The Seventh Sense

A Nobel Peace Prize For..... Twitter?

There's some serious discussion about it, mostly because of the role it played in involving the world in the Iranian revolt.

Of course, what did Twitter actually do?  It provided the platform.  It was the people using Twitter that really "done good".  So giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Twitter is kind of like Time magazine making "you" the Person of the Year.

The Actor And The "Bullet Fee"

If you were following the situation in Iran this weekend, you no doubt already know about Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman shot and killed in Iran on Saturday, who has since become an international symbol from the time the gruesome video of her death went online. [I won't post the Neda video here -- too disturbing even for me -- but you can see it here]

Of course, hers isn't the only story of cruelity inflicted by the Iranian regime on its own people.  Here is a story about another young person -- an innocent bystander again -- killed in Iran this past weekend, a 19 year old named Kaveh Alipour

On Saturday, amid the most violent clashes between security forces and protesters, Mr. Alipour was shot in the head as he stood at an intersection in downtown Tehran. He was returning from acting class and a week shy of becoming a groom, his family said.

The details of his death remain unclear. He had been alone. Neighbors and relatives think that he got trapped in the crossfire. He wasn't politically active and hadn't taken part in the turmoil that has rocked Iran for over a week, they said.

"He was a very polite, shy young man," said Mohamad, a neighbor who has known him since childhood.

When Mr. Alipour didn't return home that night, his parents began to worry. All day, they had heard gunshots ringing in the distance. His father, Yousef, first called his fiancée and friends. No one had heard from him.

At the crack of dawn, his father began searching at police stations, then hospitals and then the morgue.

Of course, we now know that Kaveh Alipour was killed.  And to add insult to, uh, injury....

Upon learning of his son's death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a "bullet fee"—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said.

The Alipour family refused to pay the fee, and morgue officials eventually caved, but "demanded that the family do no funeral or burial in Tehran."

It's no wonder there is an uprising against the Iranian government.

On Obama's Silence on Iran

This is typical of the rightwing reaction to what's happening in Iran -- Bill Kristol:

This isn’t September 1939. But the developments in Tehran are a potentially big moment, signaling the possible transformation or at least reformation of the Iranian regime. American principles and American interests argue for support of the Iranian people in this crisis.

And where is the American president? Silent.

Of course he's silent.

What's he going to do? 

Condemn post-election violence?  Can't we take that as a "given"?  Does he need to come out and say this right away?

Tell everyone Mousavi won?  Well, we don't know that.  Not yet.

Express support for the protesters?  No.  The last thing Obama should do right now is come out in favor of the protesters.  As Spencer Ackerman notes, any expression of political support for the protesters would only “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the United States, whether under [former President George W. Bush] or under Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread. 

Ultimately, the Iranian people have to choose their destiny.  And we should support them.  But not lead them.  Be two steps behind the reformists; not two steps in front of them.  And, to the extent we get involved, it should be as a somewhat muted member of the international community.

Obama is right to remain silent, and when he speaks on this issue, he should speak on the human rights and violence angle.  Conservative critics of Obama don't seem to think about this: they would rather have a President who shoots from the hip, instead being the President that we elected -- a serious man who contemplates the outcomes of his actions.

Iranian Election Tragedy

It's all a little hard to digest, so I don't have much to say.  One really hoped for a non-fraudulent election there, with the popular pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi emerging victorious, but it really looks like something odd and unsavory occurred. (For example, Mousavi was leading Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 in Tehran in a poll last week, but Ahmadinejad won Tehran 52% to 46% in the reported election results).

John Cole outlines the top pieces of evidence suggesting election fraud. But see WaPo analysis saying the election results might actually be correct.

Election statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver is stumped and explains why.

Andrew Sullivan has a great collection of photos, YouTubes, and tweets from inside Iran, where upwards of 3 million people are protesting in spite of the ban on public protesting.

Nico Pitney is liveblogging the uprising over at The Huffington Post.

UPDATE: Real-time reporting on Twitter by guys like this one are beating the mainstream media all to hell.  He just tweeted about shootings in Azadi Square.  In fact, mainstream media pretty much has no access to Iran, so it too is following tweets.

Not Funny

John McCain once again "jokes" about his desire to kill Iranians.  And he's not talking about the Iranian military or anything -- he's joking about killing Iranians.

