Act Now! No Time to Lose!

Henry Kissinger -- the name could be a metonym for dishonest defense of imperialism and reckless disregard for the consequences of military action, and so it's no surprise to hear him tell us to ignore the consensus of all 16 US intelligence agencies that there is no evidence Iran is building or is about to build nuclear weapons.

Yes, of course they could all be wrong and there is always the argument from cliche that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but even in a nation of emotionally disturbed amnesiacs like the US, some might want to remember our useless attack and occupation of Iraq for which we continue to suffer and will continue to suffer for a very long time. In case you don't remember, that country had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or the materials or technology needed to produce huge, heavy nuclear prototypes much less the probably fictional "suitcase" bombs we were told could be smuggled into the US at any moment. Act now!

On CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria yesterday, Kissinger told us he was "uneasy" with the intelligence and that we should ignore it as we ignored the lies about Iraq and make the presumption that a bomb was forthcoming.

“I am very uneasy with the so-called intelligence report that say we don’t know whether they are actually working on nuclear weapons. I think we should start from the premise that they are undergoing all this in order to achieve a military capability. I don’t think that is a disputable point.”

I think it is disputable in the extreme, considering that we're listening to a war criminal involved in and culpable for massacres, invasions and genocides in Indochina, East Timor, Chile, Cyprus and Bangladesh talking about fomenting yet another dubious and probably disastrous war.

Kissinger and warmongering toadies like Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu tell us we have no time to lose; that the time to attack is now as Former Secretary of State Rice once told us. Shoot first and pretend there is no question to ask, lest the "smoking gun" of evidence turn out to be a mushroom cloud. Frankly I think we have everything to lose, including our future and any basis upon which to base the proposition and pose of being a force for good in this world.

Iran and the Phantom Menace

Perhaps I've oversensitive about talk of going to war with Iran. After all, I remember all the talk about Iraq and nuclear/chemical/biological weapons from a government that knew damn well Iraq didn't have them or the facilities to make them. Everyone who doesn't have the excuse of being a Republican or having been trapped in a cave for most of this century remembers the war that broke the bank and destroyed Iraq to make it "free."

Perhaps I'm oversensitive but when I read Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran telling us that the President is "ready to strike" if Iran begins the nuclear beguine, I have no problem remembering that Leon Panetta, who should know a bit about the subject, told us all yesterday that Iran is not working on developing a bomb. Is Ross just shooting his mouth off or is he just tough talking for the benefit of the President and his campaign? And why is Panetta telling us there is no threat requiring such bellicose bravado or is it just a "slip" like Dick Cheney's slip when he mentioned that al Qaeda had nothing to do with 9/11?

the United States, being what it is, doesn't seem to have tired of tough talk, or at least our candidates don't think so. To me, it's a sign of weakness and perhaps a bit of arrested development and although we have a ways to go in the down direction to get back to the point of having a "War President" parading around in combat gear and calling himself the "Commander Guy" any step in that direction worries me.

Off with his hair!

Yes, it's hard to get behind anything the government of Iran does: stoning people to death, building nuclear weapons and all that, but to give credit where it's due, they do have the same lack of tolerance for certain hairstyles that I do and when it comes to demonstrating intolerance, Iran has few equals.

Yes, I'm all for freedom of expression, but there are limits and the mullet haircut is beyond that limit. As I'm concerned, ponytails on anyone over 60 and greasy spikes or Mohawks on anyone of any age are an abomination unto the Lord. So yes, I'd be right at home in the Islamic Republic and they certainly agree with me over there about what needs to be stomped out if the human race is to avoid divine retribution. Police in Iran can lop off that ponytail and that mullet can earn you jail time -- and rightly so. As I said, there are limits.

