One expert on Iraq asked me  in perplexity: "Even if Bush does launch a war against Iran,  where does he think it will get him? He will still be stuck in  Iraq and the Iranians are not going to surrender. He will just  have widened the war."

The answer to this question  is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the  hidden hand behind US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The  US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat.

The Bush administration has  always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington  than in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the  Republicans were able to retain the presidency and both Houses  of Congress in 2004. Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention  from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.

All it takes is one cruise missile to start a war, provided that the other side fights back. There are numerous examples of this, and many more when the US attacked somewhere (I am thinking of Libya, for example) and didn't get a warlike response.

Let's see. Who to attack first? The ones with the bombs/oil, or the ones with the money/oil? Either way, this is all a result of the destabilization of the region by guess who. We have created a proxy war b/w Iran and SA. Which brand of islamofascism should we enable today?

Ask the Decider.

I was thinking April, but we may be bombing Iran by the end of this week. The media heads are about to explode over this.

There is madness in their methods, to be sure, but no bumbling. Only purposeful manipulations.

"I'm the grandson of one of the late Shah's ministers," said Soroush, "and I simply want to say one U.S. bomb on Iran and the regime we all despise will remain in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians will become radicalized."

"I know," President Bush answered.

"But does Vice President Cheney know?" asked Soroush.
President Bush chuckled and walked away.

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone if the evidence recently uncovered in Iraq supports the accusations that Iranian weapons have found their way into the hands of the insurgents. However, considering this as the proof of Iran's attempts to kill Americans would take the presumptuousness of such allegations to new heights.

It is time to cut through the proverbial crap.

Let's not kid ourselves. The movers and shakers in Washington were not misled by faulty intelligence to start the invasion of the Middle East, and are not pushing forward under some other mistaken guidelines. The Israeli Likud leadership is not driven by a genuine fear or paranoia that the Jewish nation is under an existential threat by Iran. And finally, the Iranian regime does not consist of a bunch of fanatic, suicidal maniacs who'd sacrifice their own lives and their country's very existence for some archaic ideological ambitions.

No, the intelligence was not faulty, it was deliberately distorted and doctored up in order to rationalize the course of actions for which the events of 9/11 had fortuitously paved the way.

Under what circumstances would the following criteria for a news story ever be considered "journalism:"

1). Reporters met with experts and analysts who would not provide their names, background, or any identifying information
...
2). The allegations that Iran was responsible for the downing of US helicopter in Iraq by using advanced weapons were based on a set of photographs of unknown origin, date, time, or any other contextual information that could be confirmed or debunked. In other words, the facts of the story are unsupportable and cannot be in any way explored.

3). The White House led officials present at the briefing would not give their names either, despite this presentation being cleared by the White House. In other words, despite this not being a leak, no one would stand by the story.

Ex-Bush Iran official: US seeks pretext for conflict with Iran

A former top Bush administration official for Persian Gulf affairs has said in an interview this morning on CNN that the US may be trying to spark a conflict with Iran.

Hillary Mann is the former National Security Council Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Affairs. She warned in the interview that the recent flare up between Iran and the US over the former's alleged assistance to Shi'a militias results from a US desire to provoke conflict with the Iranians.

"They're trying to push a provocative, accidental conflict," Mann said.

She added that the administration hopes to goad Iran into an overreaction so that it can have justification to carry out "limited strikes" against nuclear infrastructure and Revolutionary Guards headquarters buildings in Iran.

This unbelievably irrational, even stupid, concept has arisen and has now taken root -- that to cut off funds for the war means that, one day, our troops are going to be in the middle of a vicious fire-fight and suddenly they will run out of bullets -- or run out of gas or armor -- because Nancy Pelosi refused to pay for the things they need to protect themselves, and so they are going to find themselves in the middle of the Iraq war with no supplies and no money to pay for what they need. That is just one of those grossly distorting, idiotic myths the media allows to become immovably lodged in our political discourse and which infects our political analysis and prevents any sort of rational examination of our options.

That is why virtually all political figures run away as fast and desperately as possible from the idea of de-funding a war -- it's as though they have to strongly repudiate de-funding options because de-funding has become tantamount to "endangering our troops" (notwithstanding the fact that Congress has de-funded wars in the past and it is obviously done in coordination with the military and over a scheduled time frame so as to avoid "endangering the troops").

IMO there are two kinds of people the world: actors and reactors.