I guess that's good red meat for the conservative masses, but the targets of McCain's blood lust "joke" are ordinary Iranian civilians.

I know it's easy to think of Iran has some sandy backwater country with occupied by sandy backwater bedouins on camels, but it's really not.  Here are some people and places in Iran:

So when McCain "jokes" about bomb-bomb-bombing Iran, and killing Iranians, these are among the people he's talking about.  Remember that.

Yglesius writes: "If a major Iranian political leader were to repeatedly joke about bombing the United States and killing Americans, you can just imagine the shit-storm about how Iran isn't a normal country with normal interests...."

So true.

Fallon Out; War With Iran In?

In a recent article in Esquire, CENTCOM Commander Adm. William "Fox" Fallon openly criticized the idea of a possible war with Iran, which Fallon called an "ill-advised action".  Fallon implied that he would resign rather than go to war against Iran.  (Fallon is not alone on this; most military leaders are opposed to war with Iran).

Breaking news out of the Pentagon (so new there's no link) -- Fallon is stepping down as CENTCOM cammander.

Uh oh....

UPDATE:  Here's a link; Fallon asked to resign, supposedly....

Lying Or Incompetent?

Joe Biden, on the President's line that he wasn't briefed on the new Iran NIE until last week:

“Are you telling me a president who is briefed every single morning, who is fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the United States government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in ’03?” Biden said in a conference call with reporters.

“That’s not believable,” Biden added. “I refuse to believe that. If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in … modern American history and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”

He's got a point....

UPDATE:  BarbinMD weighs in...

Moments ago, speaking in Nebraska, George Bush said:

It is clear from the latest NIE, that the Iranian government has more to explain about its nuclear intentions and past actions.

No, what is clear from the latest NIE is that the Bush administration has more to explain on what they knew and when they knew it. Less than two months ago, when Bush said:

...if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. And I take this very -- I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

...did he already know that Iran had suspended their nuclear weapons program in 2003? 

U.S. News reports:

Bush said the new intel “contradicting earlier US assessments…would not prompt him to take off the table the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran.”

There was a debate about Iraq once.  The issue was whether the intellengence on WMD was flawed and Bush followed it, or whether the intelligence on WMD was mixed and Bush ignored it because he wanted a war anyway.  Looking back on that debate through the prism of Bush today (ignoring the intelligence estimates of the Iran NIE and keeping his war-drun-beating stance), it looks like Bush doesn't really care about what our intelligence agencies say -- then or now.

Omnibus Post Because Frankly My Plate Is Full

Ugh.  So much to discuss:

(1)  White House egg-on-the-face: After months of beating the war drums to invade Iraq, it turns out that Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb program after all.  As Matt says: "Meanwhile, how outrageous is it that the best twelve months of alarmism from Bush & Cheney have come in the context of an environment where they've long had access to the intelligence community's assessment? Answer: Very outrageous."

(2)  Hillary's drop in the polls:  Look, it's early yet.  She's got money, name recognition, etc.

(3)  The stunning CNN expose on bad kissers aka "news of the obvious"

(4)  New England:  The no'reastern and the Pat's winning last night (only by virtue of the Colts really losing)

(5)  Silly local news

and perhaps best of all...

(6)  The Catholic Church tries to show how anti-child abuse it is . . with a coloring book.  Apparently, it's easier to teach a child to flee from a priest than to teach a priest to not improperly touch a child.

...but there's too much on my plate. 

So instead, I'm just gonna plug my show, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever -- with performances at the Main Street Baptist Church, N. Main Street, Kernersville, NC; Thursday December 6, Friday December 7, Saturday December 8 at 8:00PM and Sunday December 9 at 3:00PM.; Box Office open 10:00AM-2:00PM, Monday-Friday - Phone 993-6556.

We filled the church for last weekend's shows.  Expect more of the same this weekend.  Audiences seem to be enjoying it, and I'm getting some well-received praise (well-received by me, natch) for the stage direction (from people who I trust to tell me if it sucks).  The kids worked hard, so come and see them.

Also, I might be filling in for one of the small adult roles on Thursday.  Possibly other performances, too.  But come anyway.

Moving To The Iran Desk

Sy Hersh in the New Yorker about the administration’s Iran plans:

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.”)

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Here we go again...