Of course, being a land of compassionate conservatism, Iran has provided an illustrated compendium of hairstyles that, according to Jaleh Khodayar, the man in charge of the government- backed Modesty and Veil Festival, are acceptable in light of "Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law." See for yourself:

The Torturer of Tehran

Saaed Mortazavi is sometimes called the “Torturer of Tehran” but probably not to his face. The man also known as “Butcher of the press” has been given authority by the Iranian government to "interrogate" people involved, or said to be involved in the demonstrations in Tehran. Mortazavi earned his nicknames for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003 says the Times Online. The TOT was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists in 2004, held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.

I expect to be hearing a great deal about how Iranian concern over the strange results of the recent election are the products of American propaganda and the protest sponsored, choreographed and financed from Washington, DC.

Of course such things are more effective in terrorizing the locals than in convincing them that these confessions don'e have more to do with cattle prods and genitals than with American interference, but isn't it too bad that the US has lost any ability to deplore enhanced interrogation? Isn't it too bad that the US must remain silent about starting wars and killing people based information extracted by torture?

Thank you George W. Bush and all the other cowards that dragged our proud country down to the level of these savages!

We're so vain, we probably think Iran is about us

Back in the day -- the 60's that is -- conservatives fostered and circulated the idea that the people who were opposed to continued armed interference in Vietnam were all but on the payroll of Chairman Mao. Mumblings about "front" organizations and accusations of treason were commonplace even without anything resembling the internet to make it easy. One of the planned results of the strategy was to make it easier to continue the war indefinitely, violate the civil rights of objectors and easier to get conservatives to support the violation. Suggestions that Ho Chi Min preferred the Democratic candidate was heavy ammunition against him.

Now of course the Mullahs of Iran are far smarter than the average American -- who isn't? -- and if Barak Obama were to take on the traditional Republican role of moral bloviator and condemn the crackdown in Iran, they would be delighted to have the excuse that the thousands in the streets are foreign agents, motivated and backed and perhaps even paid by the United States. Any kind of violence could then be justified against these "enemy combatants" on religious and political grounds. Our open support of the protests in Tehran would effectively taint the movement which could be discussed as a Western incursion and not an Iranian movement by Iranians to take back control of Iran from a corupt government.

Our Average American however, never can seem to resist a chance proudly to display anger and even more so when he can pretend it's moral outrage. CNN's current poll shows 76% in favor of having the President "condemn" the government of Iran as though he were himself an Ayatollah pronouncing a fatwah. Of course he has expressed sympathy for those seeking democracy and there is no one in the world who would think that we would support Khamenei anyway, but the contest between statecraft and soul satisfying, but counterproductive, rage has a predictable outcome.

I have severe misgivings and doubts about the way in which our economic predicament is being addressed, but when it comes to handling touchy and dangerous world affairs, Obama seems almost a genius compared to the man the Republicans would have had as president, strutting about a stage like an overweight, underpowered Mick Jagger, singing "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

Pete Hoekstra - hero of the revolution

Believe it or not, very few Americans voted for Barak Obama. The 9 million or so difference between the count for McPalin and Obama was the result of election tampering by ACORN. This notion seems to be part of the ever-changing catechism of the Republican faithful because I've been hearing it over and over again and so it's not all that surprising that congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) would feel encouraged to tell us that the internet activity and the massive street protests since the Iranian election was

" similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

He said, referring to last August when the Speaker adjourned the House before an energy vote. Jon Stewart joked last night about the parallels being eerie: "Not parallels, the perpendiculars” but to a party that has tried to compare the governments we've cobbled together in Iraq and Afghanistan to the formation of our own government, the humor will be written off as liberal meanness or deflected by some tale of an unfair joke about the Palins or Joe the Plumber. No, once again they're posing as victims of a corrupt system and a stolen election.

I can imagine the groans of his staff, who quickly told us what Hoekstra would have said if Hoekstra had been as smart as they are:

"The two situations do share the similarity of government leadership attempting to limit debate and deliberation, and the ability of new technologies to bypass their efforts and allow for direct communication. That’s the only point that he was trying to make."

