News & Notes

Miscellaneous items of note:

Empire Burlesque: Seasons in Hell: Voices From the American Gulag

The Independent has a remarkable story on Sami al-Haj, the Sudanese journalist who has been held in George W. Bush's concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for five years. Haj has not been charged with any crime, but he is undoubtedly guilty of a grave sin in the eyes of the Bush Regime: he is a cameraman for Al Jazeera.

Orcinus: Ron Paul vs The New World Order

I have to admit that when Rep. Ron Paul announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, I didn't raise much of an eyebrow, even though I am a longtime Paul watcher. After all, he's run before; his 1988 Libertarian Party candidacy attracted little attention because he ran mostly from the fringe, and his views haven't changed substantially over the years.

What I didn't expect was that his anti-war advocacy would attract as many evident admirers from the left as it seems to have, particularly those who are dissatisfied with Democrats' apparent fumbling of the Iraq war issue. Certainly, the message boards at liberal outlets like Crooks and Liars who've carried factual counterinformation about Paul have been flooded with raging defenses of the man, as have some of our comments threads.

To what extent this is an illusion created by Paul's legion of True Believers is difficult to ascertain. Paul is very well organized online -- much of his support is derived from this -- and it's entirely likely the flood of "liberals" and "progressives" who are busy arguing that someone like Paul is worth forming an alliance with are, in fact, simply part of Paul's corps and they're doing their part to muddy the waters and ultimately attract new supporters in a "Third Way" kind of strategy.

And to some extent it seems evident that they're succeeding. Mostly, they seem to be taking advantage of a combination of amnesia among those experienced enough to know better, and simple ignorance on the part of progressives who've never heard of, or paid any attention to, Ron Paul previously. They hear Paul's carefully crafted antiwar rhetoric and his critique of the Bush administration -- all of which elide or obscure his underlying beliefs -- and think it sounds pretty good, especially for a Republican.

As Sara has already explained, there's a real problem with that -- namely, for all of Paul's seeming "progressive" positions, he carries with him a whole raft of positions well to the right of even mainstream conservatives.

Does any of the following sound familiar?

Chris Hedges: Looking Back on 40 Years of Occupation

Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank 40 years ago this week. The victory was celebrated as a great triumph, at once tripling the size of the land under Israeli control, including East Jerusalem. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory. As the occupation stretched over the decades, it transformed and deformed Israeli society. It led Israel to abandon the norms and practices of a democratic society until, in the name of national security, it began to routinely accept the brutal violence of occupation and open discrimination and abuse of Palestinians, including the torture of prisoners and collective reprisals for Palestinians attacks. Palestinian neighborhoods, olive groves and villages were, in the name of national security, bulldozed into the ground.

Lastly, on "Force labor", formerly known as slavery...

Inter Press Service: IRAQ: Blood, Sweat and Tears at New U.S. Embassy

The U.S. Justice Department is actively investigating allegations of forced labour and other abuses by the Kuwaiti contractor now rushing to complete the sprawling 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy project in Baghdad, numerous sources have revealed.

Read more...

Child Abductions for Freedom

I just saw this on Glenn Greenwald's blog:

I see that Hilzoy this morning is discussing an amazing new report (.pdf) issued jointly by six human rights groups concerning 39 individuals whose whereabouts are unknown and at least some of whom, it seems quite likely, the U.S. has simply "disappeared," secretly holding in detention. Among the disappeared, Hilzoy highlights, are likely children as young as 7-9 years old. I have a lot to say about this issue -- as I hope everyone would -- but am unable to write anything now, but Hilzoy's post is superb and ought to be read widely.

We will undoubtedly hear at the next GOP debate from Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and company as they explain -- in the face of wild cheers from the "base" -- that they not only favor the disappearance of the children of Terrorists, but think the minimum age of detention ought to be halved from 8 to 4, and the number of secretly detained children doubled at least.

So, naturally, I went over to Hilzoy's post on Obsidian Wings and found more...

This report has gotten a fair amount of play, but in all the coverage I've read, only the Philadelphia Inquirer has mentioned what is, to me, the most awful allegation: that we disappeared young children. The report (pp. 24-26) lists five groups of family members; those who are discussed at greatest length are the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was successfully apprehended several months later, and the U.S. government has acknowledged that he was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program. He is presently held at Guantánamo Bay.

[Snip]

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States. A press report on March 10, 2003 confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained that:

“We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.”

In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused:

“They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused.”"

Now, thinking back to that widely-reported confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a few months ago -- you know, the one where he confessed his responsibility for everything but the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby -- is there any chance that maybe, just maybe, some of that was coerced? I'm just speculating that, perhaps, 4 years of torture in Guantanamo Bay, combined the with the knowledge that his torturers had his children holed up in some similar undisclosed hell-hole, might have had the effect of coloring his testimony a bit. I'm just saying, I know KSM is a confirmed bad-guy and all, but this has to call his already-fantastical testimony into even more doubt.

Who needs evidence when we can threaten your kids?

I saw an episode of The Shield where the Russian mob acted the same way. But that was the Russian mob in a fictional TV show. This is the US government in real life.