Of course, Oliver Willis is right.  There is no declaration of war against Iran, and any attack on Iran without one is (or, should be) an impeachable offense.

Nuke Iran?

The story about how the Air Force "lost" five nuclear warheads (for a while) has an interesting and unnerving twist:

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride.

(Disturbing) food for thought.

UPDATE:  The speculation, however, has plenty of dissenters.

Just Call Them Terrorists...

This can't be good:

Iranian Unit to Be Labeled  'Terrorist'

U.S. Moving Against  Revolutionary Guard

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 15, 2007; A01

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

Calling the military branch of another government a "terrorist" organization also allows Bush to skirt other nasty legal obstacles.  For example, Congress won't have to declare war on them because now they would fall under the AUMF that was passed in the wake of 9/11.

And assuming we do go to war with Iran, we won't have to treat the soldiers of the opposing army under the Geneva Conventions. 

So basically, by slapping the label "terrorist" on any person, or group, the Bush Administration can do anything it wants (i.e., attack them) and avoid complying with the U.S. Constitution and international treaties and human rights and stuff like that.

Yglesias adds his profound thought:

It’s taken a few years, but we’ve managed to move now from a situation in the winter 2001-2002 where the US and Iran were cooperating against our mutual deadly foe — al-Qaeda — to one where Iran is officially one of the enemies in an open-ended struggle against God knows whom.

Yikes.

Let Me See If I Get This Straight

Let's get a timeline:

In 1995, Clinton cuts off all trade and investment with Iran.  U.S. companies were no longer able to do business with Iran.

After that announcement, Halliburton decided that business with Iran, then conducted through at least five companies, would all be done through a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands.  This way, Halliburton could skirt around the ban.  (Halliburton also did business with Saddam, up through 2000, in this manner.)

When Halliburton made that decision, its chief executive officer was Dick Cheney.

Twelve years later, Halliburton is still working in and for Iran.

Does this make any sense to anybody?  The vice-president of the United States was CEO of a company that did business with our enemies, despite the fact that it was well-known that these countries were dangerous.  Can you imagine a Democratic vice-president getting away with this?

And they call us "traitors"?!?

The Iran Debate

I second Publius' well-thought-out critique of the "credible threat" tactic we are imposing on Iran.  Publius' point, in a nutshell, is that by publicly insisting that we are keeping all our options open with respect to Iran -- particular the invasion option -- we are encouraging Iran to seek deterrent weapons (i.e., nuclear weapons), not discouraging them.

The impetus to protect oneself is so patently obvious that I am somewhat astounded that those on the right -- you know, people who think everyone should have a gun in their household -- can't see the wisdom of it.  When people, and by extension, countries, see a credible threat by a far-more-powerful force, they gear up to defend themselves.  A nuclear weapon is the ONLY thing that Iran can possess to deter the threat from us, so of course they're going to work hard to get the bomb, especially since we make rumblings that we're a-comin'.

Is The Whole "Surge" Plan A Set-Up?

Andrew Sullivan wonders:

This paragraph, buried by the NYT, leapt out at me this morning:

A Shiite political leader who has worked closely with the Americans in the past said the Bush benchmarks appeared to have been drawn up in the expectation that Mr. Maliki would not meet them. "He cannot deliver the disarming of the militias," the politician said, asking that he not be named because he did not want to be seen as publicly criticizing the prime minister. "He cannot deliver a good program for the economy and reconstruction. He cannot deliver on services. This is a matter of fact. There is a common understanding on the American side and the Iraqi side."

Views such as these — increasingly common among the political class in Baghdad — are often accompanied by predictions that Mr. Maliki will be forced out as the crisis over the militias builds. The Shiite politician who described him as incapable of disarming militias suggested he might resign; others have pointed to an American effort in recent weeks to line up a “moderate front” of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders outside the government, and said that the front might be a vehicle for mounting a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki, with behind-the-scenes American support. [My italics.]

If this is the case, this president is lying to us once again. It's one lie too far. If all of this is a ruse to depose Maliki and attack Iran, the constitutional consequences of a runaway, duplicitous president are profound.

Of course, there's considerable discussion about whether the President can constitutionally attack Iran absent a Congressional authorization.  Clearly he can't.  But constitutional limitations have not stopped this President before, and it's pretty clear that the Bush Administration thinks it is not constitutionally required to get Congressional approval -- a scary abuse of power that exceeds even the worst from the Nixon Administration.