No it wasn't and of course his party had been doing just that for 8 years. The reaction was swift, according to CNN, and one counter-twitter responded with:

"Except the Democrats didn't come after you with clubs and guns, did they?"

No, they did it with the ballot box and will all allowances made for poetic license, the perpendiculars are striking.

Mom - he's threatening me!

Perhaps if we had not, like Dr. Pavlov's dogs, been trained to growl at the mention of Iran, we could perceive just a bit of cant in the news reports of Iranian pugnaciousness today.

Iran tests missiles, vows to hit back if attacked, shouts the Reuters report and similar headlines blare in the papers today. What would we do if we were threatened with attack? What would Canada do? Indeed what have we been doing but testing our weapons and threatening apocalyptic destruction on any who attack us?

Iran has some missiles with a 1200 mile range, but by all accounts they have only rudimentary guidance systems. The warheads of course are conventional explosives and without pinpoint accuracy, their overall effects would be far less than a Tomahawk cruise missile or two. Anyone they might be aimed at in anger has nuclear retaliatory capability and advanced multiple delivery systems. Iran would stand no chance in any conventional confrontation. Iran knows this very well.

I'm no fan of heavy-handed theocracies, but even a milquetoast with his back against the wall can be forgiven for saying "if you hit me I'll hit you back" as pathetic as it might sound. The only thing more pathetic is using that as an excuse to bully him further. Considering the anti Iran rhetoric, The West's history of meddling with their elected governments and our covert operations within their borders; considering our constant threats of annihilation, what would any country do? Indeed what can any country at odds with US desires do these days but cringingly comply with our increasingly bellicose demands to disarm and assume the position?

Whether or not Iran's current government is a substantial threat to us or to our allies, such as they are, by continuing to demonize and disrespect any country refusing to pledge fealty, we continue to cultivate our image as a brutal bully, concerned only with feeding our addictions and ego and completely confused as to why everyone hates us.

The Devil loves Obama

It seems everyone running against a Republican candidate is supported by the bogey man of the day and that's held true throughout my lifetime. Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Min, Nikita Kruschev, the Anti-Christ: they all fully endorsed Democrats, if we're to believe the cannot-tell-a-lie Republicans. So of course it's no surprise to learn that Kim Jong Il would just love to see Barak Obama elected; at least that's what Lyin' Laura Ingraham was jibbering about Monday on Fox News.

Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and all the boys over at Hamas are all wearing the Big O T-Shirt these days. Of course one might speculate that any of these evildoing action figures would be smart enough to know that their actual support would harm a candidate and thus would express a fondness for those they would least like to win, but Laura and her limp-brained fans aren't big on logical processes when it's so much fun to hate.

Anyway, now that Kim's axis may no longer be quite as evil, we may suspect that his support will swing over to the Republican side. Will Laura have to decide that he's not so bad after all?

Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation announced on his blog, The Washington Note, last night that George may overcome Dick's objections and take Mr. Kim off the "terror watch list" by tomorrow. Whether or not he will be moved to some lesser list, like the Nexus of Nasty remains to be seen but I have to wonder if Bush is really trying to engage in some statecraft these days -- just for the hell of it -- or whether he's just trying to slide North Korea to the sidlines so he can concentrate on the remaining axial, Iran. You know, the one with oil.

Could be

I guess the idea is to keep the lies coming so fast and furious that rebuttal is useless. I guess the idea is just to keep saying things, no matter how factually or logically untrue they might be so that the faithful will continue to have something to hold on to as the lies get shot down one by one.

Sure the administration has denied any connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein or that he had a nuclear weapons program or had chemical weapons factories and the means to deliver all that stuff to Festus Missouri in a suitcase, but they keep saying it anyway; they keep basing arguments on it and they keep getting people to believe their war was necessary.