See also:

• Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the War on Terror

• The full report reference above (Adobe PDF file)

• Treaties banning the "disappearing" of civilians

• KSM: "I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z"

• KSM: "I beheaded American reporter"

• KSM: Read the long list of acts claimed by KSM in his secret military tribunal.

Wow, he makes Carlos the Jackal look like a Quaker.

This all further confirms for me what many have already suspected for a while. This whole torture program is designed, not to uncover intelligence on existing terror plots, but instead to create intelligence from whole cloth regardless of the existence of any plot. This manufactured intel is then used to incite fear and promote policies that have already been decided upon. The Iraq invasion, for example.

Read more...

Caribbean Terror Mastermind Exposed

Authorities have identified the mastermind behind the recent spate of terror plots hatched by dastardly Caribbean allies of Al Qaeda. The suspect is shown here in recently-released footage from a training video found during a raid of an alleged Al Qaeda safe house cleverly disguised as a beef pattie stand:

Boo, unlikely Caribbean Islamic extremist!

Hooray, FEAR!

The Nexus of Politics and Terror

Read more...

Same guys?

A couple of months ago Tom Englehardt, in an article I referenced here, wrote in amazement about the lack of media coverage of the apparent support the Bush administration was giving to Sunni extremists groups in Lebanon, some of whom are known to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda. I repost his remarks here:

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

Imagine.

Yep, that's quite a doozy, isn't it. These claims are supported by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker. In an article entitled, The Redirection Hersh writes:

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

[Snip]

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

This is of particular interest now (as if it shouldn't have been all along) because of recent news:

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Lebanon's prime minister vowed Thursday to wipe out an Islamic militant group barricaded in a Palestinian refugee camp, raising the prospect that the army will either storm the camp, in what would likely be a bloody battle, or dig in for a long siege to force its surrender.

[Snip]

Fighters from the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militant group, estimated in the hundreds, have barricaded themselves in the camp, saying they will fight off any Lebanese attack.

...and here...

US military planes have delivered more equipment to the Lebanese army, as its stand-off with Islamic militants at a Palestinian refugee camp continued.

Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora again called on Sunni militants inside the camp to surrender or face army action.

[snip]

He was speaking after the leader of Shia militant group Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said Lebanon should not be part of a US war on al-Qaeda.

The confrontation at the Nahr al-Bared camp is now in its seventh day.

Mr Siniora would not say whether a decision had been taken for the army to go into the camp, but plane-loads of American military supplies continue to arrive, apparently in preparation for just such a battle, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Beirut.

"We want to end this situation," Mr Siniora told the BBC's Arabic service.

"Either they surrender themselves to Lebanese justice... or else the Lebanese authorities will be forced to take the decision to let the army deal with this matter."

To summize, not only we were supporting Sunni extremists in Lebanon friendly to Al Qaeda, which is ridiculous enough on its own merits, but now, after lending such support, we're sending military aid to Lebanon to fight Sunni extremists there.

Are these the same guys?

It sure is interesting that this small group you've never heard much about before has become such a big deal at this point in time, isn't it? Is it possible that we would support groups diametrically opposed to our "interests" only to choose to fight them by proxy, essentially supporting both sides of the conflict. If so, why?

This administration yells from the highest mountains to complain about "foreign terrorists" crossing borders to fight against our troops in Iraq and "rogue states" that support them. Could it be that the support we lend to these groups also show up in Iraq in the form of insurgent attacks on US servicemen?

Is this yet another case of blowback or is it something even worse?

Someone with a bigger megaphone than I should be asking these questions.

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Bush & Bin Laden

As you well know by now, American Strongman George W. Bush held a press conference in which he once again invoked Al Qaeda as a justification for everything he does. Some of the reporters present tried to challenge this tired old framing by asking him direct questions about his utter failure to capture Bin Laden after nearly 6 years.

But at this point it seems clear to me that this is a waste of time. To hell with him. What did they expect, that he'd break down and tell them something substantive and true? Can any good really come of continuing to engage him as if he has any credibility at all?

No. Bush is a known quantity. At this point there can be no doubt as to what to expect from him. The task before us now, knowing what he is, is to deal with him accordingly. So here's what should be done from now on every time Generalisimo invokes the specter of Osama bin Laden to scare us all into submission. Don't ask him for the truth. Simply take this video to the streets and play it over and over and over. Bypass him and his spin machine altogether and let the people get a reminder of how his alarmist rhetoric today contrasts with this...



(Partial transcript after the jump)

Q: Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that?...

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Got that? The next time this fool comes out there with his big-bad Bin Laden hysteria, just hit PLAY.


An aside: By the way, this is my favorite part of that press conference from the other day. Bush makes the following criticism of Bin Laden:

He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

Wow. Imagine that!

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Apocalypse, Wow! Praying for a Bloodbath

---

"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."

Michael Ledeen
Neo-conservative ghoul

---

There are several revealing articles out on the web right now covering the "Literary Lunch" Maximum Ruler held at the White House with a group of A-list neo-conservatives. Accounts of that luncheon from both the left and right confirm very clearly the apocalyptic thinking of the "War President". For instance:

Accounts of a Feb. 28 "literary luncheon" at the White House suggest that President George W. Bush's reading tastes -- until now a remarkably good predictor of his policy views -- are moving ever rightward, even apocalyptic, despite his administration's recent suggestions that it is more disposed to engage Washington's foes, even in the Middle East.

