Quick Thought: Bush's Mad Eyes and Kaine Was Wrong Choice

More tomorrow on the SOTUS address by Bush although I think he broke his own record for mentioning "freedom" in a speech.

Some quick remarks... The foreign policy stuff was "manifest destiny" bullshit familiar from the biggest dog on the block since at least Roman times if not since Ug's tribe developed the club. Just the "white man's burden" rejinked for modern times.

The domestic stuff was, it seemed to me, a case of "I say it's true so it must be". Tax cuts, snooping on Americans, "Every Child Left Behind", the economy...blah, blah. But boy does he look utterly insane at times. Insane or just plain mean...or both. I last saw that gleam in the eyes of Maggie Thatcher after she had gone utterly barking during the Falklands War.

But what about the Dem response? Kaine was the wrong choice. He seemed smugly uncharismatic to me. He smiled at the wrong points - such as when he was accusing Bush of leaving American servicemen in the dirt over body armor. Did they freeze his smile with botox or something?

And what was with that young-Columbo eyebrow? My fourteen year old son pointed it out in the first 30 seconds and after that I couldn't concentrate. One hovered and moved around, halfway up his brow as if it had a life of it's own. It looked like a windshield with only one wiper going!

I thought Bush was one of the most uncharismatic and unconvincing speakers I had ever seen, but Kaine made him look almost competent.

If it hadn't been for the mad gleam in Bush's eyes when he thought he'd been clever or scored a point you could, by comparison with Kaine, have mistaken him for a real President.

Instahoglets 31st Jan 06

Sorry there were no posts yesterday - it was my wife's birthday. Here's today's short posts that would have filled a lazy blogpage all in one swoop...

Here's one to think about - "Viva La Welfare State - The case for Euro-optimism" - although the pic with the article doesn't inspire confidence in the Boston Globe. Do they think all Germans have huge man-boobs or can they just not spot a bad photoshop job?

Oil Executives are refusing to testify to Congress on mergers and price-gouging. Last time, they weren't under oath so lied through their teeth. This time they are just holding the Senate in contempt. Even some usually loyal Bush supporters are beginning to smell the coffee on this one and realise their Dear Leader and his crew have facillitated the oil industry's profiteering.

And Dear Leader will have the gall to say "America is addicted to oil" tonight on the SOTU address, according to reports. I wonder how much stock his blind trust owns in Exxon?

The more I read of Molly Ivins the more I like. Here's her latest taking BushCo to task for their utter incompetence over Katrina and breaking their promises over it's aftermath. The latest in a parade of fiascoes inspiring the administration to an impressive level of dishonesty. (Hat tip - Kat at The Daily Grail)

Regular reader Kirk directs me to an article which reports on a claim by the American College of Physicians that primary care in America is broken, possibly beyond repair. As an ex-insurance insider I have an opinion - ditch the insurance companies' involvement in healthcare, they think only in terms of covering catastrophes rather than day to day preventative medecine.

Remember that Senate investigation into how wrong Bushco were in what they told the world about Iraqi WMD's? Well it's been delayed because...the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, rather than forcing the Pentagon to realse documents it needs is awaiting the results of an investigation into war-architect Douglas Fieth over his possible role in manipulating pre-war intelligence.

Fieth resigned as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy over his alleged role in an Israeli spy case. Other neocons who have been accused at various times of spying for Israel include former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who most recently served as chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board and quietly resigned after the AIPAC case broke. All three had security clearances revoked but had them reinstated by the Bush administration. Wolfowitz, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld and the current US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, were all signators to the original statement of principles by the Project For The New American Century...

An order signed by Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003 says "Psy-op is restricted by both DoD [Department of Defense] policy and executive order from targeting American audiences, our military personnel and news agencies or outlets." Given the modern global media does that mean the psy-ops efforts of the Pentagon in Iraq and the Middle East (and robably here in the US and in Europe) are illegal? You can bet BushCo will quibble.

Let's play that new parlor game called "spot the psy-ops news plant". Here's one from the UK's Daily Torygraph that's so obvious it's funny.

Iran has formed a top secret team of nuclear specialists to infiltrate the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the UN-sponsored body that monitors its nuclear programme...its aim is to obtain information on the work of IAEA inspectors so that Iran can conceal the more sensitive areas of its nuclear research, according to information recently received by western intelligence.

Counterpunch has Paul Craigs Roberts writing on Iran and the Fox News led narrative for war. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. Not a liberal, then.

A majority of Americans have now been deceived twice on the same issue. Just as there was no evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. There is nothing but unproven assertions, assertions, moreover, that are contradicted by the evidence that does exist. Americans, it would appear, are so anxious for wars that they welcome being fooled into them...Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda must be marveling at the rank stupidity of the American people. Maybe Fox "News" only pretends to be the Ministry of War Propaganda for the Bush administration and is really in the employ of al Qaeda.

More news from the IAEA where Iran has cleared an important hurdle - access for U.N. inspectors to equipment from the former Lavisan military site. Meanwhile the AP is forced to regurgitate the tale of Iran's black market bomb plans (it's unclear whether they mean the Pakistani plans or the CIA plans - heh) and the Jerusalem Post digs up a retired spook who spied on America to opine that Iran already has the bomb.

Russia and China have agreed that the IAEA "should report to the Security Council its decision on the steps required of Iran" which is, I believe, not the same as saying the IAEA should refer Iran to the Security Council (which would mean the IAEA was asking for measures to be taken to ensure compliance) although you couldn't tell that from most reports - including the NY Times'.

Alito's been confirmed. Four Democrats (Byrd, Conrad, Johnson, and Ben Nelson) joined 54 Republicans (all but Chafee).

New Parlor Game - Spot the Story Plant

I'd like to announce that I've found a new parlor game for bloggers - spot the Pentagon or White House news plant in the foreign or domestic media.

The most obvious one this week was the Sada fable - I've written already about this but in brief it's the one where a bunch of religious right wingnuts cooked up a story about Iraqi WMDs going to Syria in 2002, then got another wingnut to write about it in his newspaper and a bunch of wingnut pundits then duly and gleefully wrote about it.

The guy who says he knows where Saddam's WMD went to is hip-deep in this sordid circle-jerk but gives the whole thing a veil of respectability because...wow...he used to be Saddams deputy chief of the Air Force. Trouble is, he didn't see anything for himself and the "eyewitnesses" he cites want to stay anonymous. Riiiight....

Why didn't he see something? Well one rightwing blogger (an ex-spook) spilled the beans - he was in prison at the time:

he was forced out of the Iraqi Air Force in 1986 (because he refused to join the Baath Party), recalled in 1991 (to interrogate Allied POWs), then tossed into prison himself because he refused Qusai Hussein's order to execute the POWs.

Can anyone translate "interrogate" in terms of Saddam's regime? Everybody? Good.

So we've an ex-torturer with friends among the religious right in the US, who didn't see anything and has no evidence for anything but has a book out now published by a religious right organ and ghost written by a well known Dominionist. That's credible...NOT!

It's so not credible it must be a psy-op coming right out of the White House's back door. It has their unmistakable stamp of incompetent lying and expecting credulity from the cheerleaders.

Want another?

Today, the Middle East Newsline had this gem:

A leading U.S. nuclear proliferation expert said Teheran obtained an atomic bomb about a decade ago from the nuclear black market. The expert said Iran sought to produce additional nuclear weapons through technology from Pakistan and other countries.

"The one functional device Iran has," Mansoor Ijaz, a U.S. nuclear scientist, said, "is the result of clandestine transfers from Pakistan's rogue black market nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold the Iranians antiquated but highly effective Chinese bomb designs and parts, including spherical shell casings, spherical Krytron detonation switches and empirical software testing modules."

Scary! They already have a nuke! Launch the missiles!

Hang on...who is this Mansoor Ijaz anyway? How credible is he?

Well he does have a background in physics, both nuclear and neurophysics and he's an intimate of the current Pakistani dictatorship. His father, "a prominent American physicist, was an early pioneer in developing the intellectual infrastructure of Pakistan's nuclear program." (So far so good.)

He's a foreign afairs correspondent for Fox News and the National Review. (sniff.)

He isn't actually working as a nuclear physicist and hasn't in fifteen years. He's actually a physicist turned hedge fund manager and investment banker. (sniff, sniff!)

His investment company is "Crescent Investment Group, Inc. whose top advisors and/or directors also include former CIA director R. James Woolsey, Jr." and "Lt. Gen. James Alan Abrahamson (USAF Ret), former director of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative." (sniff, SNIFF!)

"Ijaz has been on the forefront of arguing in his National Review Online pieces that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and he has been advocating to increase U.S. military support for the Pakistani Government, especially the sale of F-16s." (SNIFF,SNIFF!)