Washington is full of rumors that Bush has already ordered a "secret war" against Iran.  I tend to doubt that, but I happen to agree with Pat Buchanan and others who say that Bush is trying to provoke an attack from Iran, in order to launch a war there.  After all, if Iran attacks us, then Bush can, under the War Powers Act, attack Iran without Congressional approval.

The Truth Shall [Redacted] Set You Free

This is astounding.

The White House censored an New York Times editorial, telling the Times to redact certain portions.  The censored portions do not contain classified information.  The White House, it seemed, just didn't like it. (The redacted version of the op-ed is here.)

It should be noted that the CIA normally does these type of things, not the White House.  And the information redacted by the White House was cleared by the CIA when the author published it elsewhere:

The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The Century Foundation -- which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA's Publication Review Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of the White House.

The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.

These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.

Emptywheel looks into this deeper, but I find the notion of censuring things already in the public domain to be troubling.

Iran: The New Fake Boogeyman

Here we go again.

Last month, the GOP-run House Intelligence Committee released a report on Iran.  The report was not voted on by the full committee.

Its message?  "Ooooooh, they're about to bomb us with a nuke!" It got a LOT of play in the press.

Surprise! It's a fraud!

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements."

***

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

Matt Yglesius reminds us that it was the IAEA who was right when it came to Saddam's supposed WMDs:

After all the months of debate, lies, hype, more debate, handwringing, warmongering, exaggerations, etc. we came to the moment when IAEA inspectors were back on the ground in Iraq looking into Saddam's nuclear program. They said there was no nuclear program. They were roundly ignored -- the statement simply got no purchase in mainstream media or political circles. The war was on. Months later, everyone was scratching their heads wondering where the WMD were. Years later, people are still debating how the facts were gotten so wrong. The fact remains, though, that before the war, the IAEA was in the country saying the Bush administration was full of shit.

And now the IAEA is saying that the Bush administration is full of shit with respect to Iran.  Will they be listened to this time?

UPDATE:  Apparently not.  Look how the Washington Post treated the two stories: the House Intelligence Committee report (saying that Iran was coming to kill us) got page one treatment a few weeks ago.  The response by the UN inspectors (IAEA) today?  Page 17.

[Graphic by Kevin Drum]

Still Alive

We were all supposed to die yesterday.  Did you know that?

Here's a list of gloom-and-doom articles from the right-wing press, foretelling that August 22 was the day in which Iran would wreak nuclear kick-ass on all us Westerners (or, at least, Israelis).

Wall Street Journal: August 22

World News Daily: Iran Cataclysm Forecast Aug. 22

FrontPageMag: Iran's Day of Terror?

Free Republic: Why Aug 22? Iran Planning To Make A Bigger Splash?

NewsMax: Iran Hints at Aug. 22 Doomsday For Israel

Glenn Beck on CNN (video): Iran v. America

Didn't happen, of course.

It seems to me that one goal of terrorism is to create terror.  Therefore, I truly believe that these conservative pants-wetters only aid and abet the enemy when they scream (needlessly) that the sky is about to fall.  They're doing the work of bin Laden.

2,500

Just so you know.

Why Outing Plame Mattered

Here's the press release (in its original allcaps):

INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL.

Interesting.

"Mission Accomplished": 3 Years Later

Three years ago today, Bush gave his Mission Accomplished speech aboard the deck of the USS Lincoln, preclaiming that "Major combat operations have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

Think Progress looks at the before-and-after numbers:

	May 1, 2003	Today
U.S. Troops Wounded	542	17,469
U.S. Troops Killed	139	2,400
Size of U.S. Forces	150,000	132,000
Size of Iraqi Security Forces	7,000-9000	250,500
Number of Insurgents	5,000	15,000-20,000
Insurgent Attacks Per Day	8	75
Cost to U.S. Taxpayers	$79 billion	$320 billion
Approval of Bush’s Handling of Iraq	75%	37%
Percentage of Americans who Believe The Iraq War Was “Worth Fighting”	70%	41%
Bush’s Overall Job Approval	71%	38%

UPDATE:  Without any sense of irony for the 3 year anniversary, Bush declared today that Iraq is at a "turning point".

The Friend Of My Friend Is My Enemy?