The luncheon, attended as well by Vice President Dick Cheney and a dozen hard-line neo-conservatives, was held in honor of visiting British historian Andrew Roberts whose latest work, "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900", Bush reportedly read late last year and subsequently sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Cheney took the book with him on his recent trip to Pakistan.

[Snip]

A major lesson of history, Roberts told Bush, is that "will trumps wealth," according to Stelzer's account of the meeting in the Weekly Standard. He warned that "the steady drumbeat of media pessimism and television coverage are sapping the West's will" to fight and defeat the enemy which, in his view, includes Iran, as well as Sunni radicals, such as al Qaeda.

OK, so that's just a guy giving the President advice, right? You can't blame Bush for things people say to him, you say? Fair enough. But what about this?

In his article, Stelzer, an economist at the Hudson Institute and London Sunday Times columnist, disclosed that Bush had also recommended that his staff and friends read another, even more apocalyptic, analysis of the current war on terror, "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It", by Toronto-born neo-conservative columnist Mark Steyn.

Steyn's book, which, unlike Roberts', actually made the New York Times bestseller list, sees Europe's demographic trends and its multicultural, "post-nationalist" secularism -- of which his native Canada is also guilty -- as leading inevitably to the "Eupocalypse", the "recolonization of Europe by Islam", the emergence of "Eurabia", and the onset of a "new Dark Ages" in which the United States will find it difficult to survive as the "lonely candle of liberty."

Well, the above characterization aside, what do we really know about this book and why should we assume that it's influence on the most powerful man in the world it's a bad thing?

Christopher Hitchens, no bleeding-heart liberal himself, reviewed this book for the City Journal and quotes Steyn as follows:

"Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent."

"Cull them"? Excuse me but... did he just endorse ethnic cleansing?

Dave Neiwart, what do you think?

I don't see how it's possible to interpret this excerpt -- given that Steyn is also contending that these demographics are inevitable throughout Europe, and he offers no solution that would accommodate or assimilate Muslims -- as anything other than outright advocacy of genocide and the Bosnian model of "ethnic cleansing" for the rest of Europe.

Agreed. The President of the United States is now running around recommending this book both to his staff and to friends and associates.

Oh, but wait. There's more. What about that other book mention earlier that Dick Cheney keeps under his arm for long trips abroad?

Glenn Greenwald has the goods:

Roberts recently wrote the right-wing historical revisionism tract entitled History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. The book, as Roberts himself described it in an interview with Front Page Magazine, "does not consider British imperialism to have been a Bad Thing, argues that the Versailles Treaty was not harsh enough on Germany, [and] defends the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki . . . . " A central theme is that "Intellectuals of the Left bear a heavy responsibility for the cruelties and savagery of the 20th century," and Roberts' world-view is filled with banalities like this:

I fear, in the light of Congress's recent nonbinding (and utterly self-contradictory) resolution opposing the surge, the gross bias of much of the Left-Liberal media, and the present poll ratings of Sen Hillary Clinton, that the US will lose the will to fight the War against Terror in any manner that might hold out the hope of ultimate victory.

So one can see why Roberts was chosen to be honored as the President's new favorite historian, and why his "history" book, which affirms George Bush's imperial worldview in every way, has become one of the President's favorites.

That's quite a reading list he has there. But, isn't there a lot of pressure from the American people to abandon this destructive course, Mr. Bush?

"I just don't feel any," he says with the calm conviction of a man who believes the constituency to which he must ultimately answer is the Divine Presence.

Ah, of course...

See also:

Doomsday Book: Bush Literary Lunch Foretells Horrors Ahead
Empire Burlesque

Read more...

Recommended Links

Apocalypticism in Action

"We’re conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming. From both the Iranians, Americans, and from Congressional sources."

Col. Sam Gardiner
Army War College
CNN, September 18, 2006

I call attention to my earlier allusions to the Bush Administration's penchant for apocalyptic thinking here, here and here to provide context for what's going on now.

Now, consider how the Bush administration funds it's "Islamo-Fascist" enemies in the "War on Terror" and sponsors terrorism itself in an intentional effort to extend the sectarian bloodbath to the wider region. Tom Englehardt and Seymour Hersh explain..

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from [the Iran Contra scandal]... In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators... began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood...

[Snip]

In "The Coming Wars" in January of 2005, [Hersh] first reported that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since" the summer of 2004... He also reported that American combat units were "on the ground" in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack, and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also "working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ‘are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the consultant said. One goal is to get ‘eyes on the ground'… The broader aim, the consultant said, is to ‘encourage ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime"...

The Seymour Hersh Mystery: A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder… And No One Notices
By Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

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

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

The Redirection: A Strategic Shift
By Seymour Hersh
The New Yorker

Add to this list my own post from September of last year...

