects the Republicans' view that they are on the winning side of a politically important issue, GOP lawmakers and aides say. During a speech at the RNC in January, former presidential adviser Karl Rove cited the fight over the surveillance bill as one of four key issues that GOP candidates should highlight during the campaign season, according to a transcript of his remarks.

"The House Democrat leaders are on the wrong side of the American people on this," said Brian Schubert, spokesman for the House Republican Conference.

But Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, accused Republicans of engaging in "fear-mongering." He said the dispute hinges on whether to protect "big phone companies."

"We're willing to stand up to this and bring some balance to this debate," Emanuel said in an interview yesterday.

It's not often that I get to say, "Yay for Rahm Emanuel." Terror alert levels are going to be jacked up and down -- after being completely ignored for the past four years. Crazy plots about remote controlled model airplanes or poisonous frogs or whatever seems scary enough are going to find their way into the media. No effort will be spared to make sure everyone's nicely freaked out.

Of course, leadership appeals to courage, while propaganda appeals to fear. The weakness of propaganda is that it doesn't look a lot like leadership. So anyone calling these fearmongers on their BS will have their patriotism attacked. If your underwear is clean and dry, you're not a real American. The new definition of "Patriot" is synonymous with "coward."

As always, there's a certain amount of "do as I say, not as I do" to all this. While we're all supposed to be hiding under the bed at home, the Bush administration is helping terrorists abroad.

Seymour Hersch, The New Yorker:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This Yojimbo strategy of playing both sides against the middle seems to completely disregard history -- it's the same strategy that had us funding the Mujahadeen against the Soviets, which eventually led to the rise of the Taliban. We all know how well that worked out.

The key architect of this policy shouldn't surprise anyone -- Dick Cheney. Hersch tells us, "While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney." That'd be the same Dick Cheney who's managed to have a spectacularly consistent record of embracing the worse course of action.

The blatant hypocrisy of this schizoid attitude toward terrorism is mindbending. While lies are being spread about the immediate threat of terrorism at home, we're actually going out of our way to help al Qaeda abroad.

And it brings to mind past scandals and crimes. Hersch again:

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal "lessons learned" discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. [Deputy national-security adviser and Cheney henchman Elliot] Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: "One, you can't trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can't trust the uniformed military, and four, it's got to be run out of the Vice-President's office" -- a reference to Cheney's role, the former senior intelligence official said.

So we're running a new extra-governmental terrorist aid office from behind Dick Cheney's desk, but we're supposed to be all bent out of shape that the House won't give telcoms amnesty. Terrorists will come over to your house and kill you because you have the right to sue AT&T. Apparently, one of al Qaeda's big issues is tort reform.

Mr. Million Dollar Voice Guy's never going to tell you any of this. His job is to get your boxers wet. The big Global War on Terror isn't so global, after all. Terrorism's fine, so long as the terrorists are destabilizing people we don't like. And, if these terrorists are the same ones who'd like to destabilize the US, well, so what? The neocon dreamers have a vision to follow. The middle east will be reshaped to meet their fantasies, Iran will fall, Syria will crumble, and butterflies and rainbows will shoot out of Islamic extremist asses worldwide. Terrorists, being so reasonable and sane and all, will realize the cause is lost and open homes for injured puppies.

That's what the "realists" like Cheney and Bush really believe and anything they do on the way is OK. The end justifies the means, the gardener doesn't shed a tear when his spade splits a worm. They've got a world to remake and it's your job, as a good, patriotic American, to drop a load in your shorts on cue.

That's the plan for America and that's the plan to win the elections. Ask Mr. Million Dollar Voice Guy, he'll be on TV for the next few months.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Bush; White House; middle east; Syria; Iran; propaganda; FISA ;Dick Cheney -- terrorism's BFF

A Tale of Two Headlines

Without a doubt, the big story this week was the National Intelligence Estimate that shot down Bush administration claims that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. The NIE changed the face of American politics immediately and destroyed what was left of neocon credibility. After months and months of frightening people with an atomic Ahmadinejad, Bushies found their scary monster story completely discredited. You can stop hiding under the covers now.

With the entire Middle East narrative changed, Bush found himself playing Baghdad Bob. In the face of plain fact, the president tried to convince us that the old story still worked. The NIE was a warning, he said, the world was still in peril and everyone should be scared, scared, scared. Iran was Germany, Ahmadinejad was Hitler, and Bush was -- I don't know -- Churchill or someone. He sure as hell isn't FDR.