His investment company specialises in oil and gas projects. Samuel Berger, NSA for Clinton, felt he was compromised by various deals, including some in Sudan. Of the current administration he said: "As an American citizen with proximity to the President of the United States and senior national security council officials, I have enjoyed their support of my efforts..."

Yup, that's definitely the sordid whiff of utter hawkish bullshit designed by either the White House or the Pentagon to be planted in the Middle East press at this time of tension.

Instahoglets 29th Jan 06

I've a question. Does Hindrocket have a big poster of Bush's ass on his bedroom wall that he kisses before he goes to sleep each night?

There's a great op-ed by blogger Hossein Derakhshan over at the NY Times today about Bush's double standards when it comes to not-quite-fully democratic elections in Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere. The criticism is echoed by Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post.

Hindrocket would say Bush-hate is blinding us all to the truth about how wonderful Bush is - and then I have no doubt that he would happily bar us all from voting and take our candidates off the ballot sheet. I would love him to tackle exactly how US-imposed debaathification restrictions in Iraqi elections were different, qua "democracy", than what Iran's mullah's did to their own elections. That would be an interesting tangle.

The narrative is succeeding - 57% of Americans want military action against Iran and the U.S. Senate has passed a resolution unanimously condemming Iran. That's despite Iran agreeing to IAEA demands for access to equipment from an old site which will probably fulfil a key condition set by IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei to ease doubts that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful. It's also despite El Baradei's opinion that neither the nuclear crisis nor other pressing issues regarding Iran can be resolved through escalation.

Jazz at Running Scared is right - Bush has done a good thing by backing the Russian solution. Now let's see if he can help resolve Iran's misgivings over Russian relability. I'm also going to point out, because I'm a stickler for that kind of thing, the double standards of saying Iran can't have a complete fuel cycle in the same week as Bush ordered a resumption of fuel recycling in the U.S. - something which augments American stocks of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium.

For those following events surrounding Iran's nuclear program I heartily recommend a blog called Nuclear Iran. Amir, the writer, seems to favor El Baradei's solution - have Iran declare a five year ban on enrichment and in return the US will build it's nuke plants and provide it's fuel instead of Russia. It's on my blogroll.

Glenn Greenwald - how the Bush administration has humiliated Congress over Snoopgate. Excellent analysis from an expert.

Newsweek has the tale of the conservative, Bush-appointed Justice Department lawyers who stood up the hardliners who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror - and paid the price. (Is it just me or is Eugene Volokh starting to smell the coffee?)

The Boston Globe - Spinning the State of the Union. Look for these themes: mission accomplished in Iraq, stern sabre-rattling on Iran, the need to extend the Patriot Act even though it's not needed if warrantless spying is actually legal, more bad policy ideas that are mainly subsidies to special interests, fear-mongering on immigration, talking up job increases but not mentioning wage drops and more tax cuts to line rich pockets, strip the piggy-bank and drive the deficit even higher.

Talking of special interests...Oil companies on both sides of the Atlantic will gush record profits this week, with America’s Exxon Mobil posting the world’s biggest-ever profit, and Shell setting a new record for British companies. See them complaining about the high price of oil created by Bush's adventures and sabre-rattling?

Fester at Comments From Left Field points out that we knew about US forces kidnapping hostages in Iraq two years ago but it's only now getting to the mainstream media as the Pentagon are forced to release documents. He's pissed.

Arctic Circle - Canada's Not Kidding

Further to yesterday's Instahoglets item about the difference of opinion between America and Canada over territorial rights in the Arctic Circle, I thought it might be fun to see how the British Press are reporting it.

Cue first the ultra-liberal Independent newspaper:

Canada's Prime Minister- elect has issued a blunt "hands off" warning to the US over territorial rights in the Arctic...

...With global warming steadily melting the passage, the period during which it is navigable is growing year by year, offering access to untapped fish stocks, and a shipping route that shortens the journey between Europe and Asia by almost 2,500 miles.

But then look at what the Murdoch-owned and conservative London Times has to say - something few others have mentioned. Oil!

The melting of the ice pack is opening up vast reserves of offshore oil and gas, new shipping routes and fishing grounds...Helge Lund, the president of Statoil, Norway’s state oil company, said that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves, 375 billion barrels, lies under the Arctic Ocean. “It will never replace the Middle East but it has the potential to be a good supplement,” he said.

Indeed, some experts think oil reserves in the area claimed by Canada may be equal to those currently owned by Saudi Arabia.

The realpolitik is that no Canadian government, liberal or conservative, will walk away from that kind of revenue base. If they give in to American demands that the oil reserves lie under international waters then they give up the taxation windfall and that's just not going to happen. Lkewise, the current administration isn't going to let it's friends the big oil corporations be taxed if it can prevent it. Add in the revenues Canada could gain from fishing and from tolls on a newly opened NorthWest Passage (which would be at least 12 to 20 days shorter than alternative routes) and the money means that Stephen Harper isn't going to simply be Bush's "pool boy" no matter how much the morons at NRO may try to reassure their readers that he is exactly that.

Recently, the Washington Post ran a humorous and belittling article about US plans to invade Canada back in the 1930s. I sniff a Pentagon psy-ops plant of the kind they say they only run abroad. A symposium of U.S. Naval types in 2001 began from the assumption that the differences between the U.S. and Canada over Arctic sovereignty could "lead to conflict". A book by an officer of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in 2002 recommended keeping an entire aircraft carrier battle group and an amphibious ready group with embarked special-operations-capable Marine expeditionary unit and supporting forces on station in the ice-free Arctic Ocean against "the possibility of a peer competitor intent on aggressively confronting U.S. interests". A paper for "Defense Horizons" in 2003 noted challenges associated with easier access to Arctic sea routes.

Easy access to both the Northwest Passage (through the Canadian Archipelago) and the Northeast Sea Route (across the top of Russia) will assuredly invoke major legal issues with both Canada and Russia under the United Nations Law of the Seas. Easier access to the Arctic also invites other nations, including their militaries, to ply these seas. That would present the US with another coast to defend and necessitate devoting or creating forces capable of safe and effective operations there.

It continued to note how unprepared the U.S. Navy was for this, having cut down on it's Arctic capabilities drastically at the end of the Cold War. There are undoubtably more up-to-date plans to invade Canada.

This is not a case of Bush's pool boy saying something inflammatory to cajole Canucks into a sense of ease. In fact, the situation has a potential to become a lethal issue no less than the press for war with oil-rich states in the Middle East that are demonized prior to "liberation" by America's neocons.

It's a serious issue that will only get more pressing over time.

Instahoglets 27th Jan 06

Poor King George, it's been a tough week.

The Washington Times called George incompetent for all his screwups but especially for Medicare Part D, his flagship domestic initiative. Jacob Weisberg at Slate called him power mad for trying to turn America into an elected dictatorship. Now comes the news that he's about as popular as a fart in a space-shuttle cockpit according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll - 58% described his second term as a failure and 51% said they would rather vote for congressional candidates who don't support him.

Amnesty International wrote an open letter to King George two days ago. Have you seen it in the mainstream media yet? -

"[We] urge you to speak to the issue of US involvement in torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. As the evidence of US complicity in torture and ill-treatment grows, it is incumbent that this nation and the world know clearly whether the United States stands unequivocally for the absolute ban on torture and ill-treatment. It is essential that all who tune in to your State of the Union Address hear that anyone responsible, even at the highest levels, for policies that have led to the torture and ill-treatment will be held accountable to ensure such abuses do not occur in the future. The blanket denials issued by your Administration do not reflect the gravity of the situation or the growing evidence of such acts."

They are probably vegan and as such a threat to Mom's apple pie!

Noah Shachtman at DefenseTech:

Very roughly speaking, there are two factions jockeying for control in the Pentagon. One thinks that the U.S. military is going to spend a big chunk of the next twenty years hunting down terrorists and stabilizing screwed-up states. The other believes that China has to be smacked down, before it bulks up to superpower status.

Guess who gets just words and crumbs and who gets the gold-plated shiny toys worth tens, even hundreds, of billions? Of course, the shiny toys and the poor bloody infantry would probably be affordable if it wasn't for the pork larded onto defense bills by legislators and lobbyists working hand-on-gland to line each other's pockets.

When Rummie says that the U.S. military isn't overextended, just "battle hardened" he flies in the face of his own experts. Don't they tell him to get his head out of his ass and face the truth that's been obvious for two years? Does he just ignore them? Or is he thinking about the shiny toys that are all pristine because they're no bloody use at all against the likes of Osama and Zarqawi?