Early last year Seymour Hersh of the The New Yorker wrote this piece outlining what his sources told him was a plan by the Bush administration to put special forces inside Iran -- to perform search & destroy missions, target identification and foment unrest -- in preparation for an attack on that country. At the time the article was published his assertions were ridiculed as "far-fetched" and "riddled with errors" by the Bush administration. Not much has been spoken of this since that time.

But then a strange thing happened, something I noticed shortly after seeing that article and in the months before I started this blog. Stuff in Iran started blowing up. Each time the explosions were dismissed as something innocuous but, yet and still, stuff kept blowing up. I got curious so decided to continue to check up on it from time to time and, amazingly, these explosions kept happening. I'm talking about an unusually high number of freak explosions for one country that size without any kind of war (that we know of) going on. It was in the process of this little project that I first thought, "I should start a blog".

As I tracked these explosions and listened to the Bush Administration's simultaneous pronouncements that any talk of attacking Iran in the short term was ridiculous (but not off the table) I couldn't help but think about how, if Hersh was correct, this would all mirror the M.O. used in Iraq. So it all fits together, you know? Mind you, this was nothing one could present as a "smoking gun" for predicting future events or anything but it was interesting nevertheless.

Finally, explosions in Iran compiled from this collection:

Explosion in Iran sets off fears
USA Today
February 16, 2005

Explosion in Tehran Kills 1
Iran Focus
June 12, 2005

Deadly blasts hit two Iranian cities
Al Jazeera English
June 14, 2005

Explosion Hits Office in Southwest Iran
ABC News International
May 8, 2006

Bomb Kills 11 on Military Bus in Iran
CNN
February 14, 2007

Order restored after blast at girls school in Iran
CNN
February 17, 2007


"Birth pangs of a new Middle-East"...

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Bush Compares Himself to George Washington

Abandoning any pretense of not being a complete joke, the High Lord & Protector of the Realm today compared his war on terrah with the American Revolution, I shit you not.

President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday, likening George Washington's long struggle that gave birth to a nation to the war on global terrorism.

"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home and above a mostly frozen Potomac River.

"And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone."

With his characteristic disregard for the stomachs of those gathered in attendance, Bush then took a moment to pose for the above photograph with a fellow presidential impersonator.

Also typical of his administration, the actors on hand portraying colonial soldiers were not provided with adequate armor (read, "hot air-sickness bags") they so desperately needed for their hazardous mission.

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Posting Delayed by Category 5 Propaganda Hurricane

Every time I think I'm ready to post something comprehensive about the selling of our next big war-for-no-reason-at-all I find myself knocked down and overwhelmed by another gust of hot air. We are being inundated at this time by a barrage of amazingly transparent propaganda accompanied by almost no common-sense analysis.

It is truly breathtaking to watch the machine at work, I must admit and I will be commenting on this warmongering nonsense soon. I've simply been taken aback by the sheer scale of the propaganda at the moment. I find it deeply disturbing.

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A Brief Reminder About the Libby Trial and the Coming Attack on Iran

Before this gets completely lost in the shuffle of our inexorable drive towards another war, I thought I should at least make a passing reference to this well-documented but little discussed fact. The very people who are now telling us that the supposed nuclear weapons threat posed by Iran is the most important thing in the world right now are the same people who saw fit to blow the cover of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, who's main area of concentration was on, guess what, WMD proliferation issues in Iran.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

The Libby trial has revealed, in detail that would be shocking if we hadn't already been numbed beyond the capacity to feel shock by this administration, that there was a concerted effort to blow this agent's cover for purely political purposes (as opposed to some frivolous purpose like protecting the nation or something).

So how do we reconcile this? On the one hand we have a White House that tells us that Iran's nuclear program poses the gravest of threats to the safety of the US and the world. On the other hand, they seem to have felt perfectly at ease tossing out the window a CIA operation to counter Iran's efforts, outing not just Ms. Plame, but her entire under-cover operation, endangering the lives of any agents or cooperating individuals known to be associated with her and spoiling those assets for any future operations that may start up.

So, it seems Iran's programs are important enough to start a war over today, but they're not so important that we'd want to protect federal agents working to track them or anything. No, we can feel free to sacrifice them to BushCo's political calculus.

I find that so interesting. Maybe folks should talk about that more.

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"Surging" Into a Self-Sustaining Loop

Whenever I read Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque I get a strange feeling of deja vu, as if I'm reading my own thoughts penned by a better writer. Writing about the latest Milleresque propaganda -- crying out for Iranian blood -- splashed across the pages of the New York Times, Floyd touches on a point about the "surge" that I've been stuck on for some time. Floyd writes:

But what's most notable about the unsourced story is the way it -- and the White House -- are now trying to conflate the Iranians with the Iraqi insurgency, in much the same fashion as they merged Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda in the public mind. Here, the trick is to focus on Iran's alleged supply of IEDs to Iraq's Shiite militias, talking of their deadly effectiveness against American soldiers -- while scarcely noting the fact that the overwhelming number of attacks against the "Coalition of Aggression" come from the Sunni insurgents. What then are the headlines, the soundbites for the public? Iran... IEDs... deadly... insurgency... kill Americans." The intended effect, of course, is to convey the impression that Iran is driving the Iraqi insurgency that is now killing Americans in record numbers.