Actors lead, take chances, and set goals while everyone else follows. Sometimes they fail. But they pick themselves up and keep trying.

Reactors watch and follow...

It's time for the democratic leadership to stop being reactors, stand up and lead, and take charge.

"Wars do not determine who is right. Wars determine who is left."

--anon

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The Steyr HS50 is a long range, high precision rifle. The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Same old story. Why is the Times running this stuff and not doing any reporting (checking sources, getting direct evidence and creating proper context/perspective-for instance that Suadi Arabia funds Sunni insurgents who have posed a much greater harm to US troops), when they admitted they got it so wrong in the leadup to the invasion?

Well, well boys and girls, I haven't seen so much denial since Aunt Jane developed a huge bulge in her  lower front area of unknown origin.

The Foreign Office expressed "serious concerns" over the sale of the rifles last year and Britain protested to the Austrian government.

A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: "Although we did make our worries known the sale unfortunately went ahead and now the potential that these weapons could fall into the wrong hands appears to have happened."

Well, the long-delayed other shoe has finally dropped. The U.S. government has for months been promising "slam-dunk" evidence that the Islamic Republic of Iran is providing weapons to militias attacking American troops in Iraq, a causus belli that would at least justify whacking Iranian targets in Iraq, if not direct strikes against Iran. Either way, it's sure to do only two things: start a much larger war and unify the Iranian people around their leaders.

Ray McGovern has done an excellent job of casting aside the distraction of the Bush administration's case against Iran and looking at the potential nuclear standoff in his call for Congressional action today at TomPaine. But he does not address the substance of the latest round. The Bush administration has repeatedly delayed a public presentation of this evidence, reportedly after the intelligence community demanded the report be "scrubbed" of hyperbole and exageration. This is the precise parallel to the possibly illegal manipulation of intelligence produced by Dougles Feith's office in the runup to war with Iraq in 2003--and discredited by the Pentagon last week. Finally, on February 11, major papers across the Unites States reported on a briefing given to reporters in Baghdad by three government sources, who insisted on anonymity. They detailed the supply of the new "IED", the "EFP" or "explosively formed penetrator," allegedly made solely by Iran and used exclusively by Iranian-supplied militant groups in Lebanon and Iraq. They are allegedly the most deadly weapon facing U.S. forces on the Iraqi battlefield. You can see some of the props presented to reporters yourself here.

Charges of this seriousness require serious scrutiny. While some questions were raised by the mainstream accounts of this briefing, they were deliberately crippled by the terms of the briefing: complete anonymity and

No TV cameras or tapes were allowed in, and journalists' cell phones were taken away before they entered the briefing room.

But many questions remain. The case made by the administration focuses on Iran supplying "rogue" elements of vocally anti-American Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi. But the briefing seemed to acknowledge that Iranian diplomats and security officials had been "caught red-handed" only in the company of U.S. allies such as a proto-consulate in Kurdistan and in the offices of SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a supporter of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and honored guest at the White House.

...
Does any of this seem familiar? Can we stop this nightmare from happening all over again?

There is no way the attack on Iran will not go forward, in my estimation, failing defunding the Iraq occupation, forcing bush/cheney to withdraw the troops there, and impeachment of both of them.

Even the threat of impeachment may tilt them over the edge and speed up an attack on Iran.

Michael Gordon?

hahahaha

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own realityreality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.

From today's news conference.

Bush Says Iran is Source of Deadly Bombs

iow, Let the bombing commence.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called into question assertions by three senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday who said the highest levels of Iranian government were responsible for arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the bombs
[...]
On Monday, Pace said he had no firm knowledge that the Iranian government had sanctioned the arming of the insurgents

Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, the top commander in the Middle East, said he didn't know.

"I have no idea who may be actually hands-on in this stuff

a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad would not confirm recent military statements that Iran's leadership is directing the production of an armor-piercing explosive said to be supplied to extremists in Iraq.

"I think people want to make an inference," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a briefing. "I think people want to hype this up.

At a White House press conference Wednesday, Mr. Bush acknowledged that the United States had no proof that top Iranian leaders  such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had approved the shipment of the explosively formed penetrators.
[...]
"What's worse? That the [Iranian government] knew? Or that it didn't know?" said Bush

I was also there when a buddy proved otherwise.

So, according to your logic I should not believe anything that my parents told me later, and everything my buddy did.

Al, being an adult means that you must have the ability to sort through a variety of information, understand where it came from and use as required.