There are probably a lot of reasons why Iran abandoned their nuclear weapons program. Most important among these would be that it was incredibly expensive and more than a little pointless. Iran isn't pursuing nukes because Iran doesn't need nukes. If Iran used a nuke, it's a sure bet they'd be nuked by either the US or Israel -- probably both. It'd be pretty much the same thing as nuking themselves. Why spend that kind of money on a weapon you could never use? Simple pragmatism -- a concept that the neocons clearly don't understand -- probably kept Iran out of the nuclear club.

What has become clear is that the intelligence community and the Pentagon have learned the lesson of Iraq, while the Bush administration has not. This is the tale of two headlines. One demonstrating a sadder, wiser intelligence wing and the other demonstrating just how stubborn, stupid, and unwilling to learn a damned thing the neocons are.

The first headline is from the Los Angeles Times. That headline (at least when it was reprinted in my paper) was "Iran report altered to avoid past mistakes." That story tells how the intelligence community was on track to back up Bush administration claims, but "the earlier drafts were scrapped."

What happened?

As U.S. intelligence officials sought Tuesday to explain the remarkable reversal, they pointed to two factors: the emergence of crucial information over the summer, and a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes that preceded the Iraq war.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the information that surfaced this summer included intercepted conversations of Iranian officials discussing the country's nuclear weapons program, as well as a journal from an Iranian source that documented decisions to shut it down.

The second headline is from Raw Story -- "Neocons believe US intelligence community too timid after Iraq."

Seriously.

Following its botched reports about Iraq's weapons capabilities, the US intelligence community is now too gun-shy to get it right about Iran, according to some hawkish conservatives who have advocated possible military intervention against the country.

Newly declassified portions of a new National Intelligence Estimate -- which indicates that Iran [is] no longer actively developing a nuclear weapon -- are part of an effort by the US intelligence community to avoid a repeat of its mistakes in the run-up to war with Iraq, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Fox News.

"They're so concerned about overstating the threat in Iraq, that they're overcompensating in the wrong direction," Bolton said. "You know they've changed their estimate on Iran from just two years ago. One has to ask why we should be more inclined to believe this one today than the one two years ago." A 2005 NIE reported Iran was "determined" [to] develop nuclear capability.

I can answer that question which "one has to ask" -- information is cumulative in nature and more time equals more information. If my information tells me that 1+X=Y, I have to guess at the value of Y. If I later find out that 1+2=Y, I can quit guessing. In fact, I have to abandon earlier guesses that were off the mark. That's this new, crazy thing the kids are using these days -- it's called "logic," John.

Once again, we have concrete proof that John Bolton's a freakin' moron. If you were just guessing about that before, you can stop now. Like the intelligence agencies, you now have enough info to call it. The more you know, the more likely you are to be right. Two years are plenty of time for sixteen intelligence agencies to get it right about Iran and we have plenty of evidence aout Bolton.

In fact, we're now learning that, while the intelligence agencies were determined to be right, the neocons were determined to be wrong. Raw Story reports that, although Bush claimed he only found out about the NIE last week, others have been trying to keep it under wraps for a lot longer than that.

...the NIE was no surprise to veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who has been writing about it since November 2006. Hersh told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that he believes the White House deliberately kept the NIE bottled up for over a year because the vice president was dissatisfied with its conclusions.

"At the time I wrote that, there was a tremendous fight about it because Cheney ... did not want to hear this," Hersh recalled. "I think the vice-president has kept his foot on the neck of that report. ... The intelligence we learned about yesterday has been circulating inside this government at the highest levels for the last year -- and probably longer."

As early as July 2006, Hersh had reported that the US military was resisting administration pressure for a bombing campaign in Iran, because "American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities."

Let me repeat that -- "The White House deliberately kept the NIE bottled up for over a year." But Bush claimed he only found out about it last week. This means that Bush is incredibly clueless or he's lying. As I never tire of pointing out, one doesn't preclude the other.

Reality, it seems, has a dovish, liberal bias. Dick Cheney "kept his foot on the neck of that report" because it didn't fit his preconceptions. I say it often, but I'm not sure I say it enough -- the neocons believe they're hard-headed realists. This despite the fact that they're wrong more often than not. They seem incapable of learning, as if they think the power of their beliefs is so strong that it can change reality. For neocons, wishing makes it so. These "realists" are really dreamers.