But the story is also significant for what it doesn't spell out, but clearly implies. Assuming for a moment the highly unlikely possibility that the Bushist security organs are actually telling the truth or even something like it in this instance -- given their repeatedly demonstrated propensity to lie and lie and lie again when the Bossman wants a war -- we are left with an extraordinary claim by the Bush Administration: that their own allies have turned against them and are now killing American soldiers with sophisticated weapons.

For who are the "Shiite militias"? They are the armed wings of the political factions that now run the Bush-backed Iraqi government, elected in an electoral process designed by the Bush Administration that guaranteed the rise of these extremist sectarian armed cliques to power. The Shiite militias ARE the Iraqi government -- or at least, they are part of that government's many contentious factions. If they have power, if they operate with impunity -- with or without weapons supplied by the long-time allies in Iran, with which most of the Iraqi Shiite factions have a relationship going back decades -- then it is because these factions have been and are now being empowered, armed, funded, trained and supported by the Bush Administration.

This is what the Bushists are tacitly admitting when they claim that the Shiite militias are fragging their ostensible American allies with Iranian weapons. They are saying that even the factions "liberated" and empowered by the American invasion are now attacking and killing U.S. soldiers, with even more virulence than the Sunni insurgents. They are saying that Bush is now "surging" more soldiers into a situation where every single armed faction in the Iraqi conflict is targeting and killing Americans, including those factions armed and funded by the Americans themselves.

This is a remarkable confession. And it represents yet another of the many overwhelming reasons to bring Bush's bloody Babylonian escapade to a halt without further delay. The most compelling reason, of course, is the fact that the invasion was a war crime from the word go and every second that it continues is a furtherance and compounding of that original sin. But even by the viscera-smeared lights of the war's own proponents, to have reached the place where the very people you have empowered are killing your troops is surely the end of the road.

What's wrong with this picture?

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Iraq Redux

Gary Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud upon which much of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was based, has written an extensive essay for Vanity Fair dealing with the parallels between the propaganda leading to the invasion of Iraq and what we're hearing today about Iran. I don't have much to add because Unger lays it all out so plainly. I'll let this extended excerpt speak for itself. All emphases, of course, are mine...

From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq

The same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq war have been using the same tactics—alliances with shady exiles, dubious intelligence on W.M.D.—to push for the bombing of Iran. As President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran, is he planning to double his Middle East bet?

by Craig Unger March 2007

In the weeks leading up to George W. Bush's January 10 speech on the war in Iraq, there was a brief but heady moment when it seemed that the president might finally accept the failure of his Middle East policy and try something new. Rising anti-war sentiment had swept congressional Republicans out of power. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been tossed overboard. And the Iraq Study Group (I.S.G.), chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, had put together a bipartisan report that offered a face-saving strategy to exit Iraq. Who better than Baker, the Bush family's longtime friend and consigliere, to talk some sense into the president?

By the time the president finished his speech from the White House library, however, all those hopes had vanished. It wasn't just that Bush was doubling down on an extravagantly costly bet by sending 21,500 more American troops to Iraq; there were also indications that he was upping the ante by an order of magnitude. The most conspicuous clue was a four-letter word that Bush uttered six times in the course of his speech: Iran.

In a clear reference to the Islamic Republic and its sometime ally Syria, Bush vowed to "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies." At about the same time his speech was taking place, U.S. troops stormed an Iranian liaison office in Erbil, a Kurdish-controlled city in northern Iraq, and arrested and detained five Iranians working there.

Already, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the war in Iraq. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people have been killed. Countless more are wounded or living as refugees. Launched with the intention of shoring up Israeli security and replacing rogue regimes in the Middle East with friendly, pro-Western allies, the war in Iraq has instead turned that country into a terrorist training ground. By eliminating Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition has sparked a Sunni-Shiite civil war, which threatens to spread throughout the entire Middle East. And, far from creating a secular democracy, the war has empowered Shiite fundamentalists aligned with Iran. The most powerful of these, Muqtada al-Sadr, commands both an anti-American sectarian militia and the largest voting bloc in the Iraqi parliament.

"Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn't happened," says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. "And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president's neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, 'Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.' But after you've lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?"

By now, the story of how neoconservatives hijacked American foreign policy is a familiar one. With Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld leading the way, neocons working out of the office of the vice president and the Department of Defense orchestrated a spectacular disinformation operation, asserting that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed a grave and immediate threat to the U.S. Veteran analysts who disagreed were circumvented. Dubious information from known fabricators was hyped. Forged documents showing phony yellowcake-uranium sales to Iraq were promoted.

What's less understood is that the same tactics have been in play with Iran. Once again, neocon ideologues have been flogging questionable intelligence about W.M.D. Once again, dubious Middle East exile groups are making the rounds in Washington—this time urging regime change in Syria and Iran. Once again, heroic new exile leaders are promising freedom.

