September 11 kickoff?

Informed Comment Global Affairs: Post Labor Day Product Rollout: War with Iran (Cross-posted at DailyKos)!

Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Can we expect a bomb or attack to hit ours shores? That would really make it easy to point some fingers at Iran, get the blood boiling, and create some public support.

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Next steps?

Bush Threatens to Confront Iran Over Alleged Support for Iraqi insurgents

George Bush yesterday ramped up the war of words between the US and Iran, accusing Tehran of threatening to place the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust and revealing that he had authorised US military commanders in Iraq to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”.

Wow. Any limits W? Okay, okay - I know the answer. Boys and girls it's on to Tehran very soon. Bend over and kiss your ass bye-bye.

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Just say no!

Bush to request $50 billion more for Iraq war: report

U.S. President George W. Bush is preparing to ask Congress for as much as $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a White House official.
The request signals increasing White House confidence that it can fend off mounting congressional pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, the Post reported.
The request is expected to be announced next month after the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker report to Congress on the state of the war, the newspaper said.

One guess what the Stooge Boys will have to say.
No matter what they say, it is time for this Congress to shut this war down.

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It's not enough

I cheered when Rummy left...
I cheered when Karl left...
I am cheering that Alberto is leaving...
But the bottles of champagne won't be open until
Gitmo is closed,
The Patriot Act turned back,
The entire regime goes,
The wars are ended and all our troops return.

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Say it ain't so...

US 'poised to strike Iran'

BOB Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the next couple of months because things could be about to change. Baer, in an interview with The Weekend Australian, says his contacts in the administration suggest a strategic airstrike on Iran is a real possibility in the months ahead. "What I'm getting is a sense that their sentiment is they are going to hit the Iranians and not just because of Israel, but due to the fact that Iran is the predominant power in the Gulf and it is hostile and its power is creeping into the Gulf at every level," Baer says. He says his contacts have told him of his book: "You better hurry up because the thesis is going to change. I told them submission is in January but they said, 'You're probably going to be too late'."

But how could we possibly justify an attack? Raw Story reports that

Experts and officials in the US military and intelligence communities read the administration's move to declare the Guard a terrorist organization as an indication that something ominous is looming over the horizon. One of the former CIA case officers interviewed for this article explained that the Office of the Vice President is making this drastic move in order to lay the groundwork for a possible incident. “They still need a trigger and I would not be surprised if we will see some event in Iraq which implicates the Iranians,” said this source. “They need a pretext.” The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified defense planning guidance – written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon staffers I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and current UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad – Cheney's aides called for the United States to assume the position of lone superpower and act preemptively to prevent the emergence of even regional competitors. The draft document was leaked at the time to the New York Times and the Washington Post and caused an uproar among Democrats and many in George H. W. Bush's Administration. Previous attempts at “fixing the facts” around the policy of a military strike against Iran have failed on several occasions, including ramped up allegations of an Iranian WMD program being close to completion that culminated in a near-offensive in March of 2006 and attempts at provocation by positioning US aircraft carriers in the region during the summer of 2006.

Implicating Iran being involved in Iraq is easy, but doesn't go far enough. Now an event on our shores "tied" to Iran - that would get the blood boiling. Talk about "trigger." It worked once...

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Wisdom from The Clash

In response to W's comments comparing Vietnam and Iraq and any aftermath, I think The Clash offered the best wisdom:

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double

Amazing how prescient they were.

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Let's not stop the war machine!

U.S. envoy: Iran's openness is a distraction

Iran's willingness to answer questions about its nuclear program will not save it from new U.N. sanctions, a U.S. envoy said Wednesday, describing Tehran's new openness as an attempt to deflect "attention from its ... bomb-making capabilities." But the U.S. stance drew criticism, with some diplomats suggesting Washington was trying to derail important progress in getting to the bottom of Iran's nuclear secrets in its drive to impose new U.N. penalties.

Screw the UN sanctions. This openness is screwing up the war machine poised to strike at Iran.

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Related Photos From Flickr

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Vets pledge fight for ‘record-breaking peace’
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Rah Rahing for war

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The reality of war

Maybe this new HBO Documentary (Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq) is what the "rah-rah for war" brigade should watch. If we all see the real war - rather than the war W and the machine wants us to see - we all will demand an end to wars.

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And the winner was....

Kucinich!!!

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Rove: a redeeming quality?

Bush League War Drums Beating Louder on Iran

Our VIPS colleague Phil Geraldi, writing in The American Conservative , earlier noted that in the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on Cheney’s death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most devoted neo-cons just before the attack on Iraq, has put into words (on LewRockwell.com) speculation several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove’s departure.
In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one’s dummy and would not want to be required to “spin” an unnecessary war on Iran, may have lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided-or was urged-to spend more time with his family. As for administration spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally possible that, before deciding he had to leave the White House to make more money, he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the challenge of conjuring up yet another Snow job to explain why Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran.

Bizarro World - I may have to tip my hat to Karl?

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Damn peace!