The McClatchy website today quotes Bush as saying on a Radio Farda broadcast that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program. [italics mine] Of course they never actually declared any such thing and the phrase could be doesn't accompany the caveat that could be covers everything from the likely to the ludicrous. I could be the Easter Bunny. Saddam could have had invisible nuclear bomb factories and George Bush could be an honest man too.

"they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now. Who knows?" says Bush. The US has gone to war under false pretexts in the past and they may do it again, say I.

If George Bush had not turned the nuclear inspection program in Iraq into a passion play we would not have had this war and it could be that we could have contained Saddam quite well at a ten thousandth of the cost, which would have allowed him to continue to keep al Qaeda out of Iraq and us to concentrate on crippling the group that planned the 9/11 attack rather than the economy and our civil liberties. Could have - it's a fun game. You can do almost anything.

Freedom of some religion

I've been told that there is freedom of religion in Iran. That's almost true. Unlike the US, where the government may not legally establish any list of approved or disapproved religions (Sorry, Republicans) only Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are legal in Iran.

Consequently, when 54 adherents of the Baha'i faith went out to help the poor of Shiraz, or so they said, they were arrested for proselytizing or as it was official charged, spreading propaganda against the regime. They were sentenced today to four years in prison. Of those 54, the sentences of 51 were reduced to one year conditionally while they were sent off to study at the Islamic Propaganda Organisation, ostensibly to be bullied onto dropping the idea that Bahá'u'lláh was the last of the prophets and accepting that the other guy was God's final phone call to planet Earth.

I'm not picking on Iran, at least not without also picking on the many other countries that are theocratic or even nominally atheistic where it's possible to prosecute someone for belonging to a religion or even a secular organization; to talk about it openly, to meet peacefully. Perhaps someone will remember just how precious the First Amendment to our constitution is when charming idiots like Mike Huckabee talk about changing America to be in line with his religious beliefs.

The Hormuz Hoax, part II

George W. Bush wants a war with Iran so badly that I have to be suspicious of any news item that relates to Iranian matters, particularly when the information comes from the US government. When I first heard the mysterious voice saying "I am coming to you ... You will explode in a few minutes." something sounded wrong about it. It's not only that the voice seemed to be putting on a deliberately thick accent, it certainly wasn't coming from a speed boat pounding through the swells at 30 knots or more as the video seemed to indicate; no effect on the voice of the impact of the hull against the water, no background noise of roaring engines or wind. I spend a lot of time on the radio, both from my boat and from my amateur station. I can tell the difference. It's unusual, but not unknown for such behavior to be found on the Amateur Radio bands and less often on the police and public service bands. On CB radio, it's almost standard procedure. When such people are identified, the punishment can be rather severe and the perpetrators are very often teens who are using dad's radio equipment when he's not around. Of course the VHF marine channels used by everything from pleasure boats to battleships are not immune to abuse.

Now the Navy Times is blaming the incident on a mysterious pirate radio operator or operators who have been doing just this sort of thing on the Marine VHF channel 16 for decades at all hours of the day and night. It seems in fact, to be happening all over the world and is often attributed to the mythical "Filipino Monkey." Someone with a radio on shore or on another ship gets his kicks from listening to conversations, interrupting with obscenities and making threats. According to many radiomen, female voices on the radio often elicit vulgar comments from these people. All ships and most boats are required to monitor channel 16 and so it is difficult to claim that the transmission was intended for one vessel or another and impossible to know where it originated, particularly in crowded shipping lanes like the straights of Hormuz. Such radios can be bought at any marine supply store without having to show any identification or license.

We were shown the audio and video of the boats simultaneously said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, because “ it gives you a better idea of what is happening” not because there is really any evidence that the voice came from the boats. Can it be that we have just narrowly escaped fulfilling Bush's dream of a massive air attack on Iran using this random and meaningless incident as an excuse? We've been fooled in just this way before at the cost of millions of lives and we have a president with a record of fooling us again and again.