They've found another use for those toys though - sending into oblivion the nation of Iran. Never mind the many arguments against such a course, the neocon counter in favor of war goes that:

multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

They hope none of their brethren hawks notices that nothing short of full scale invasion would halt Iran's nuclear weapon program if they had one. And a full scale invasion can't succeed. Oops. There goes the logic. Next?

The thing is, if you've gone as far as the military option then you've already put all other options in the trash...there is no "next option" after the military one fails.

Bush and the neocons are too dumb to have figured that one out. That's why they are now blackmailing India. No help with India's own nuclear program unless they vote the way Bush wants at the IAEA meeting.

Those poor misguided wingnuts. No sooner are their celebrations over Canada's new minority conservative government over than Canada's new leader shows he won't join their line to kiss Bush ass like they all expected:

Political pundits who declared that Stephen Harper, Canada’s next prime minister, would move quickly to patch up ties with the United States were having to regroup Friday after Harper used his first post-election press conference to tell the United States to mind its own business when it comes to territorial rights in the Arctic North.

You see, Canada believes in global warming and sees itself making huge revenues when the fabled Northwest Passage is finally free. Bush wants it to make money for his own asskisser corporations even though he pretends not to believe in global warming.

Uber-wingnut pundit Ann Coulter, the only Fox contributor with both an apple and a banana, has suggested giving rat poison to liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. Even some of the wingnuts realise she jumped the shark a long time ago, although they are sure to forgive her (after all, they forgave John Cornyn and he's not as popular as Coulter). That says as much about them as it does her.

"Conservative" Means Never Letting Go Of A Lie

Not only does "conservative" mean never letting go of a lie but given half a chance they will make shit up to try to justify the lie anew at a later date.

The rightwing bloggers are all agog today over a "revelation" in the New York Sun by ex-Iraqi Air Force deputy, Georges Sada, who alleges that Iraq's WMD were flown to Syria prior to the invasion by two stripped down civilian aircraft.

Of course, the former general didn't see or know of this first hand, despite being the number two man in the air force - the military arm that would most likely have used any WMD. No, he supposedly got the information from two men who were the pilots of the aircraft involved.

"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

Jumpin' Jeebus...and the wingnuts accuse liberals of jumping to conclusions based on what they say is second-hand evidence (such as the Downing Street Memos). Why are they so keen to believe an ex- Saddam crony but not the Head of British Intelligence, I wonder? Could it be because they don't want to admit to themselves that they got taken in by the sociopaths in charge of the White House?

Anyway...there's no "there" with this story. A moments investigation discovers that the basis for the story is a circle-jerk by neocons and the Christian Right.

The first thing to notice is that the NY Sun handily provides a link to the general's new book, which contains these allegations for the first time. Sada says he's known about this stuff since mid-2004 but hasn't shared the knowledge until now. Shades of the NY Times and Snoopgate! But there's no cries from the right about possible monetary motives this time. Oh no...it's bypassed utterly in the rush to believe!

Then notice Mr Sada's co-author, or should I say ghost writer, for that book - Jim Nelson Black. Black is a member of the Religious Right with titles such as "Equipping & Empowering Christians to Restore America's Biblical Foundation - America Adrift" under his bible-belt. He's also written about "how our colleges are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation" and has collaborated on audio tapes about America's "destiny" with uber-dominionist D. James Kennedy. Not surprisingly, some of his work appears on the lists of Tyndale Publishing. Get the feeling the right is setting things up for itself here?

Sada, who describes himself as a "devout christian" was accompanied to the NY Sun offices by Terry Law, "the president of a Tulsa, Oklahoma based Christian humanitarian organization" called World Compassion. Mr. Law is Mr. Sada's new employer and spoke for his honesty.

The book's publishers are Integrity Publishers, a division of Integrity Media. They describe themselves as "an established, worldwide force in Christian music, owned by Christians committed to a strong book publishing program as a strategic component of its overall mission statement" and adds that every staff member has "a sense of calling and deep conviction".

Of course we all know Ira Stoll, the author of the NY Sun piece and the Sun's managing editor. He's a neocon through and through, having written for the likes of Front Page as well as the Sun. He's the man who famously demanded, on August 20th 2003, that Washington finish the war against the Arabs. Even so, you would think that he could see he was being led by the nose by the religious Right with a story that has no meat to it...unless he really wanted to be led, that is.

Stoll even has the temerity to write:

Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr. Sada's claim independently will face difficulty.

Hah!

Good try, folks, but not convincing.

Instahoglets 25th Jan 06

A bumper crop today.

Let's start with my pet peeve - the unseemly rush to war with Iran. The Heritage Foundation's warmongers are at it again - this time it's Peter Brookes rolling out the lies and misdirections including a new one:

Iran now harbors at least 25 senior Al Qaeda operatives, including senior military commander Saif al Adel and three of Osama bin Laden's sons. If we come to blows, would Tehran help al Qaeda hit the U.S. homeland? (The offices of Iran's U.N. mission might facilitate such an attack. . .)

Not a shred of evidence is provided for this claim that will soon be wingnut "received wisdom." Iran doesn't harbor these people - they are in Iran fighting the curent regime there! As for the bit about the UN mission...have you ever seen such sensationalist scaremongering? (Thanks to Kirk for the link.)

You have to wonder at the contradictory signals the incompetents are sending. While Bush is telling everyone that the US will defend Israel, a much softer voice, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, is in Pakistan telling Musharraf that the US will not use military force against Iran. Who to believe? How do they ever expect diplomacy to work if they can't even get their story straight?

Mind you, the Israelis are as bad. While their own warmongering wingnut politicians are rattling sabres, their Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, is summarized by Haaretz newspaper as saying:

The Iranian threat is existential, but not urgent, nor will it be so in 2006; fears of renewed hostilities coming from the Palestinians or the Lebanese border are far more immediate, even if their implications are less serious.

Haaretz also says the Israeli politicians are being coached by the Bush administration on what to say.

The Asian Times has an interesting op-ed that says the US will attack Iran - and that for both nations it's all about oil, not nukes. Meanwhile, for an additional antidote to the neocon narrative, click on over to The Washington Note, where Steve Clemons comments on an article by national security guro Chris Nelson in a post entitled "On Iran: "Rewarding the Hysterical at the Expense of the Calm." Great stuff and some great comments too.

Lastly, and idiotically, the neocons have managed to sell some conservative Europeans with an incapacity to use Google on the idea of unleashing the MEK on Iran. How many times do I have to say that the last thing anyone wants to do is replace the current Iran regime with the ex-Saddam bullyboy minions of a nutcase who not only believes in the 12th Prophet but thinks he is that very prophet!

OK, now to Iraq..the taste of things Iranian to come if Bush gets his way. A place where reconstruction has been "badly hobbled" by by "gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs" - in other words, utter and gross incompetence just as progressives have been saying all along - according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

It's also the place where incompetence has almost broken the "thin green line" of the U.S. Army. And no, it isn't Murtha and progressive pundits saying so this time - it's Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract!

If the rightwing were really interested in supporting the troops instead of supporting the administrations incompetence, they would be clamoring for military innovators like Col. H.R. McMaster, the commander of the 3rd ACR in Tal Afar, to be given promotions and a free hand in Iraq. McMaster's tactics get the job done while holding "hearts and minds" as a primary operational concern. That's why fewer of his troops get killed, fewer Iraqis get killed and the Sunni Mayor of Tal Afar has written to President Bush and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, begging them to extend the regiment's tour of duty until it's finished the job.

But McMaster is one of the "mavericks" who doesn't fit well with the Bush cronyism at the top of the Pentagon and looks to preserve as many lives as possible even if they are Iraqi lives, so the rightwingers say nary a word about his successes. It's left to people like me - and very glad I am to do so.

E. J. Dionne agrees that vote-chasing Democrat leaders are missing the point on national security issues, often playing the Republican game for them by trying to look "tough" the Republican way. The Heretic has far more, wonderfully written as always.

Here's a thought for those follow-the-leader Dems: the right continually frames the debate by saying Dems "don't realise that it's a post-9/11 world". Switch it on the warmongering fuckers. Because for sure none of the Republicans have realised the further reality that we are now living in a post-Iraqi Occupation world. A world where international confidence in America's truthfulness and competence is at a 65 year low; the Army is nearly broken, the treasury is bare, the international condemnation of torture is loud and civil rights are endangered - and Osama is still walking free! Stick that in their tailpipes when they start their warmongering over Iran.