I could go on and on and on about this, but I'm a wussie, Bush-hatin' liberal -- which is the term applied to actual realists these days. Sooner or later, this realist knows I'm going to lose your attention. You didn't come here to read a freakin' book. So I'll leave you with one more link. Follow it if you're interested.

TIME has a piece explaining the Pentagon's take on the NIE. The headline pretty much tells it all -- "Why the Pentagon Is Happy about the NIE."

In fact, everyone is happy about the NIE -- other than warhead morons. We just found out that the world's a little safer than we were told. Seriously, what's not to like?

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; Middle East; morons; Bush; Cheney; propaganda; The new National Intelligence Estimate proves neocon are morons

Big Surprise, Bush Caught in a Lie

I called it nearly a year ago. On the day after Christmas, 2006, I wrote a post that I titled, Iran May Actually Need Nuclear Energy. In that post, I argued that Iran was running out of oil and a country that had spent its entire modernity as an energy seller would want to stay in the energy business. If you can't sell oil to the world, you can sell electricity to the Middle East.

In that post, I referred to an Associated Press story that told us, "Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015..." Iran, it appeared, had experienced peak oil -- the point at which oil fields begin to deliver diminishing returns. Iran's decline is between "10 and 12 percent" annually, according to the report.

As I say, I reported this, but in the mainstream media the story went nowhere. It was a business section story and no one reported it as being evidence that Bush administration scare mongering over an Iranian nuke program might be a tad bit overhyped. Someone owes me a beer.

So, after sitting on the "Iran's running out of oil" story for almost a year, the media reported yesterday the obvious as shocking truth -- the Bush administration's full of crap about Iran's nuclear program.

Raw Story:

A new US intelligence report indicates that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program four years ago -- but the White House on Monday nevertheless urged global powers to "turn up the pressure" on the country.

Newly declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate find that Iran abandoned its nuclear program in the fall of 2003 and does not currently possess a nuclear weapon. The country is still enriching uranium, however, and could still develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, according to senior intelligence officials.

It's important to distinguish the difference between "could develop a weapon" and "will develop a weapon." Iran could develop a nuclear weapon by 2010, if they started working on one today. But they aren't. We've just established that.

And even this news isn't the first we'd heard of this. In October, the UN raised their own doubts.

Agence France-Presse:

UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.

"We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program," the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.

"Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons ... they are at least (a) few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments.

"My fear (is) that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."

That Bush and Cheney have been overhyping the threat of Iran should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. The only way to get a position in this administration is to be a shameless liar.

And it's way past time that the media recognized that fact.

In fact, this new story about Iran's lack of a nuclear weapons program should be seen as as big a scandal for the media as the administration. There is no possible way that the only person who thought the whole story was screwy was some blogger in Wisconsin. If I knew it, they knew it.

And, knowing the story was extremely suspect, they helped the Bushies scare the bejeezus out of everyone with a nuclear weaponized Ahmadinejad.

This new information doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. Shameless as ever, the Bush administration is trying to spin this report into saying the exact opposite of what it plainly says. "Today's National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news," Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley said yesterday. "It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen."

Iran's not working on a nuke, so the Bush administration was right in telling everyone we're on the verge of WWIII. If your head just exploded, don't blame me.

In fact, at a press conference today, President Bush told reporters, "I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it." This is beyond spin. This is like being found in bed with another woman and denying she's another woman. "Baby, this is you..."

Whether or not the media goes along with this new Bush lie is an open question. I've been saying that the Bush administration has lost the benefit of the doubt for a long time. There isn't a single thing they say that shouldn't be viewed with skepticism. I also think we've gotten to that point with the media. I don't think we should assume the "Nuclear Iran" story's dead.

If the mainstream media remains true to form, they'll spend the next few weeks repairing the scare and we'll be right back where we were again. We don't just need a new administration, we need a new media.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; nuclear; energy; oil; peak oil; middle east; propaganda; Will the media keep helping Bush and Cheney scare monger?