I have a hard time keeping the players stright.

Bush wanted to let the United Arab Emirates to manage our ports.  He said that the UAE is a "committed ally in the war on terror".

So . . . UAE = "good guy", according to Bush.

Meanwhile, we're all pounding our chests and beating the war drums because Iran is getting all nuked up, and that's threatening to us.

So . . . Iran = "bad guy".

So far so good.  But then yesterday, according to an Iranian news agency, Iran's Deputy Minister and the UAE's Prime Minister met and celebrated the two countries' great relations, which they both said they were committed to expanding "in all areas":

Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Mostafavi and Deputy Emir and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Mohammad ben Rashid al-Maktoum stressed Monday expansion of relations between Iran and UAE in all areas.

Mostafavi lauded al-Maktoum on his efforts in strengthening bilateral ties and invited him for a state visit to Tehran.

Mostafavi also briefed the Dubai's ruler on the Iranians positions on Iraq and Palestinians developments, and described the trend of Iran-Russia talks on Tehran resolve in acquiring peaceful nuclear technology. . . .

Glenn Greenwald asks the right questions:

If Iran were really the Ultimate Terrorist Evil, the new Nazi Germany, would one of our "most committed allies in the war on terror" maintain such friendly relations with them? For a reasonable, moderate, responsible anti-terrorist country like the UAE to maintain such a close alliance with Iran, mustn't there be some rationality and stability in the Iranian government?

And why is the UAE's extreme hostility to Israel -- to the point where it denies Israel's right to exist and bans its citizens from entering the country -- consistent with our close alliance with the UAE, but Iran's extreme hostility towards Israel (admittedly with more inflammatory rhetoric) compels us to view Iran as the new Nazi Germany?

Second Verse, Same As The First

Press Conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday:

Q: What planning, if any, has the Pentagon been undertaken for the possibility of military action involving Iran? And has the nuclear strike option been ruled out?

RUMSFELD: You know, someone comes up with an idea, runs it in a magazine or a paper; other papers pick it up and reprint it; editorialists, then, say, Oh, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, and opine on this and opine that.

…But it is just simply not useful to get into fantasyland.

Press Conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/22/02:

Q: Sources say the President has a war plan on his desk about attacking Iraq? What types of options were provided to the President?

Rumsfeld: Of course I could and I won’t. I must say I find the people that are talking to the media about war plans are so far out of line and so disgracefully misbehaving that I find it stunning and a weak effort.

First of all I can tell you that anyone who knows anything isn’t talking and anyone with any sense isn’t talking therefore the people that are talking to the media by definition people who don’t know anything and people who don’t have a hell of a lot of sense.

Deja Vu

LA Times:

U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on Iran's potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the new Tehran leadership and the contingent of Al Qaeda leaders residing in the country.

Some officials, citing evidence from highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing host to much of Al Qaeda's remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network's operations.

And they suggest that new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be forging an alliance with Al Qaeda operatives as a way to expand Iran's influence or, at a minimum, that he is looking the other way as Al Qaeda leaders in his country collaborate with their counterparts elsewhere.

Change the "n" in Iran to a "q", and this sounds remarkably familiar, oui?

Kevin Drum says only a moron would fall for the same thing twice and demands something called e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

Today:

Rice says time for talking with Iran is over

November 2003:

The Bush administration publicly refused to negotiate with Saddam. It demanded that he abide by U.N. resolutions that required Iraq to cooperate unconditionally with U.N. arms inspectors and make a full accounting of its illicit biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

President Bush rejected Saddam's assertions that he had no illicit weapons programs and declared that only the Iraqi leader's unconditional surrender or departure from Iraq could avert war.

Iran Is This Year's Iraq

President Bush, 1/13/06:

Iran, armed with a nuclear weapon, poses a grave threat to the security of the world.

President Bush 10/7/02:

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace…The threat comes from Iraq…It is seeking nuclear weapons.

Cheney Vs. The Bees

"Some have suggested by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq in September 2001 and the terrorists hit us anyway."

That's what Dick Cheney said two days ago.  Yes, he's still making the connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.  It's a sickness, in my view.

And "hornet's nest"?  If 9/11 was a bee sting, Iraq wasn't the hive.  That's the problem, and your critics are right, Dick.