Then rub salt into their wounds - remind them of the incompetence of their beloved administration and it's leader when Katrina hit. Here's a sure sign of their weakness - even Joe Lieberman, the brownnoser-in-cheif for Demlicans on the Hill, has accused administration officials of failing to cooperate and trying to run out the clock on the congressional probe investigating the government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Would Rove pass up blood in the water to this extent if the roles were reversed? Hell no.

Oh...one last thing...just in case you might have dreamed that Rupet Murdoch, the owner of Fox News and more, had an ounce of integrity in his body...

He's announced that he would ditch his media empire's support for Tony Blair - who his minions have so lauded for sticking by Bush in Iraq - in a New York second if the new Conservative leader would just promise to line Murdoch's pockets with some nice tax cuts.

Unlike Blair, Cameron, the new Conservative leader, was against the Iraq war from word one and wants to pull the UK's troops out.

"Rupert Murdoch...traitor to America". Want to bet you don't see that headline from any US rightwing pundit anytime ever?

Joel Stein Is Blethering Gobshite Says Socialist

Joel Stein is, as they say in the auld country, a blethering gobshite - and it's a socialist saying this. That socialist is me.

Today Stein tried...I'm not sure what. It's almost as if any attempt at understanding the issues was deliberately avoided in preference for sensationalist shitstirring. Either that or the L.A. Times is now hiring sub-grade morons to write op-eds. I suppose the latter is possible - after all, NRO and the Washington Times have been doing it for years.

Why am I so pissed? Take a look.

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Is this guy being paid by Karl Rove to give the wingnuts hardons?

He has a couple of valid points - mostly about yellow car sticker ribbons not aising the troops, only some Chinese entrepreneurs - but he's totally unglued on this whole thing about if your against the war you can't be for the troops. Of course, that's the bit the wingnuts have honed in on, saying all liberals secretly feel that way, and the bit that means this column should've been used to wipe his ass with instead of being submitted for publication.

Look, for those who are hard of understanding. My family has a long tradition of being lefties - most of my uncles held elected posts for the Labour Party. They all also fought in WW2, in Africa, Europe and Asia. My Grandfather was one of the founders of the Communist Party in Great Britain. He fought in Europe against the Nazis and twice only escaped death by sheer accident - once when a sniper's bullet hit the binoculars he had illegally looted from a dead German officer and once when a shell hit the bunker he had 30 seconds before been playing cards in, killing his entire section. In Holland, he was told by his commanding officer to crawl forward towards a dug-in Tiger tank with the platoons only PIAT (a primitive anti-tank missile) and "have a go". His response was "after you, Sir" - a perfectly reasonable and legal answer to any order of that idiocy. The officer demured...since the attempt would have been suicide.

My Grandad came home, unlike more than one in ten of the menfolk of the village (and the nation). Their names are on the memorial and Grandad knew and remembered every single one. This giant of a man was a pacificst and a hero who fought with honour. He extracted my promise, when I was about fourteen, never to volunteer for the military but to gladly go if everyone was called up - he felt a general draft was a sure sign of a needful war. Our local regiment is the Black Watch, which has done more than its fair share of dying over the years - including the distinction of being bombed and straffed by it's American allies in three major conflicts. Everyone in the area knows someone who has died in Iraq. My own most poignant are of a three year old I used to babysitt when I was a teen. He was killed last year leading his squad.

Maybe it's because Americans of this century haven't experienced so huge a loss of life as the European nations saw during WW2 that so much utter crap is spouted about military duty and how the populace should feel about it by idiots from both Left and Right. Imagine for a second applying the following sentiment to other past wars:

There is a time to be against a war, and that time is before the war begins. Strategies for victory are legitimate debate, but as long as troops are on the ground then that is where debate should end."

Now apply it to the Confederate side of the American Civil War, or the common soldiers under the Nazis, or any in a long line of conflicts which were ended by people realising that the war was wrong and speaking up, so that ceasefire terms could be agreed. If Japan had held to the same credo, MacArthur would have had to invade. Yet it's constantly advanced by Bush and his sycophants as a reason not to dissent against his own wars. In such a light it is seen for what it is - unaldulterated partisan idiocy.

Many Americans on the Right also don't get one of the most basic and crucial verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials - that every soldier has a duty to refuse an order if he truly thinks it illegal.

Our soldiers were sent to Iraq by the president pursuant to an overwhelming authorization of force by the Congress. At that point, they have a duty to go off to war regardless of whether they like it. It would be untenable to put the country in a position where it is paying for warriors that it relies on in times of crisis and then give those warriors the ability to opt out at the moment when they are needed.

If they were writing in Germany, where everyone is very aware of international and German military law, such a call for blind obedience to the flag would raise all kinds of hackles and several hefty woodsheddings from military commenters. You see, having a volunteer military which opts out of an unjust order is exactly what Nuremberg and the Geneva Convention both decree.

So just for the idiots I will lay it out as simply as I can.

We all have the right:

To agree or disagree with our nation's wars, even while they are being fought.

To disagree with the way the war is being fought if we think different leaders, strategies or tactics would fight it better.

To call for a halt to the war, or a portion of it, if we think the incompetence of national and military leaders means we aren't winning or suffering unacceptable/unneccessary losses.

To support each soldiers individual decision on whether their orders are lawful or not. Only the individual soldier can make that decision for him or herself.

To support the poor bloody infantry by wanting them to have the best of equipment, the best of leaders, the best of tactics and the luck or acumen to not have themselves killed or too many bystanders or enemies killed. We are all, first and foremost, human and every death is a tragedy to some extent.

I can support the troops, both British and American, while not supporting the war in Iraq and anyone who says otherwise is a blethering gobshite.

Instahoglets 23rd Jan 06

I hate making small posts that don't contain much analysis. It seems a lazy way to fill a blog page to me. So I collect them and post them all together, sometimes with added snark.

Psst...want to follow the wicked web of Republican corruption? Anything They Say can and will be used against them.

Remember Afghanistan, where the Great War On Michael Moore was already won? As I and others have been saying for over a year, the Iraqi adventure has drawn off resources to such an extent that Michael's...sorry, Osama's...forces are resurgent and mounting ever heavier attacks. But wait, it gets worse. It seems Pakistan (remember? strongly Sunni Islamist, has nukes, run by a dictator - exactly not like Iran) is where most of the militants are coming from nowadays.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as "bizarre" a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there," Aziz said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." U.S. counterterrorism officials have said they believe the January 13 attack killed four to eight al Qaeda-affiliated "foreigners" attending a dinner meeting. When liars collide, who can you believe? That's the question that Bush and his cronies have given the whole world. Once upon a time, the world tended to believe America.

Never mind the terrorists, here's the armed criminals! In a story that says everything about the White House spin about how well everything is going in Iraq, everyone who can get out - doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen - is getting out of the country.

The United States has said that British police can board and search rendition flights carrying terrorist suspects if the authorities can produce evidence of a crime and officers turn up with a search warrant. The catch? According to the UK's Crown Office, they don't think moving terrorist suspects to a country where they could be tortured is enough of a crime to qualify for a search warrant. US officials have also ruled out the possibility of CIA planes being subject to routine inspections like every other plane that passes through UK airspace.

And while the UK's Jack Straw is lying through his teeth and saying the government had "found no evidence" of detainees being "rendered" through Britain since September 11, the Malta Independent (of all places) gives Straw the lie with a sneak preview of the findings of EU investigator Dick Marty:

Governments across the European Union have “collaborated, tolerated or looked away” from the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine operations on their countries’ soil for the last two to three years. This is expected to be one of the main findings that will be revealed on Tuesday when a Council of Europe (COE) inquiry presents its interim report on the use of European territory for the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

The report is due tomorrow, notice. It should be a show stopper.

Talk Left has the goods on how the Patriot Act enabled the creation of a national police force - a uniformed branch of the Secret Service - that works solely for the President and has wide powers to arrest without warrant.

Oh Maaaan! Go read William Pitt Rivers RIGHT NOW! He is so all over the congressional Dems spinelessness and the GOP's intention to terrify the electorate into voting for them that it's just not funny.

ElBaradei Refuses To Aid Rush To War

Mohamed ElBaradei is refusing to be rushed by the Bush administration and it's European allies and has ruled out hurrying a detailled report on Iran's nuclear program so as to make it ready for the early February emergency meeting they have called.

ElBaradei said in written responses to the U.S. and EU requests that he had given Iran until the March meeting to answer questions in IAEA inquiries into its nuclear project, which it concealed from U.N. inspectors for almost two decades.

"Due process, therefore, must take its course before (we are) able to submit a detailed report," he said in a letter to the U.S., British, French and Australian ambassadors to the IAEA, distributed to all board members and seen by Reuters.