The Quiet Neocon Madness

We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq.
--Mohammed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Feb. 14, 2003

We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program [in Iran].
--Mohammed ElBaradei, Oct. 28, 2007

Almost every day, you see some story about leaked plans for attacking, invading, or nuking Iran. The latest comes from Esquire Magazine and a story titled, "The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know." In that story, two White Housers warn that Bush/Cheney -- and mostly Cheney -- want war with Iran. There's some pushback from the State Department, but war is inevitable.

Here's the thing; everything out of the White House needs to be taken with a grain of salt. For something "The White House Doesn't Want You to Know," we sure seem to know one helluva lot about how much Bushies want war with Iran. How much of this is actual whistleblowing and how many of these "leaks" are meant for Iran? Is the White House trying to play good cop/bad cop with Iran, casting Condoleezza Rice as the good cop and Dick Cheney, suffering from the quiet malady of neocon madness, as the bad cop?

The "we're about to attack Iran!" story's been going strong since at least October of 2006, when the USS Eisenhower was sent to the Persian Gulf. "This build-up of naval power around the coast of Iran, according to some military sources, is in preparation for an air attack on Iran that would target not just Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, but its entire military command and control system," wrote Dave Lindorff at the time.

From what we know about the Bush White House, the idea of cooler heads prevailing seems unlikely for a lot of reasons -- most obvious is that history has proven that there aren't any cool-headed people in this administration. Rice's predecessor, Colin Powell, was pushed out for not being a team player and now Rice is a dissenting voice? Not likely.

If the ongoing threat of secret war plans with Iran is just propaganda, it doesn't mean that we're safe. The problem with the Bush administration is that they have a bad habit of operating as if their propaganda were true. It's hard not to see parallels with the BS about WMD in Iraq. Not only did Donald Rumsfeld say we knew exactly where Saddam's Death Ray was, but Colin Powell showed the UN General Assembly satellite images of what he said were chemical weapons facilities. It was all BS, but they went ahead anyway -- with only the evidence that they'd manufactured.

Given this, it wouldn't be very surprising to see the US go to war again as part of a bluff taken to an insane extreme. The problem for the Bush administration this time around is that everyone on Earth knows they're all lying sacks. They literally have almost zero credibility. When the US announced that we'd be stepping up sanctions against Iran, we didn't get a lot of support. The Bush administration, trying to play the tough guy, looked weak as hell. The Tehran Times wrote, "Ironically, the U.S. has become isolated in its endeavor to isolate Iran." Clearly, Iran is less than impressed. Good cop/bad cop only works when the bad cop is scary. Without support, the Bush administration couldn't possibly go to war with Iran. The US military is spread far too thin, thanks to a snipe hunt in neighboring Iraq. And with Turkey on the verge of joining the Iraqi civil war, we've really got our hands full already.

And the lack of support isn't only in the international community. Bush is a very unpopular president with a very unpopular war. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll shows that 65% of respondents oppose the war in Iraq. It seems unlikely that they'll be excited about the prospect of war with Iran.

If the Bush administration is actually gearing up for war with Iran, it may be gearing up for disaster. In any case, the idea -- like all the lies about Iraq -- is to freak everyone the hell out. And to change the subject. Iraq is a huge problem for the Bushies and attempts to blame problems on Iran have so far failed to catch on. The neocons, who probably did plan on war with Iran from day one, are having a damned hard time getting to phase two. Almost literally no one stands with them. Even some Republicans are spooked. "This whole thing . . . reminds me of the movie Dr Strangelove," the Sunday Times reported an unnamed GOP congressman as saying.

It's frightening because none of it makes any damned sense at all. That Iran is the cause of the insurgency in Iraq is ridiculous on it's face and there's no real evidence that Tehran is looking at developing nuclear weapons. In fact, a vastly underreported fact is that Iran has probably already experienced peak oil and needs an alternative source of revenue. Associated Press reported that Iran had suffered a "staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports" in December of 2006 and that "if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015." If Iran became a major power generator, they could sell energy regionally.

In other words, it may be that Iran is doing exactly what Iran says it's doing -- pursuing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The fact that there's no evidence to the contrary would, among a saner bunch of people than the Bushies, be cause to calm down.

But the problem isn't that administration is playing a game of good cop/bad cop. The problem is that, in truth, there are no good cops in the White House and the quiet neocon madness of Cheney is the quiet neocon madness of them all. They cannot be relied on to act rationally.