Bombs, Bibles and Bullshit

I'm not surprised at Zogby's poll results. I remember back in the dark days of the Cold War when the University I attended had a symposium on US - Soviet relations and invited the local townspeople to attend. The consensus amongst the patriotic townies was that we should "bomb them back to the Stone Age." That was then, they're just as stupid now.

According to Zogby International, a recent phone poll shows that 52% of Americans favor the bombing of Iran. Amongst the Republicans the number is 71%. A minority of independents and Democrats favor such actions but overall, only 29% of us oppose it.

I'm quite sure that if Bush actually leaves the White House and if the Republicans lose the next election, the scorched earth left behind will include a bombed Iran. This perception serves to and may be designed to frighten voters into supporting whomever they dredge out of the barrel of slime to run against Hillary Clinton. Of course we will get fooled again - and again. We're Americans.

What is truth, part III

Nothing is true, all things are permitted

-dubiously attributed to Hassan bin Sabbah - but who knows?

____

"There's nothing known as absolute," said Iranian president Ahmadinejad. That's an uncharacteristic statement for a religious man, but quite characteristic for someone trying to eat his words without swallowing them. It all depends on what "thing" means and what knowledge means and what absolute means you see -- and if you're adept at that sort of rebarbate rhetoric you're adept at saying you didn't have sex with that woman or that Hitler didn't kill all those Jews or that there are no homosexuals in Iran without leaving enough of a handle for anyone to call you to account for the apparent ambiguity.

Insinuating that the Jury is still out on something as massively documented as the Nazi genocide by talking about the rights of "Scholars" is a ploy all too reminiscent of Bush's assertion that the jury was still out on the equally massively documented subject of evolution. Neither jury exists. There is really no Debate concerning geology or cosmology or any number of things that people want to deny by insinuating one. There is not much of a debate about who hired the hijackers in 2001 and one has to suspect the motives for insinuating that perhaps it was the same "Columbian drug lords" who slashed Mrs. Simpson to pieces. I won't argue the inherent uncertainty in all things, nor would Doctor Heisenberg, but I will suggest that some things are close enough. There are Homosexuals in Iran and I think the pictures of teenagers swinging from ropes are real.

Perhaps though, the undoubtedly embarrassed president was forced to offer something more like a debate than the snarky "it never happened" crap that's been attributed to him elsewhere.

"Granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"

That's a debate and a stunning opening for further debate that may never have happened during a long distance propaganda battle.

Does the Ahmadinajad shuffle indicate that the man regrets his statements and is trying to wriggle around them while not antagonizing the supporters who were just fine with holocaust denial? I'd like to think so and I'm sure that like any politician, he has to please people he doesn't agree with. I would also like to think that he's being forthcoming when he says Iran doesn't need a nuclear weapon and thinks Israel should not be attacked militarily. But as he says: nothing is absolute and of all those things not absolute, trust is near the top of the list. There is in fact a debate about Iranian nuclear progress and its aims and there are contradictory assertions about its policy toward Israel and toward the US occupation of Iraq. That's a debate where all parties have a credibility problem and where we all desperately want and need to know the answers.

Unfortunately I doubt there will be any step toward dialog taken by our horseless cowboy but one can hope that nothing blows up until we - and perhaps they have another administration.

Flowers for Ahmadinejad

In Iran, the president isn't what a president is in the United States. Ahmedinijad isn't the alpha dog of Iran; that would be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mahmoud, with his mangy beard and 80's vintage polyester jacket looks more like a cab driver or someone who hustles bags at JFK on weekends for a few extra bucks. It even seems as though he's a comparative liberal back home on issues like women's rights, so it's not surprising that Iranians wonder why we pay so much attention to him.

He's good at what he does however and what he does is push American hot buttons to the same effect as kids tossing peanuts at the primate house until the apes get hysterical and start shrieking and tossing dung. He's an expert in rattling our cage. So just what do we do with Ahmadinejad when he gets here? We don't have the discipline to ignore him and he knows it. Do we let him talk? Do we let him visit the holy hole in the ground? Do we let him control the situation?