The Peace Racket by Bruce Bawer, City Journal Summer 2007

Call it the Peace Racket.
We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to “establish a Peace Academy,” “develop a peace education curriculum” for elementary and secondary schools, and provide “grants for peace studies departments” at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence.
The Peace Racket’s boundaries aren’t easy to define. It embraces scores of “peace institutes” and “peace centers” in the U.S. and Europe, plus several hundred university peace studies programs. As Ian Harris, Larry Fisk, and Carol Rank point out in a sympathetic overview of these programs, it’s hard to say exactly how many exist—partly because they often go by other labels, such as “security studies” and “human rights education”; partly because many “professors who infuse peace material into courses do not offer special courses with the title peace in them”; and finally because “several small liberal arts colleges offer an introductory course requirement to all incoming students which infuses peace and justice themes.” Many primary and secondary schools also teach peace studies in some form.

Shudder to think what will happen if the "peace racket" succeeds. No war - oh wait that would mean no military contracts. The economy would be destroyed. Damn us who want peace!

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Stop the madness - PLEASE!!!

Prelude to an Attack on Iran

Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.
And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

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The monster!

Monsters creating monsters creating monsters.

Thank Mr. Fish. But tell W that we villagers will never respect the monster he is and the devastation he has caused with his war and his policies.

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"Truths that are self evident"

“An Attempt to Deceive Americans Into Yet Another War”

Dennis Kucinich may not be a front runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But the congressman from Cleveland has succeeded in distinguishing himself from the other contenders when it speaking those truths that are self-evident.
And in an era of mass delusion and denial on the party of leaders in both major political parties, stating the obvious can be a radical act.
Such is the case with Kucinich appropriate answer to the latest move by the Bush-Cheney administration to ramp up hostilities with Iran. That move — the unprecedented attempt to label Iran’s 125,000-strong Republican Guard as a “specially designated global terrorist” group — is, as the congressman says “nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war — this time with Iran.”

Listening to the nuts on talk radio today - the drums of war against Iran are beating louder and louder each day. The lies are being eaten, swallowed, regurgitated and spit out into our faces.

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Counting down to "Target Iran"

Iran's military as global terrorists

Last night's carefully managed leak from the White House that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is being designated as a global terrorist group is a story that -- while in a sense you could see it coming for months -- seemed to also catch a lot of the major news media off guard. On CNN this morning, Kiran Chetry kept referring to it as a "bold move," "bold" meaning CNN knew it was important but it really wasn't sure why.
Here's what it means on the surface, that U.S. -- which increasingly blames Iran for terrorist meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan -- can try to go after those who do business with the Iranian military unit. Still, it's clearly not a normal move -- the first time that a government military has received this terrorist designation -- something that's usually reserved for non-state actors like al-Qaeda. And so no one seems sure what this morning what the concrete impact of this unexpected move will be.
Nowhere yet have I seen what it seems clear Bush's Iran move is really all about.
The White House hawks in Dick Cheney's office and elsewhere who want to stage an attack on Iran are clearly winning the internal power stuggle. And an often overlooked sub-plot on the long road toward war with Tehran is this: How could Bush stage an attack on Iran without the authorization of a skeptical, Democratic Congress?
Today, the White House has solved that pesky problem in one fell swoop. By explicitly linking the Iranian elite guard into the post 9/11 "global war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's lawyers would certainly now argue that any military strike on Iran is now covered by the October 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq, as part of their overly sweeping response to the 2001 attacks.

The evil geniuses of this regime...wonder if this was a going away gift from Karl? Will we allow this regime to take us down a slippery slope (buttressed by lies) again?

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Peaceman versus Uncle Dick

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Learning from the U.S.

Canadian Military Keeping Tabs on Peace Activists?

Steven Staples, a prominent Canadian peace activist, is accusing the Canadian military of subtle surveillance after the military sent an officer to take notes on him at a conference at Dalhousie University in 2006.The story came to light a few weeks ago after freedom of information requests finally revealed that briefings had been written for senior military officers.

I thought crap flows down. Seems that our crap is starting to flow up to the north.

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No War on Iran

Bush, Congress Could Collide On Iran

Two knowledgeable U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because intelligence on Iran is highly classified, said that the administration so far doesn’t have “smoking-gun” evidence that could be used publicly to justify an air attack.
The presumed target of an attack would be camps in Iran where officials believe the Iranians are teaching Iraqi Shiite fighters how to fashion bombs that can destroy American armored vehicles.
The U.S. officials refused to discuss whether such evidence exists but can’t be made public because doing so would betray intelligence sources and methods, or whether it hasn’t been uncovered.
Should Bush simply pursue a strike against Iran without seeking congressional authorization, it would cause “an uproar over here. It would be a serious breach of (the limits on) executive power,” said a military affairs aide to a Democratic senator.
Nevertheless, Bush and Vice President Cheney take a broad view of executive power, and it’s unclear what consequences Bush would face if he were to take action without authorization.
Many on Capitol Hill said the reaction would depend largely on the provocation used as a rationale for an attack.

"Provocation" - there's the rub. A well placed bomb...a terrorist attack...a video tape. So easy to fabricate...so easy to pull off...so easy to point a finger. Let us hope that the public doesn't fall for it again!