Diplomats close to the IAEA say ElBaradei disagrees with the Western thrust for referral now, believing further direct talks with Iran and IAEA investigations could still rein in Tehran. A fresh team of investigators is due in Iran this week, at Iran's invite, to monitor the research they will be making after taking the IAEA seals off equipment recently - equipment which was originally sealed by Iran voluntarily and in excess of requirements made by non-proliferation treaties.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that "You can't have negotiations going on while the regime is ignoring its agreements with the international community," - seemingly unaware of the irony of his words. If you listed all the agreements with the international community that the Bush administration has unilaterally reneged on, starting with the Geneva Convention, it would be longer than this webpage.

Scotty's attack-dog rhetoric seems to give the lie to recent reports that Bush, Rice and others had agreed on a policy of containment and peaceful regime-change for Iran. If they are just lying to present a case of plausible deniability behind which a rush for war continues then that would be utterly reprehensible. The very real possibility of changing by careful diplomacy the current regime in Iran for a more moderate one, without a revolution and without involving covert action and lunatic opposition resistance groups like the MEK, is the only one that offers a lasting resolution between Iran and the West which doesn't make matters worse.

Maybe it's just that, as my friend Mr M. at Comments From Left Field says, the Bushies are simply terrible at diplomacy. M blames the cronyism that is endemic to Bush's appointees:

The problem with cronyism is that it is an exact antithesis of diplomacy. This is simply because cronyism requires you to rub elbows with people who are similar to you, and easy for you to get along with, whereas diplomacy requires you to put aside personal differences and dislikes to work with people you don't like.

I think he is spot on about that, but I'm still of a mind that, like the Iraq invasion and the subsequent occupation, the administration's story may be one of lies and misdirection as well as incompetence.

Take for example the recent New York Times by David Sanger entitled "Why Not a Strike on Iran?" by David Sanger. Sanger is a consummate Washington insider, a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and of Joseph Nye and Brent Scowcroft's Aspen Strategy Group. Every single one of his reports has the appearance of being composed mainly by administration officials and sources commenting anonomously. Thus we can look at his latest story as being the second stage spin for the rush to war - it basically says that military strikes are possible, that the consequences would be terrible...and then, sotto voce, that even so, those strikes should take place because to do less would be cowardly appeasement. Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in the current highly rightwing Israeli government. Like Rove, they know that nothing wins votes for the incumbents like a handy war or the threat of one.

But the cracks are already showing, the lies are already surfacing. Dick Cheney had to admit this week that there is no evidence for close ties between Iran and the boogeyman, Al Qaida. (Unsurprising, really. Iran has already experienced several terror attacks by Al Qaida in recent years which went utterly unreported by the mainstream American media.) People like Dr. Jeffrey Lewis are doing sterling work showing that not only is Iran a decade or more away from having the capability to build a nuke, it's current missiles are utterly inadequate to deliver the heavy nukes it could build in the forseeable future.

Even the rightwing pundits (the honest ones at least - not the sycophant hacks) are being backed into a position where they have to conceed that there is a possibility that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Their answer to that is to suppose that Iran wants everyone else to think they do - the possibility that American and Israeli hawks, along with nutcase Iranian would-be tyrants, are fabricating the evidence to enable the war they want so much is never considered. Even after admitting that "our intelligence in Iran is quite poor (poorer even than our intelligence was in Saddam’s Iraq and you know how that came out)", the right still wants to attack because, whether Iran is working for nukes or whether the hawks have just convinced themselves it is, "prudence requires us to respond to either alternative identically."

I'm very glad that ElBaradei has refused to be steamrollered. However, I am extremely dubious as to whether his sanity will be enough to reign in the rush to war. It is becoming ever more likely that, after refusing to be a part of negotiations in the first place, pressuring for the breakdown of negotiations and then refusing to entertain others beginning negotiations again, the war-wishers in America, Europe and Israel will announce there is no point to diplomacy any more and reach for their own bombs.

Conceding The Battlefield

My recent post suggesting that progressive bloggers aren't on top of the Iranian issue got me a couple of responses by email of "I have posted about Iran - Look!" It's true that many progressive blogs have posted about the Iran issue once or twice over the last week or two - but the rightwing bloggers are on it every day, as are the GOP and the MSM which appears to be uncrtitically cutting and pasting from White House press releases. That higher volume is what is setting the agenda and setting the rightwing narrative in stone. Meanwhile liberals are more interested in Snoopgate and GOP corruption.

Republicans figure that voters are likely to be more swayed by national security issues and fear than by tales of corruption and incompetence. Given the last Presidential and Senatorial elections, they may well be right. Certainly Karl Rove thinks that Thatcher's magic formula will still hold - nothing wins at the polls like the mixture of fear and nationalism a handy war (or the fear of one) drums up.

Now, there's a well-known adage that you fight on the battlefields of your own choosing, not your enemies. But what if the enemy has chosen better battles? Refusing to mount an effective counterattack is how you lose the entire war. Look at the Alito confirmation hearings and the shameless way some Demlicans have carried water for the extreme right.

The Democratic leadership is, by and large, too afraid of losing votes to go up against the narrative. The only way they will find their courage is if the grassroots mounts the kind of unified outcry against this Iraq-redux that they have mounted against the Iraqi occupation or Bush's social security hatchet job.

Remember, many high-profile Dems were for the war in Iraq before the grassroots made such a united hue and cry about the many incompetencies and lies involved, exposed the quislings like Joe and Joe, and made the issue a vote winner. Then they were against the war. Don't let them spin it - you were there and that's how it was.

Instahoglets 20th Jan 06

Steps have been taken, a silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You can't stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion
We all have a dark side, to say the least
And dealing in death is the nature of the beast
Pink Floyd - Dogs Of War.

Congressman Bob Filner is a Democrat and an ass. He's in favor of slipping the leash on the Mujahedeen e-Kalqh, currently under minimal guard at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. I shall quote this moron:

It is time to take the MEK (People Mojahedin Organization of Iran) off the terrorist list. If we can not have war and if appeasement does not work, we have a Third option. As Maryam Rajavi has said there is a third way and that is to assist the internal resistance based in Iraq. That we can have a democratic government. To make change from within. We don't need a world war. We can have the internal resistance make the change.

Yeah, democracy will best be served by letting the messianic leader of the Islamist/Marxist army who used to be Saddam's enforcers run Iran and it's nuclear program. NOT!

Fred Kaplan has a similiar problem. The only non-nutcase alternatives to the Iranian regime-in-place are secular groups which are a) all based in America, not Iran and b) not big enough to fill a pool hall, let alone a parliament. Shades of A. Chalabi! Do we really want to try that one again?

Tough guy Vice President John Way...oops, Dick Cheney...says that the US will not negotiate with terrorists and thus rejects any truce with Bin Laden. I think you have to destroy them," he told Fox News Channel. "It's the only way to deal with them."

Meanwhile, the Shia majority in Iraq pleads with the US to stop negotiating with terrorists! National Security Adviser Mowaffak Rubaie told the Washington Times "I think the Americans are making a huge and fatal mistake in their policy of appeasement and they should not do this." Ah, the delicious irony!

(Cheney is indeed a Dick. If he had said you can negotiate with some terrorists but not others, and then gone on to explain why Osama can't be trusted in negotiations, I would have had less of a problem - maybe none. It's the "Death to all fanatics!" absolutist political whip-up-the-base crap I find laughable.)

Tough Guy French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it. The problem with terrorists is they are usually stateless, isn't it? At least that's the justification for the US's "illegal combatant" bodyswerve around the Geneva Convention. Understandably, Jacques has upset several neighbouring countries who don't have nukes but do have a history of being invaded by France every hundred years or so.

(The most ridiculous aspect of this story is the American Right, crowing and speculating whether the "socialist Fwench surrender monkeys" finally grew some. France has been led by a rightwing government for over a decade now. Chirac is about as warmongeringly conservative as they come - utterly Thatcheresque. He just didn't see the percentage for France in the Iraqi Adventure.)

It is cynical of me, but I have to think the real reason behind Bush and his crew's unseemly rush to war with Iran is in their checkbooks. Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D. who teaches economics at the American University in Bulgaria seems to think so too:

"The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate "nuclear" weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro."

Piecing together the network of corruption- District Attorney Ronnie Earle has asked for bank records which could prove a link between the defense contractor involved in Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham's bribery and a Texas political committee founded by Tom DeLay.

Once, Harry Reid found cojones for a day when he shut the Senate down over Bush's lies about Iraq. Now he has lost them again and is offering an apology to Repuglicans because a report by his office singled out 33 Republican senators for various ethical lapses and transgressions.