Libby at Newshoggers suggests that we arrange to have some half naked college girl lay a big smooch on old stubbleface and maybe blow his chance for paradise -- or maybe worse: a young man in a tight speedo. ( I would suggest red with sequins) Perhaps a toilet paper parade or mass moon-in would send him home without that trademark smirk, but I have little doubt that we will play along with his game by hooting and flinging banana peels and making him feel important.

It's decisional

I'm not even going to bother with the dictionary. If Decisional is a word, it shouldn't be, but a Decisional meeting is what Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called today's "surprise" get together at the Al Asad Air Base in Iraq's Anbar province; bringing together senior U.S. military leaders, top Iraqi political leadership, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and of course, the Decider in full Decisional mode.

"Nothing beats the opportunity to look David Petraeus in the eye and Ambassador Crocker and say, 'What's the situation? What do you think?'"

said an unnamed "senior official as quoted by ABC News today. I don't agree. I think we'd be better off, decisionally speaking, having the opinion of someone whose career doesn't depend on selling vain hopes and sanguine dreams to delusional deciders.

Whether or not there has been a significant and stable gain in overall security in Iraq of late, and whether the administration is simply sprucing up the stage set or building a full scale Potemkin Village, one can be forgiven a bit of skepticism -- and particularly one old enough to remember General Westmoreland's hauntingly similar vision of a "light at the end of the tunnel" 10 weeks before the Tet Offensive.

cross posted at The Reaction

A three hour tour

How far is it from Fantasy Island to Gilligan's Island? Our Iraq experience should give us a clue, but perhaps we'll have an even better fix if what Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center said last week at a meeting organised by The National Interest comes true. According to today's Times of London, Debat said:

"The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days."

We know what the Minnow's three hour tour turned into and we know how the "matter of weeks at most" Iraqi adventure turned out. Can we hope for anything better with a "three day blitz" in Iran? I think we can hope for worse - much worse. Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be carried out because they would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq, but of course we have plenty of nuclear weapons and a president that's desperate to win something by doubling up his bets.

Perhaps Bush is trying Richard Nixon's "madman theory" in the hopes that Iran will be afraid and back down, but it didn't work against North Vietnam and I don't know why it seems more likely to work now. Bush is beginning more and more to appear like the frustrated schoolyard bully who has turned everyone against him and out of desperation brings a gun to school.

cross posted at The Reaction

No questions asked

The amazing thing about human nature is the number of people always willing to believe what they're told; to be angry at what they're told to be angry about, hate whom they're told to hate and cheered up by the lies of someone who has lied and lied and lied. There are always those willing to support a leader whether that leader is Gandhi or Idi Amin.

It shouldn't be any surprise that Bush's ratings have improved lately. It's simply because the believaholics have been invited to another media party, where the Bullshit is on tap and it's always happy hour.

Were the July casualty figures good news because they were a bit lower than June's? Are they a tragedy because they're double the July results for last year? How can anyone possible say that we're being given an accurate picture given the relentlessly wrong figures, predictions and pictures since before this war started.

The CNN poll shows that the prodigal sons of bitches, Republicans who had begun to doubt the sanguine but shifty prognostications of the Administration, are beginning to return. It's giving Bush a shot in the arm, we're told, but if anyone is getting a shot in the arm it's the incurable addicts. Apparently the Democrats and independents responding to the poll remain unmoved, but does that matter since they remain powerless, staring at the headlights of a new impending war?

Sure as hell they will be believing whatever they're told about Iran being at the bottom of this all and never questioning this latest round of fabrication and I think the attack everyone is expecting may come before Congress returns to work - if that's what it's called. Right now I see it as a race between World War Three and impeachment and my money says war.

Hoist by our own petard?

The Financial Times announces today that Chinese "armor piercing" ammunition is being used by the Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq. I'm almost surprised they didn't follow the government line as far as to substitute "al Qaeda" for insurgents.