So my advice is to take "leaked" reports of imminent war with Iran with that grain of salt. But don't ever, ever dismiss them entirely.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; Bush; Cheney; neocon; War with Iran may be White House propaganda -- but that doesn't mean we shouldn't worry

If it's not Working, Do More of it

There's seems to be a predictable line of thinking to the Bush administration's approach to foreign policy. I'd say it was a line of reasoning, but let's not aggrandize anything.

First, they come up with a course of action. This action generally involves being a hard ass. This is because the only people in the world who are fully adult are Americans and all anyone else understands is a spanking.

When whatever you're doing isn't working, the problem is that you're not being a big enough dick about it. If whatever you're doing isn't getting you anywhere, it's because you're not doing enough of it. This, after all, was the thinking behind the "surge" -- what we were doing wasn't failing because it was the wrong thing to do, it was failing because we weren't doing enough of it. The only problem with war in Iraq was that the war wasn't big enough.

And, so it is with Iran. The Bush administration's been freaking out about Iran for some time, using bellicose language and an approach to diplomacy that can only be described as "not diplomacy." As this approach failed to get anywhere, the obvious solution was to be bigger asses. When asked about Iran at a press conference last week, Bush answered, "I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace. It would -- this is -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. And I take this very -- I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously."

Here's a fun game, let's ask our man in Iraq, al-Maliki, what he thinks of Israel. You probably wouldn't get much of a different answer from him than you would from Ahmadinejad. Israel's not the most popular kid in that particular neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's busy trying to be a bigger ass than he was before. As always, Dick made sure to spread some BS, saying that Iran wants to "to keep Iraq in a state of weakness to ensure Baghdad does not pose a threat to Tehran." That would be kind of crazy of Iran. Remember that election and those purple fingers of freedom? Yeah, they elected a pro-Iran government. I doubt the Iranian government is spending a lot of time worrying about the threat posed by Baghdad.

Dick had other crazy-assed things to say. For example, AP reports that Dick claimed "the ultimate goal of the Iranian leadership is to establish itself as the hegemonic force in the Middle East." I can see how that would make him mad; Iran has apparently stolen our plan for the region.

All of which makes this Agence France-Presse headline fun, "White House denies stoking Iran nuclear tensions."

You know, denying something is pointless when everyone can see you doing it right out there in the open. So, how well has the Bushie doctrine of always doing more of what's not working panned out?

Pretty much the way any normal, sane ten year old child would've predicted.

Reuters:

A change in Iran's top nuclear negotiator indicates President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who oppose any compromise in an atomic standoff with the West are winning the policy argument in the Islamic Republic.

Saeed Jalili, a close ally of Ahmadinejad, has replaced Ali Larijani, who had been backing a more pragmatic line in talks aimed at allaying the West's suspicions that Iran is seeking to build atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

Brilliantly played, Mr. President. You've managed -- as you almost always do -- to take a bad situation and make it worse. There's a reason why there are no neocon Grandmasters in chess -- they fail to realize that other people actually think. With all their visions of nuclear missiles flying all over the place out of Iran, they never seem to ask themselves why this would happen. They don't seem to understand that nations do things for honest-to-goodness motives. For them, Iran is like Skeletor and only does the things it does to be evil.

When you don't think that other people are actual, full-fledged adult humans, you tend to fail to predict what they'll do. Worse, by treating Ahmadinejad as the greatest threat the US has faced since the Soviet Union, the Bush administration builds him up. When you want to face someone across a chess board, the last thing you want to do is hand him pieces that'll make him stronger. But that's exactly what the White House has been doing. Ahmadinejad, once an unpopular leader in Iran, is now seen as a pitbull. As Reuters points out, he's winning the argument at home -- in direct response to the US being such pricks about everything. Increasing our bellicosity is making things worse.

Of course, the Bush response will be to be even bigger pricks. I'm guessing that the recent uptick in stupid-assed statements from Bush/Cheney is an attempt to put the fear of God into the new negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Like I said, the White House's remedy for a failing plan is to do even more of what's failing.

It's hard to see how they can clear the bar set by Bush's "WWIII" comment, but these guys are pretty creative when it comes to the escalation of stupid statements.

They'll manage somehow.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; middle east; diplomacy; foreign policy; Iraq; The Bush and Cheney strategy for dealing with Iran -- be complete asses about everything