Molly Ivins unloads a rightous can of whoop-ass on theDemocrats' Republican-Lite elite powerbrokers, who jump at their own shadows and at every poll on Faux News, as she tells them "I will not support Hillary Clinton for president." YOU GO, MOLLY!

As noted above, Osama binForgotten popped up this week with a timely reminder that this seven foot tall guy with a gimpy leg who needs weekly dialysis and is also the world's most wanted terrorist can't be found by BushCo and their allies. Rather than be embarassed that they've wasted so much time supporting a Prezi-didn't who couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a map the Right did what it always does - blamed the Left. And did so by putting words in the mouths of Lefties that I've never heard from a real one. I don't usually link to Daily Kos - I'm not a fan for a variety of reasons - but this time a diarist absolutely nails the BushCo sycophants on their moronic use of the language of treason.

El Baradei Refuses To Refer Iran

Reports are surfacing that Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has rejected an EU request to condemn Iran's nuclear program.

Instead, he has given Tehran until the end of next month to give his inspectors improved access to documents and sites. Only if Iran does not accede would he be ready to declare his investigation was no longer making progress and that his hands were tied.

Yet again, the Bush administration and it's warlike poodles abroad find themselves at odds with the major investigative and regulatory organisation involved. It really is just like the lead up to invading Iraq, isn't it?

I mean it really, really is! If you're wondering why El Baradei isn't as fired up as Condi Rice then look no further than today's excellent article by the Arms Control Wonk, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis. Assuming that Iran does in fact want a nuke (something that is still highly questionable), how close are they to developing one?

The short answer is between three and ten years if all goes well - and these things never go well.

When some moron like Charles Krauthammer claims Iran is now just “months” away from a bomb, you can pretty much ignore him: He has no idea what he is talking about.

Overall, Iran is probably a little less than a decade away from developing a nuclear weapon. The key question here is how long it will take Iran to enrich a few tens of kilograms of uranium to more than 90 percent U-235.

Dafna Linzer reported that the US Intelligence Community does not believe that Iran could do so before “early to mid next decade”—a revision of previous assessments that Iran would “have the ability to produce nuclear weapons early in the next decade.”

Why so long? The answer is that Iran still has to build, install and operate its centrifuges to enrich uranium.

There's years of development and research still to do. Dr. Lewis has the facts and the math to back his assertion. A MUST READ if you're at all interested in the truth rather than the narrative.

The Toughest Option Of All For Iran

Where are all the progressive bloggers and pundits who should be writing about Iran? Sure it's easy and fun to write about the Abramoff scandals or Snoopgate but neither of those are going to kill American citizens! Yet the progressive grassroots seem to have left the field open to the hawks of the Right and the hawks in the Democrat leadership. I want to begin to remedy that lack, so here's something to think about

Who does Condi Rice think she is to be demanding anything of anyone over Iran? Has she forgotten that she was the one who ruled out American involvement in negotiations when the EU3 and Iran most wanted U.S. input? Even the rightwingers who normally believe that the sun rises and sets only at Mad King George's behest are pissed at his administration's utter lack of open involvement in negotiations, Condi and pals being content to pull strings and exert pressure behind the scenes.

The failure to craft an effective Iran policy has plagued this administration, and indeed the entire American political class, for five long years. Calls of "faster, please" were dismissed, in large part because they failed to resonate in the policy community, aside from a few brave souls in Congress (Jon Kyl, John Cornyn, Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, Illeana Ros-Lehtinen come to mind. No thanks to the nominal leaders, Henry Hyde and Richard Lugar, both in full denial, in lockstep with Foggy Bottom and Langley).

Now Condi is in a position where the Europeans are "mulling a Russian proposal to the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in Vienna -- that would stop short of formally referring Iran to the council." That won't suit the chickenhawks who want their war and they want it now!

Invasion of Iran to protect America from nuclear attack, and preserve our freedom, counts as a major war.

This would, however, make absolute hash of the Bush administration's quite fictitious future budget estimates, which are the reason why it refused to significantly expand our ground forces after 9/11 though such was obviously necessary. Those phony budget estimates are arguably the biggest obstacle to our invasion of Iran this year. Iran’s mullahs might even have counted on this in timing their breakout to public nuclear weapons possession.

And if we don't invade this year, it won't matter much after that. We'll be in the worst case scenario. And President Bush will be reviled as America’s worst President – the one who through inaction cost us our freedom.

In their eagerness to have a disasterous war, they are even willing to finally see the light on Dubya. It's a gen-u-wine fucking miracle!

Yet the warmongers will get their war. King George wants it even if the wingnuts are annoyed at him because he hasn't delivered fast enough, Rumsfeld wants it and is busy talking up the Pentagon's ability to wage it, the neocons want it. The "culture-war class" crowd want it so much they are hard for it because it will give them the war of civilisations they have spoken about so long. The religious right think that war of religions will bring about the end times, the conversion of the non-radioactive Jews to Christianity and the eventual Rapture so they want it most of all.

When it happens, a whole bunch of the Democrat leadership will want it too and will vote for it before changing their minds later when it becomes a debacle. Hillary Clinton wants sanctions - not because we thinks they will work but because she thinks being soft on Iran will lose her votes from security moms. The woman has self-promoted herself well beyond her own competence. Other Dem leaders are following suit or insisting that the military option must be kept open, for the same vote-chasing reasons if any of them have an ounce of belief in what they have been saying about being lied into war in Iraq. They've all seen the recent Pew poll that says the Dems are ahead on Iraq and foreign policy and fear losing that lead so much that their ambition is making cowards of them all. It is not brave men who strike out without reason, but cowards and bullies who think they can get away with it.

And every single one of them is saying "we know it's just like Iraq but we are right this time...trust us!"

I don't.

I don't because there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Every single reason for believing they are comes down to either paranoia, a lust for Iranian blood based on a warped appreciation of recent history or a mindless trust in the assertions of the Islamist/Marxist opposition-in-exile which is led by a certifiable nutcase even more insane than the worst estimates of the current Iranian President's state of mind. Iran's nukes are as chimerical as Iraq's in 2002.

I don't because all the hawks know sanctions would be useless even if Iran were pursuing a nuclear weapon - which makes them just a stepping stone on the way to the war they want the most.

I dont because any military option would have the gravest of consequences for the region and the world.

Regime change by covert action? Give me a break. The only alternative regime is an even worse one - that afore-mentioned gang of terrorist nutcases which the neocons have been grooming for years and whom they would love to unleash on Iran. The "democratic opposition" in Iran is an Islamic and Iranian nationalist one. It will not throw it's weight behind a betrayal of it's nation.

So what is the answer? Well, as The Guardian's Simon Jenkins puts it:

Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.

So just maybe progressives should be listening to the voice of my favourite Texan libertarian:

Iran was the birthplace of Western civilization. It is a sophisticated nation of almost 200 million(Libertas amends this figure in comments -it's actually 64.5 million - C) well-educated inhabitants. So why do Belgium and Portugal have more to say about global affairs than Iran? Because we continue to perceive this world power as if it were an ill-mannered colonial stepchild. It is not. Iran is going to be one of the world’s most influential players in the 21st century and the sooner we realize this the better. Instead continuing a feeble and fruitless policy of trying to keep Iran a eunuch nation, we should be intent on trying to help develop and direct Iran peaceably into its rightful place as one of the preeminent players in world affairs.

In other words change the Iranian regime by changing the actual regime rather than swapping it for another which would be even worse.

Just because this option doesn't involve dropping bombs on anyone it will be decried as "wimpish" and "appeasing". That is more an indictment of the mindset that believes all tough choices can be answered with mayhem than of the option itself.

Instahoglets 18th Jan 06

Normal snark levels will now be resumed.

The Guardian's Simon Jenkins puts it plain - the West has picked a fight with Iran it cannot win.

Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.

I should add in here that yet again, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has told the world that:

"We are not after nuclear arms. Western states know well that manufacturing nuclear arms is contrary to political and economic interests of the nation and is in violation of the commands of Islam."

And for those who would believe the neocon crap (yet again) that the people of Iran are crying out for regime change and would strew rose petals at the feet of their liberators, think again. Kevin Sites examines the honor martyrs are given and the esteem in which they are held -- particularly amongst Iran's poor and more conservative religious populations. Then recall that America backed Saddam in his war with Iran and that Iranians have long, long memories.

More from the Guardian, this time Iraq:

An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a "social breakdown" in which criminals have "almost free rein"...The picture it paints is not only darker than the optimistic accounts from the White House and the Pentagon, it also gives a more complex profile of the insurgency than the straightforward "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists" described by George Bush.

Oops. What a foul-up by the rosy picture brigade! You just know some spinmeister is gonna get a Rovian reeming for this.