Meanwhile, a series of recent moves by the military have lent credence to widespread reports that the U.S. is secretly preparing for a massive air attack against Iran. (No one is suggesting a ground invasion.) First came the deployment order of U.S. Navy ships to the Persian Gulf. Then came high-level personnel shifts signaling a new focus on naval and air operations rather than the ground combat that predominates in Iraq. In his January 10 speech, Bush announced that he was sending Patriot missiles to the Middle East to defend U.S. allies—presumably from Iran. And he pointedly asserted that Iran was "providing material support for attacks on American troops," a charge that could easily evolve into a casus belli.

"It is absolutely parallel," says Philip Giraldi, a former C.I.A. counterterrorism specialist. "They're using the same dance steps—demonize the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux..."

This is but a sample. I strongly recommend reading the article in its entirety. At the risk of seeming redundant...

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Budgeting for a Permanent Occupation

"Bush's new budget asks for an astounding $745 billion in defense spending. Will Congress give it to him?"

Continuing on our occupation theme, Ari Berman at The Nation magazine has written a very relevant piece about the new budget released by His Majesty this week.

Need proof that George W. Bush is not planning to withdraw US troops from Iraq on his watch? Just look at his latest budget.

The Bush Administration will ask Congress for $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan this year--on top of the $70 billion already allocated--and $145 billion for 2008. Why ask for the money if you're not planning to use it?

Administration officials, according to the Washington Post, "warned that even more money will probably will be needed." The Los Angeles Times says the military wants "even larger defense budgets."

Are you kidding me?

The costs of Iraq and Afghanistan aren't even included in the $481 billion the Pentagon demands for 2008, a 10 percent raise over this year. Total these figures up and Bush is asking for roughly $745 billion in defense spending, a higher number, when adjusted for inflation, than the entire cost of the Vietnam War.

Just pause and consider the size of that number. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars and Osama bin Laden is still at large, the Taliban are regrouping in Afghanistan and the US military is stuck in a civil war in Iraq.

"We have the largest Pentagon budget since World War II, but we are losing to an opponent in Iraq that spends less over an entire year than what we spend in one day," says Winslow Wheeler, a longtime defense expert at the Center for Defense Information.

That sounds about right to me. They're budgeting for increased expenses over the next 2 years while, at the same time, telling us that "the surge" should improve things within 60-90 days and allow us to begin drawing down troops by the summer.

Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with the part they're not telling us. This couldn't have anything to do with the PNAC-inspired "core mission" of fighting and decisively winning "multiple, simultaneous multi-theatre wars" (Iran anyone?), could it? It wouldn't have anything to do with an "essential element of US strategy" that "transcends the issue of Saddam Hussein" would it? Hmmm....

Yeah, I think it does.

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The Battle for Haifa Street

This is being posted, if for no other reason, because CBS refuses to air it and all the sad and sorry truths about our media that their refusal symbolizes.

The segment in question -- "Battle for Haifa Street" -- is a piece of first-rate journalism but one that appears only on the CBS News website -- and has never been broadcast. It is a gritty, realistic look at life on the very mean streets of Baghdad and includes interviews with civilians who complain that the U.S. military presence is only making their lives worse and the situation more deadly.
"They told us they would bring democracy, they promised life would be better than it was under Saddam," one told Logan. "But they brought us nothing but death and killing. They brought mass destruction to Baghdad."

Several bodies are shown in the two-minute segment, "some with obvious signs of torture," as Logan points out. She also notes that her crew had to flee for their lives when they we were warned of an impending attack. While fleeing, another civilian was killed before their eyes.

Logan's email, with the one-word subject line of "help," was sent to friends and colleagues imploring them to lobby CBS to highlight that people are interested in seeing the piece. In it, Logan argues that the story is "not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore … It should be seen. And people should know about this."

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Straight to the Good Part

I think this AP story serves as a good follow-up to the "The" vs "A" post from a few days ago. That earlier post dealt with the use of language to control the terms of a debate, focusing on the use of indefinite article "the" to reinforce false assumptions (e.g., "What are we to do about the WMD in Iraq"). The following excerpt is an example of same technique applied this time by the use of the adjective "its"...

U.S. Warns Iran to Back Down

By Jim Krane, Associated Press Writer | January 23, 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates --A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday.

Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was "not possible" until Iran halts uranium enrichment.

"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region," Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank...

So what has happened here? It seems that we have completely skipped over the most important part of the debate, the part where we actually establish as a fact the idea that Iran is attempting to dominate the region or that it's nuclear program is for anything other than energy production. We haven't bothered with that at all. Instead we've gone straight to the good part, the fun part, the part where we decide what to do about this unconfirmed threat.

This is how simple, subtle choices of words can change the entire dynamic of the debate. The US official quoted here could have warned Iran to not attempt to dominate the region. He could have made reference to Iran's suspected desire to dominate the region. He could have used any number formulations that more accurately portrayed state of knowledge on Iran's intentions, characterizing them as uncertain or unclear. But, alas, that doesn't the serve the purpose of justifying the war that's already been decided upon. So he chose not to use any of those. Instead he baselessly gave us a definitive reference to "it's attempts" to dominate the region as if they were already documented and agreed upon.

That possessive adjective, "it's", carries with it the implicit assumption that thing that is possessed actually exists. How can it be possessed if it doesn't exist, right? Good, no need to prove it then.