Holly Martins adds more:

So let's get this straight: If you suggest any policy in Iraq other that the administration-approved "Stay the Course" you are handing a nation over to terrorist control. But if terrorist activity, or the threat thereof, seems sufficiently worrisome to contemplate another policy then. . .it doesn't matter, because the terrorists will attack us anyway? Withdrawal from Iraq is appeasing the terrorist enemy--but 9/11 demonstrates the mindset of that enemy is irrelevant. Wouldn't the logic of the latter claim suggest that the terrorists simply might not notice we had withdrawn and/or attack us no matter what? Are they all-powerful evildoers, or Ritalin- deprived ADD cases? Also: There were all sorts of things we weren't doing in 2001. We hadn't yet thrilled to the magic of Gigli, or whatever the name of that sucky Coldplay record is. Does this mean if there's no Gigli sequel, the terrorists win? Please make our head stop hurting like this, Mr. Vice President, Sir!

In related news, the Wall Street Journal provides a rationale for the Iraq war which may surprise some for its candor: the Iraq invasion was about creating a home base from which the United States can launch future wars against Iran and Syria:

The invasion of Iraq was not only about weapons of mass destruction…It was also about establishing a U.S. war-fighting beachhead in the heart of the Middle East, the principal breeding ground of terrorists. The invasion took out one terrorism sponsor, Saddam Hussein, and gave the U.S. a presence for intimidating two others, Iran and Syria.

According to WSJ author Melloan, we need to finish the job in Iraq quickly – not so we can send the troops home – but so we can get ready to fight Iran:

Nowhere is the antipathy toward America and the West more clearly manifested than in Iran…Getting Iraq under control is urgent because of what may be the next threat in the Middle East.

Don’t expect the string of wars to end anytime soon. Melloan concludes that the fight could last “30 years in the view of some analysts.”

That's a lot of beehives.

Credibility Consequences

With the Bush Administration being cagy about everything from torture to its "evidence" leading up to the Iraq War, it's no surprise that the world view of America's credibility has shrunken.  In fact, most countries apparently view our credibility on a scale apar with that of Iran:

[D]oubts about the intelligence persist among some foreign analysts. In part, that is because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop computer beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a longtime contact in Iran. Moreover, this chapter in the confrontation with Iran is infused with the memory of the faulty intelligence on Iraq's unconventional arms. In this atmosphere, though few countries are willing to believe Iran's denials about nuclear arms, few are willing to accept the United States' weapons intelligence without question.

"I can fabricate that data," a senior European diplomat said of the documents. "It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt."

And, in what is sure to cause many neo-cons' head to simultaneously explode, the one country that does believe our intelligence regarding Iran is -- wait for it -- France:

As a measure of the skepticism the Bush administration faces, officials said the American ambassador to the international atomic agency, Gregory L. Schulte, was urging other countries to consult with his French counterpart. "On Iraq we disagreed, and on Iran we completely agree," a senior State Department official said. "That gets attention."

Condi Thinking About Giving The Silent Treatment To Iran President

From AP:

"Iran needs to get a message from the international community that is a unified message," Rice said at a news conference that focused mostly on talks she plans to hold in New York next week during the special session of the U.N. General Assembly.

She said she might say "hello" to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if they come across each other in U.N. corridors.

But that's it.  Just a "hello".  If he's lucky. 

Or she could just walk past him, like he's not even there, and go straight to her locker. 

Or maybe she could have a friend give a "secret love test survey" for Ahmadinejad to fill out in study hall.  But no -- he'll probably be all like "what's this?" and stuff.  It's not that Condi doesn't like him, but she doesn't like him like him, y'know?

"I Don't Know"

That's what I was once told to say when I didn't know.  I re-learned that lesson as a young lawyer: if a judge asks you a question, and you don't know the answer, admit that you don't know the answer.  That is how you maintain your credibility.

Sadly, the Bush Administration didn't do that with respect to WMDs in Iraq.  But perhaps -- just perhaps -- they have learned how to say "we don't know".

That's why this is important (from today's New York Times):

Data Is Lacking on Iran's Arms, U.S. Panel Says

By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

ASHINGTON, March 8 - A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel's work.

The report comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr. Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The Bush administration has been issuing increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is intended purely for civilian purposes.

The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

As they say, read the whole thing.

And Mr. President, say it with me: We.  Don't.  Know.