Insider Larry C. Johnson recalls his conversations with Paul Bremer and says Bremer is wrong about no-one anticipating the Iraqi insurgency.

"I tried to warn him and I tried to hook him up with genuine experts on Iraq before he went to Baghdad in the spring of 2003."

But Bremer, like Bush and the rest, just went "La, la la..I can't hear you!"

Regular reader Kirk sent me the next one. As the "social breakdown" that everyone anticipated except the Bush administration continues in Iraq, the U.S. Army is telling soldiers who have privately purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor (the state of the art body armor that totally outclasses Interceptor armor but is too expensive for the Pentagon's beancounters)to shed their Dragon Skin's or risk losing the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. Yep, that's taking care of the troops the Republican way...

(P.S. Currently nine US generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin body armor, so it's great for the generals but not OK for the P.B.I.)

Talking of supporting the troops the Bush way:

"The Pentagon hopes to reap billions of dollars to pay for ships, aircraft and other weapons by doubling or tripling health insurance premiums paid by military retirees and driving 600,000 of those pensioners out of the military medical system, a coalition of veterans organizations charges."

The beancounters up at the Pentagon need to be demoted and transferred directly to Mosul. Do not pass go, do not collect any body armor at all.

Whiskey Bar has a large collection of quotes that show the Republicans were more than happy to claim Jack Abramoff as exclusively one of their own right up until he became a liability. That's when Jack becam an "equal money dispenser" as far as the spin was concerned. Bush is trying to say he never knew Abramoff. The All Spin Zone is the first to ask "what happens when Abramoff testifies otherwise?"

Nuclear Iran Part Three - Exploring the Military Option

Iran is still asking for further negotiations over it's nuclear program, while insisting that it has a right to research under international law (which it does). However, the EU3 of Germany, Britain and France are adamant that there is no room for further talking and that they will ask the IAEA, in an emergency session on 2nd February, to refer Iran to the Security Council. The usual "unnamed officials think Iran is stalling. Rusia and China have refused to go as far as the EU3, and continue to advocate further dialogue while making placatory noises to both sides - something that probably has more to do with money than moral belief. The Arab world is pleading with the U.S. to show restarint and patience, with IAEA board member Egypt also putting Dick Cheney on notice that it will not vote for unilateral referral - any propsal it will vote on must also include Israel for contraventions of the NPT. But at the end of the day the other nations, even the members of the Security Council, are merely bit players because not only is the U.S. the driving force behind the Europeans but the Bush Doctine says that if America feels the need to do something then it can and should - even if that means flying in the face of international opinion and international law.

Meanwhile in the United States, the instigator of the narrative who refused to get involved in the negotiations, the unseemly rush to war continues apace. Prominent neocon media figures likeWilliam Kristol, Niall Ferguson and Michelle Malkin are leading the charge on behalf of the Bush administration, always with a "we don't want war but we must be prepared" caveat that quickly turns into "everyone but us is spineless for not wanting war" followed by "Why postpone the INEVITABLE!? LET'S LAUNCH MISSILES ASAP." (I should note that some conservative pundits are considerably more realistic - including The Glittering Eye blog who has an assessment I am most indebted to.) Of course, the hawks of the Democratic Party aren't far behind, chasing votes like ghouls chase ambulances. They remember how the patriotic fervor of Iraq bought Bush a Presidency and the GOP the Hill and don't want to lose out this time.

All of this simply combines to give the Bush administration some support for what it wants to do anyway. There are enough neocons in the administration to highly color it's policy and in any case they've already spent too much political and diplomatic capital trying to convince everyone that Iran is one of the nations covered by the Bush Doctrine, one of the "axis of evil". That means that, nuclear research or no, sanctions or no sanctions, united international front or ad-hoc coalition of the foolable, I believe there will at some stage be an attack on Iran even though it is "a very silly thing to do" as British First Sea Lord Sir Alan West noted last Friday.

In the 12th January edition of Jane's Intelligence Digest, the preeminent journal of all matters concerning military and intelligence afairs gave it's opinion of the year ahead for Iran:

In view of the latest moves to reactivate suspended nuclear programmes at Iran's Nantaz facility, there is an increased likelihood that Tehran will be referred to the UN Security Council in the coming months. However, JID also remains convinced that pre-emptive military strikes against suspected nuclear facilities in Iran during 2006 are a real possibility, with Israel likely to take the lead.

Israel has always been the favorite for a proxy attack on Iran, and has mentioned airstrikes before now. Given it's situation it's paranoia is understandable if misguided and the new acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is making highly belligerent noises.

Israel cannot allow in any way or at any stage someone who has such hostile intentions against us to obtain weapons that could threaten our existence,"

It seems unlikely that Israel has any more intelligence assets in Iran than the U.S. does, which means this aggresive stance is based on American assessments which are in turn based on the "findings of the MeK and biased by the neocon wish-list.

Were Israel to attempt a pre-emptive strike, then they could probably do it. It would require a surge by pretty much the entire Israeli airforce and would probably be led by their F15 long range attack aircraft. The strike would be co-ordinated by EC707 AEW aircraft and the shorter range F-16s in Israel's inventory could be refuelled in flight by it's eight tanker aircraft, giving them the legs to strike and return. Even so, a refuelling stop on the way out or a landing site closer to the targets would be a very handy thing, which is perhaps why there are rumors that Israel may attempt to gain use of three airbases in the Kurdish North of Iraq should it decide to strike.

Still, Israel would not have much left in it's pockets for a follow-on strike. It also has a major problem, as this map demonstrates"



It cannot attack Iran without passing over at least one other moslem nation. Turkey would have been the most likely candidate until fairly recently, when relations between the two nations have cooled considerably. Supposing Turkey co-operated, it would force that nation out of the Moslem world entirely and into the Euro-sphere for good. That might seem desirable to neocon minds but the resulting destabilisation is impossible to predict fully and since it would doubtless at least lead to the downfall of the current Turkish government I think it's a non-starter. Even going back to those rumors of a staging base or three inside Iraq - that creates it's own problems. Flying over Syria would invite Syrian involvemnt on Iran's behalf, giving early warning of any raid and probably reprisal attacks by the strong Syrian military while Israel was denuded of aircraft. Syria would probably offer Iran airbases for staging any counterstrikes.

Using Iraqi bases or overflying Iraq would be equivalent to American involvement as far as the region was concerned. The ruling Shia would never give permission for Israel to strike Shiite Iran and no-one would believe otherwise. America has a very strong air presence in the country and is the defender of Iraq's sovereign airspace. It would be the final nail in the myth of Iraqi sovereignty (already damaged by U.S. and U.K. warrantless raids and prison breaks) and would doubtless instigate a general uprising and return to the insurgency of the Shiite majority in Iraq. The Bush administration, given it's history of non-planning in Iraq, may help Israel do the deed via Iraq anyway. It would be the most incredibly dumb mistake of all - leaving Coalition forces sandwiched between Syria and Iran while fighting every Iraqi except the Kurds. Israel, meanwhile, would be occupied by Syria and possibly other Arab states angered by their pre-emptive aggression. It would be a bloodbath. Israel could set back Iranian nuclear research by yeras in one strike, but the consequences would be far worse than the cure.

Iran is no pushover. It is the indigenous naval power of the Gulf - although it would be no match for even one US carrier group it has a couple of missile destroyers (ironically, one is ex-British and the other is ex-American navy), a score of highly capable missile craft, a couple of missile-armed frigates (again, ex British and American vessels) and a half dozen very capable deisel subs. Enough to put a dent even in a US fleet and enough to clean the clocks of the rest of the Gulf states. In the air, Iran has over 400 modern combat aircraft including American F-14s and F-4s (questionably maintained), Mig 29s and 31s and even Russian "Backfire" supersonic heavy bombers armed with cruise missiles. It's air defenses are formidable, including US Hawk missiles and russian SA-10s. On the ground, Iran masses some 1600 tanks (including around 100 of their own design which is rumored to be as good as the U.S. Abrams), over a thousand armored troop carriers, 3,000 artillery pieces including cruise missles and Scuds and 50 helicopter gunships.

There's no doubt in my mind that the current air and naval-air assets the U.S. has in the region, aided by cruise missiles, B2 Stealth bombers flying from the U.S.A. and B52's from Diego Garcia, could conduct an extensive and protracted air war against Iran, utterly devasting their nuclear program and indeed the whole country if so wished. Losses would be far higher than against Iraq but not prohibatively so. It is unlikely that Britain would get involved no matter what Tony Blair says. He is in an increasingly weak position compared with Gordon Brown and both the Foreign Minister and the Defence Minister have said the UK will not join a military adventure against Iran. However, the aftermath would be even uglier than that for an Israeli strike. Unless Israel was willing to begin a war of aggression into Syrian territoty (with predictable reactions from other Arab countries) then Coalition forces would be sandwiched between Syria and Iran, two nations with a mutual defense pact, and trying to withstand a widespread insurgency. Pakistan would probably be forced to cease co-operating with America and upwards of 20,000 al-Qaida trained militants from cities like Karachi would flood across the border between Pakistan, Iran and Iraq to join the mayhem. Coalition losses would begin to resemble those of World War Two on the Eastern Front.