Naturally, it follows that the only question that remains now is what to do about "it's attempts" and it follows very nicely from there that we have our warships in place.

So, as you can see, if we accept this spokesman's framing of the issue we have unwittingly conceded the point completely. The decision to take some action against Iran has already been made for us before a single countering argument can even been made because the issue has come to us pre-packaged with a ready-made concession to the warmongers. If we accept it as-is then, just as was with Iraq, they may fire when ready.

"Can't get fooled again!"

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"Habeas Corpus, Schmabeas Schmorpus!"

I just saw this on Crooks & Liars and I'm just speechless (well, almost). It is an excerpt of an independent transcript of an exchange between your Attorney General of the United States of America, Alberto "V05" Gonzalez and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) on the writ of habeas corpus in US law. Get a load of this:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

As pointed out on C&L, Article 9, Clause 2 of the US Constition does read as follows:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Still, VO5's argument is unfathomable. If the government can, without due process, reserve the right to suspend a constitutional protection on an "individual" basis, as he argues here, then there is no constitutional protection to begin with. The constitution wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on. It is impossible to argue that this position is not an inherent suspension of the writ. The writ was written for the very purpose of protecting individuals!

Again, this is the Attorney General of the United States talking. This is the man in charge of the FBI, the US Marshall Service, the DEA, the ATF and every other federal law enforcement agency. When that guy doesn't believe American citizens are constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus protections that's a problem.

Think Progess has more on this.

God help us all.

UPDATE: The video is now up on YouTube. I've placed in the original post above.

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"The" vs "A"

This is my kind of article. A psychology professor breaks down one glaring example of the use of language to control the terms of the debate. In this case he looks at the impact of the indefinite article:

American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus, and her colleagues have shown how rhetorical tricks can make people misconceive reality. In one study by Loftus and Zanni (1975), people were shown a film of a car accident, and then asked questions about what they saw. A random half of the witnesses were asked “Did you see a broken headlight?” and the other half were asked “Did you see the broken headlight?” In the first version, 7% of the people said they saw a broken headlight. In the second version, 17% said they saw the broken headlight. In fact, there was no broken headlight. If someone uses the definite article “the”, then listeners and readers tend to presume that what follows actually exists.

In another study by Loftus (1975), people viewed a film and one group answered a questionnaire that included, "Did you see the children getting on the school bus?" and the other group did not get this question. A week later, people filled out a second questionnaire that contained the question, "Did you see a school bus?" Only 6% of the people who had not been exposed the the question a week earlier recalled seeing a school bus, but 26% of those who had been exposed to the the question a week earlier said "yes" they had seen a school bus. In fact, there was no school bus.

Thus, by the simple use of the, just one time, 10% of the people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there. With some additional details that fit, like children getting on school buses, and with the delay of a week to consolidate the false information, 20% of people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there.

Imagine the effectiveness of the, repeated over and over and over and over, for weeks and months, by authorities whom we are trained to trust, providing lots of information that coherently fits with the false claims. For example, the Independent article quoted President Bush using the three times:

"We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

There are in fact attacks on US forces (but done by anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents), and there are in fact networks providing advanced weapons for these attacks (but coming from pre-war Iraqi caches and pilfered from US supplies). Those two true facts serve to add coherence and believability to the unsubstantiated claim about “the flow of support from Iran and Syria” for which there is in fact no evidence. Thus we come to confidently believe something is there that is not there.

The Independent is careful not to serve as a propagandist for governments bent on misleading the public in order to make new wars. When unnamed officials make claims, they are not presented as true, but as alleged, reportedly. And when there is no evidence, the Independent says that there is no evidence:

“Officials have also reportedly claimed that thousands of Shia militia fighters have been trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Again, no evidence to support these claims has been made public.”

American journalists writing for US media are much less careful, and much more comfortable reinforcing beliefs for which there is no evidence, other than the repeated over and over and over. For example, ABC News headlined a report, “EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Weapons Arm Iraqi Militia”. The report quoted unnamed authorities that “smoking-gun evidence” has been found, that “the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias” and that “the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias”. But the alleged weapons and other evidence are only hearsay, never made public and not seen by the reporter. The “smoking gun” is actually smoke and mirrors made by repeated use of the definite article the.

The world is again being tricked into war by empty rhetoric and fear, unsupported by facts.

Please read the article in its entirety. I actually have nothing more to add.

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Next, After the Speech

Via Norm at OneGoodMove.Org, the programming lineup following the President's speech:





There's poetry all around you, if you just look for it.