I have become so accustomed to deceptive descriptions of arms and ammunition in the popular press that I usually ignore such terms as "armor piercing," "cop killer" and "military" but my real concern here is that the knee-jerk China bashing is obscuring the real problem of the international arms trade in which the US is a major participant, having supplied arms to the Middle East and other places of unrest for a long time. It's not unusual for a country to be attacked with weapons of it's own manufacture or that were made by an ally as, for example, Great Britain whose destroyer was sunk by a French Missile during the Falklands war. That incident did not result in a British assault on France, but then George Bush was not calling the shots as he is here, nor did Mrs Thatcher seek to expand that war on other fronts.

The US has sold arms to Iran and to Iraq as well as to dictators and warlords all over the world, many of whom sold them out the back door to more dangerous customers. It's a multinational problem but we are a factor in the problem and we are a country heavily influenced by the wants of the international military-industrial complex.

Until the major arms exporters, like the US, Russia, China, France and Israel decide to cooperate in making a serious effort to control arms proliferation, we will continue to be shot at by an international buffet of weaponry. Of course as the profits are so enormous, it's never going to happen.

Jingo Joe's Crusade

"When Congress reconvenes next week, all of us who are privileged to serve there should set aside whatever partisan or ideological differences divide us to send a clear, strong and unified message to Tehran that it must stop everything it is doing to bring about the death of American service members in Iraq."

That's what Jingo Joe Lieberman opines in his WSJ op ed piece today. I'm sure Mr. Ahmedinejad will smile at the "Chutzbah" as they say in Farsi. If Congress somehow does send that unified message, he will be able to file it along with the message we sent Iran by removing an elected government and installing a King and along with the message we sent by openly supplying Saddam Hussein in a bloody, protracted and chemical war against them. "don't stand up to US aggression" is just what he needs to read to his people in the interest of restoring anti-American unity.

It's not so much that I doubt the reassurance that there are Iranian made arms in Iraq that are traceable to government support of any particular insurgency, though of course I do, but that I doubt everything we are told and have ever been told about that conflict. Lieberman's choice of words; phrasing Iranian arms deals, Iranian reaction to what they see as aggression right on their border as "bringing about the death of American Service Members" is a grandstand play. As I said, it deconstructs to and is received as "don't resist our aggression into your world or we will kill you."

What answer do we expect other than "if you want to spare American troops, get the hell out" when we describe our "mission" just like another Crusade?

Syrian Missile crisis?

Pandora may have unleashed a world of woes, but the woes unleashed by the Bush Family are a cash cow of unprecedented size for war profiteers: the corporations who get Carte Blanche no bid contracts and of course the arms dealers and manufacturers both Bush and Cheney are affiliated with. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia and perhaps China stand to profit substantially from the administration's lust to attack Iran, but who is concerned with the likely outcomes?

Syria, the end of whose nuclear program was vaunted as a benefit of Bush's attack on Iraq has a mutual defense pact with Iran and in an act that conjures up the Cuban Missile Crisis, has agreed to accept the installation of Iranian owned, Russian built missiles on their soil.

The threat to US troops in Iraq may not be as serious as the threat to Israel, but it will require more arms and equipment and more money in the coffers of the multinational military-industrial complex. That we have an administration with family and business ties to the arms trade gives me little confidence in their intentions. Iran is in the position where their only deterrent to invasion is a nuclear one and invasion seems ever more likely with warships amassing around them. Sales are brisk and getting better and when or if the nukes begin to pop and millions die and the world is changed, they can come out of their bunkers owning a much bigger chunk of what's left than those of us who don't have bunkers.

Bush is no Kennedy and who can be sure he really has any interest in preventing continued escalation of a war in the Middle East? He himself is besieged and his time is growing short. He has set up the mechanism to allow himself absolute, unimpeded power. All he needs is a national emergency and with his connections, that should be a snap.