A ground invasion of Iran would be even more disasterous. Imagine attacking a well defended mountainous country, even with air-superiority, with weary troops. It's not the perfect tank country that much of Iraq gives. Add in the general insurgency which would rage in the rear and a probable Syrian involvement again.

A per-emptive nuclear strike by either Israel or America? Increase the chaos and the rage in the moslem world by a factor of 100. If the neocons want to go looking for the "war of civilisations" they write so much about then that would indeed be the way to do it.

My worry is that, as I said above, the Bush administration (who are also pulling Israel's strings) are provably terrible at envisioning and planning for the consequences of their actions. They will almost certainly still try some kind of military option unless enough of their own number, as well as the official opposition, see reason. I'm not at all confident that will happen until after the fact.

Part One, The Back Story deals with the known truths and speculations about Iran's nuclear program.

Part Two - Sanctions or What? looks at the options available to the international community short of military action.

Nuclear Iran. Part Two - Sanctions or What?

The five veto-holding members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, have been meeting today in an attempt to agree on what exactly should be done about the Iranian nuclear program. Together, these nations are the main players (other than Iran) - the EU3 of Germany, France and Britain; the US which has the biggest axe to grind when it comes to Iran; Russia which is trying to keep good relations with the first four but earns a lot of foreign currency from Iran's nuclear project and China, which is heavily reliant on Iran for oil and gas while also making plenty of arms sales to Iran. The next meeting of the International Atomic Energy Authority's governing board is scheduled for March and the idea behind the current meetings is that the six nations will be in broad agreement by then. However, Russia and China are still not "on side" with American-led moves to make Iran a pariah state. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said today:

China believes that under the current situation, all relevant sides should remain restrained and stick to solving the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiations.

While Russia obviously feels it can garner for itself a priveliged position as provider of enriched uranium fuel to the world and pull Iran's cat out of the bag.

The Russian proposal would ensure oversight so that uranium would be enriched only as much as is needed for use in nuclear power plants and not to the higher level required for weapons.
"As far as Russia's proposal is concerned, we consider it constructive and are carefully studying it. This is a good initiative to resolve the situation. We believe that Iran and Russia should find a way out of this jointly," Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Gholamreza Ansari, said in comments translated into Russian and shown on state Channel One television.

Iran's concerns are easy to see, especially after Russia recently shut off gas supplies to the Ukraine - it must be reassured that Russia's priveliged position under such a deal does not mean it becomes an effective satellite state or that it's supplies of fuel can be shut off for no particular reason. However, if the two nations can reach a deal on enrichment, it effectively defuses the entire situation for now. Only the uber-hawks would then be left crying about possible secret military development programs for which there is no concrete, objective evidence. Mind you, that has never stopped the Bush administration when it wanted to provoke a fight before and is unlikely to do so again. However, it would strip away most international backing for the Bush administrations obvious desire to play hardball.

America, however, is pushing to have a special meeting of the IAEA earlier than scheduled and the EU3 (France, Germany and Britain) have now fallen in line with this, announcing they want an emergency meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation board of governors in Vienna on February 2-3. . Ostensibly this is because the situation is so serious and so pressing but anyone who reads between the lines of the media reports or looks beyond the narrative handed out by the US and so helpfully and uncritically parroted by the media at home and in Europe knows that this is simply false. The best intelligence estimates say that even if Iraq is actively seeking a nuclear weapon - something which is highly questionable as is shown in part one - then they are between three and ten years away from actually doing so. More likely the latter figure as IAEA inspections consistently show Iran has less of a nuclear infrastructure than the more doom-mongering assessments require. Unless the Bush administration and it's allies are being as uncritical of intelligence from questionable sources as even it's supporters admit it was over Iraq - in other words, unless they are swallowing their own bullshit whole again - then they too realise that what they are desseminating to the public is yet again misleading if not actual lies.

No, the more likely reason for American-backed calls for haste is to keep up the pressure - to keep the ball rolling at an ever increasing speed. That not only pressures Iranians, who must surely feel the winds of war blowing on their necks already, but also the other five nations currently in negotiation over a joint path as well as the IAEA. It also creates a sense of ever-faster approaching doom in the minds of the public and that sense of fear has always been very useful to the Bush administrations efforts on all fronts. Lastly, if successful, it cuts the time for the IAEA to inspect, question and verify. It cuts the time available for the actual truth to be ascertained - making it all the more likely that the IAEA will bend under pressure, err on the side of extreme possibility, and refer Iran to the Security Council as the US wishes. President Putin of Russia knows this, and has said that "it's necessary to work carefully and avoid any sharp, erroneous moves." Today's action in calling an emergency session shows he is being ignored.

If the six major players can come to an agreement, especially on whether Iran should be referred to the UN Security Council by the IAEA, then there will be huge pressure on El Baradei's crew to do exactly that. There's no guarantee, however, that the IAEA will refer Iran just because any number of those six nations say they should. El Baradei and his governors have proven themselves independant thinkers in the past and were they to do so again and refuse to refer Iran it would considerably weaken the hand of the US and it's allies. That's not to say it would stop America doing what it wants to - merely that it would do so without the primature of the IAEA's decision.

If (and on balance I think they will, under pressure and constraints of time) the IAEA refers Iran to the Security Council then there are a range of possible outcomes. These begin with a simple Chapter Seven slap on the wrist and an ultimatum to fully co-operate with anything the IAEA asks for, or else. (As an aside, can you imagine the U.S. agreeing to such a thing for it's own nuclear programs? Or Britain? Russia? France?) Next in severity would be blocking Iran's application to join the World Trade Organisation; curtailling Iranian citizens' and diplomats' freedom of movement about the world; attempting to ban Iran from the World Cup (Soccer, for Americans...the rest don't need to ask). Next comes a series of economic sanctions:

The United States already embargoes major trade with Iran. It is especially keen to stop US oil companies from helping Iran develop its reserves. Oil and gas are by far Iran's largest exports. According to the WTO, they and mining products account for 86% of Iranian exports. But the US could not expect other countries to take such drastic action and it might be difficult to persuade some of them to take much action at all.

For example China, a veto-holding permanent member of the Security Council and in search of oil worldwide, would hardly vote for an oil embargo - given that in November 2004, it reached a major agreement with Iran to buy its oil and gas in a deal valued by the Chinese at $70bn. The West also has to tread carefully in the current oil crisis. At the moment Japan is the largest importer of Iranian oil and would not want the trade to be curtailed too much.

The consensus opinion also seems to be that sanctions will be ineffective at bringing Iran "into line". Iran's populace are already used to a high level of sanctions by the U.S. and Iran's leaders appear to have the backing of the populace as well as a great lever - a surfeit of oil and gas in a time of energy shortages. However, large-scale sanctions would give America and it's allies a face-saver. They could pretend they had done something concrete about "the grave threat" they have trumpeted. The danger would be that Iran could then retaliate by hiking the price of oil, although that wouldn't phase the oil companies one bit. As the invasion and occupation of Iraq has proven, higher prices mean greater profits.

If the IAEA doesn't refer Iran, or the Security Council doesn't do what America would like done, then the US has the option of going it alone or with a small ad-hoc coalition of allies. In such a circumstance, sanctions of any kind by a small group of nations just aren't going to cut it. If the Security Council doesn't give the U.S. what it wants then the only option left is the military option. It's that or back down - and I simply don't believe the Bush administration will do that. They've already spent too much political and diplomatic capital trying to convince everyone that Iran is one of the nations covered by the Bush Doctrine, one of the "axis of evil".

At that point, I believe America, either itself or by proxy, will exercise the military option. That's next.

Part One, The Back Story deals with the known truths and speculations about Iran's nuclear program. Part Three - Exploring the Military Option looks at the final resort.

Update Within minutes of my posting this came news that China and Russia have declined to join calls for Iran's referral to the U.N. Security Council. The EU3 and America seem determined to continue with the referral process, however this changes the equation somewhat in that actual referral by the IAEA has become less likely and the chance of a veto of any eventual Security Council action by Russia or China has become more so. That means that things have become more dangerous - the chances that the U.S. and and/or it's allies will take unilateral military action just increased.