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Occupation and Escalation

Following up on my previous post, I've run across two articles online that further examine the nature of the US occupation of Iraq and the coming escalation. The first comes from Michael Klare in the The Nation. Are you wondering why would the US would put a naval man in charge of the land-based CENTCOM forces in the middle-east? Klare explains:

Part of the explanation for this move, of course, is a desire by the White House to sweep away bitter ground-force commanders like Abizaid and Casey who had opposed an increase in US troops in Iraq and argued for shifting greater responsibility for the fighting to Iraq forces, thereby permitting a gradual American withdrawal. "The Baghdad situation requires more Iraqi troops," not more Americans, Abizaid said in a recent interview with the New York Times. For this alone, Abizaid had to go. But there's more to it. Abizaid, who is of Lebanese descent and served a tour of duty with UN forces in Lebanon, has come to see the need for a regional solution to the crisis in Iraq--one that inevitably requires some sort of engagement with Iran and Syria, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group

[Snip]

If engagement with Iran and Syria was even remotely on the agenda, Abizaid is exactly the man you'd want on the job at Centcom overseeing US forces and strategy in the region. But if that's not on the agenda, if you're thinking instead of using force against Iran and/or Syria, then Admiral Fallon is exactly the man you'd want at Centcom.

Why? Because combined air and naval operations are his forté. Fallon began his combat career as a Navy combat flyer in Vietnam, and he served with carrier-based forces for twenty-four years after that. He commanded a carrier battle wing during the first Gulf War in 1991 and led the naval group supporting NATO operations during the Bosnia conflict four years later. More recently, Fallon served as vice chief of naval operations before becoming the head of Pacom in 2005. All this means that he is primed to oversee an air, missile and naval attack on Iran, should the President give the green light for such an assault--and the fact that Fallon has been moved from Pacom to Centcom means that such a move is very much on Bush's mind.

The second is from Frank Rich of the New York Times. Using the recent media coverage of the Gerald Ford funeral as a springboard, Rich compares and contrasts Ford's presidential style with that of the current president, which is a very interesting read all by itself. But then...

It's against the backdrop of both the Hussein video and the Ford presidency that we must examine the prospect of that much-previewed "surge" in Iraq - a surge, by the way, that the press should start calling by its rightful name, escalation. As Mr. Ford had it, America cannot regain its pride by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned and, for that matter, as far as Iraq is concerned. By large margins, the citizens of both countries want us not to escalate but to start disengaging. So do America's top military commanders, who are now being cast aside just as Gen. Eric Shinseki was when he dared assert before the invasion that securing Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops.

It would still take that many troops, not the 20,000 we might scrape together now. Last month the Army and Marines issued an updated field manual on counterinsurgency (PDF) supervised by none other than Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the next top American military commander in Iraq. It endorsed the formula that "20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents" is "the minimum troop density required." By that yardstick, it would take the addition of 100,000-plus troops to secure Baghdad alone.

The "surge," then, is a sham. It is not meant to achieve that undefined "victory" Mr. Bush keeps talking about but to serve his own political spin. His real mission is to float the "we're not winning, we're not losing" status quo until Jan. 20, 2009. After that, as Joseph Biden put it last week, a new president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof." This is nothing but a replay of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger "decent interval" exit strategy concocted to pass the political buck (to Mr. Ford, as it happened) on Vietnam.

As the White House tries to sell this flimflam, picture fresh American troops being tossed into Baghdad's caldron to work alongside the Maliki-Sadr Shiite lynch mob that presided over the Saddam hanging. Contemplate as well Gerald Ford's most famous words, spoken as he assumed the presidency after the Nixon resignation: "Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

This time the people do not rule. Two months after Americans spoke decisively on Election Day, the president is determined to overrule them. Our long national nightmare in Iraq, far from being over, is about to get a second wind.

Indeed.

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Report: Israel Planning Nuclear Strike

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that Israel is planning a nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. The strike is described as involving conventional nukes to open a tunnel underground after which "tactical" nuclear weapons (that's "weapons", with an 's') are to be used to destroy the facilities.

Israel has already issued a denial of the report.

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An aside: If you do a Google or Yahoo news search on this story using the terms "Israel plans nuclear Iran", for example, you'll find that the overwhelming majority (if not all) of the stories covering the original report on these plans come from media sources outside of the US. But the US media is well represented in the list of stories detailing Israel's denial of the report. I though that was interesting.

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These "tactical" nukes are said to have about 1/15th of destructive force of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the desired underground detonation is designed to limit the risk of nuclear fallout. There now, that's comforting, isn't it?

In light of the Israeli government's denials, I would be remiss if I didn't point out an earlier post on these pages where I noted Dick Cheney's foreshadowing of these very events...

Over a year ago Vice President Dick Cheney foreshadowed the end-game:

"Well, one of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

That sounds so much like a tacit recommendation cloaked in plausible deniability that I just can't stand it. But one could argue that he didn't mean it that way at all. After all, that's what plausible deniability is all about.

But Thursday, President Bush gave us the confirmation and removed all doubt. In the same press statement cited here earlier, where he described this as "American policy", he also said:

And now's the time to address the root cause of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracies. Hezbollah attacked Israel. I believe Hezbollah -- I know Hezbollah is connected to Iran. And now's the time for the world to confront this danger."

That's where this is going. That's what this is all for. All the rest is pretext. Israel is initiating a plan drawn up by us to facilitate a military strike, possibly a nuclear one, on Iran. This is the latest great event that we will be asked to believe will revolutionize the middle-east for the better. It is an apocalyptic vision bathed in blood. What's worse, it will fail and it will backfire on all of us. God help us all.

The point still stands.

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