Who will lead the "lie brigade?" Uncle Dick of course.

Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.
Cheney, who’s long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran’s complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

Oh, sometimes he makes it so easy.

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The Democrats will never leave Iraq

We need Billy Jack today! We need Kucinich!

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Lyme explains it all

W treated for Lyme in 2006

President Bush was successfully treated for Lyme disease nearly a year ago, the White House announced Wednesday.
The condition had never been revealed until the White House on Wednesday made public the results of his annual physical exam. They said that he was treated for what they called “early, localized Lyme disease” last August after developing the characteristic bullseye rash, and that it did not recur.

Success? Let's look at some of the some complications of untreated Lyme:

Left untreated, Lyme disease can cause: * Cognitive defects, such as impaired memory Late-stage symptoms also may include: * Memory loss * Difficulty concentrating ...

Based on his prowess at processing issues, not repeating historey...W has a baaaaad case of Lyme.

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The Best Answer to our Problems...

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Green with Envy?

"That hat would go great with my cowboy boots. Wonder if he would give it to me if I promise him some more troops and weapons?"

Photo from www.Antiwar.com

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Doublespeaking our way to war!

They want bombs!

US President George W. Bush charged Monday that Iran has openly declared that it seeks nuclear weapons -- an inaccurate accusation at a time of sharp tensions between Washington and Tehran.
"It's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force. After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon," he said during a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
But Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program, which is widely believed in the West to be cover for an effort to develop atomic weapons, is for civilian purposes.
Asked to provide examples of Tehran openly declaring that it seeks atomic weapons, White House officials contacted by AFP said that Bush was referring to Iran's defiance of international calls to freeze sensitive nuclear work.
They explained that he was referring to Tehran's uranium enrichment -- a process that can yield nuclear bomb material -- and resulting worries by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Minor technicalities? In WWII it was "Loose lips sink ships." With W it's "Loose Lips and No Brains Starts a War."

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No More - II

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Kucinich taking Rummy down...

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Disgusting!

Expanded Wire Taps

President Bush on Sunday signed into law an expansion of the government’s power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects without the need for warrants.
The law, approved by the Senate and the House just before Congress adjourned for its summer break, was deemed a priority by Bush and his chief intelligence officials.

Sure give W more power and opportunities to wield that power. Great!

Are safeguards written in? Are there guarantees that this will not be used against protesters, dissidents, rivals...?

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No More!

Between August 6 and 9, the anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demand an end to the U.S. wars in the Middle East and the global abolition of nuclear weapons, starting with our own.

As carried out against Iraq and threatened against Iran, the specter of nuclear weapons in the hands of "rogue" states has become the United States' number one excuse for waging war.Yet the threatened first use of nuclear weapons remains the "cornerstone" of U.S. national security policy. The U.S. has about 10,000 nuclear weapons, is designing new ones, and is pouring billions of dollars into its nuclear weapons research and production complex! Who is threatening whom?

Sixty-two years after the U.S. killed 200,000 civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two densely populated cities, we call on groups to expose the continuing, grave and immediate threats posed to the world by U.S. nuclear hypocrisy, and to directly confront the U.S. corporations that are perpetuating and profiting from a worldwide nuclear crisis and the wars in the Middle East.

August6.org

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Rage against the machine

Cindy Sheehan's call to action:

I was at a Rage Against the Machine concert last night, watching the thousands of young people in the audience from stage right. The crowd was as filled with life as the band, and I was amazed at all the energy. I wondered if the crowd knew how socially and politically radical the words are to Rage's music, and were not just as mesmerized by the pounding music and Tom Morello's amazing guitar playing as I was. I was wondering how the peace and justice movement could harness that energy in a positive direction to really shutting down the machine that is brought to us by Boeing and The Oil and Natural Gas Council, among thousands of other companies that profit off of war, and our politicians who let the machine tell them how to govern to keep that same machine well oiled, while stealing financial and human resources right out from under the noses of families and communities. Before Casey was killed, I did not rage against the machine that has been grinding up our soldiers and murderously oppressing other populations for generations. As a matter of fact, I practically threw my own son under the wheels of the machine. Despite my vague misgivings about the machine and my desperate worry about Casey going to Iraq, I watched him leave through tear-soaked eyes and a worry-laden heart. Rage, rage, rage against that machine! Don't let it eat up you or your children because it uses our flesh and blood to engender enormous profits; and while sending our children off to war to use up their airplanes, bombs, guns, bullets, uniforms, helmets and boots, the machine is sending its children off to expensive private schools to raise more machine heads. It is impossible to bring back the lives that have been stolen by the machine, but it is never too late to save the future. I am hoping my candidacy against Nancy Pelosi in California's 8th will be able to put a little sugar in the tank of the machine. The machine is powerful and heartless, but if we all stand up to it, we can finally dismantle it this time.

The machine: the corporate state, the war machine, the "just for the elite/ruling class" mentality, the "fear" mentality, the "democracy through invasion" approach... Maybe a few wrenches need to be thrown in.

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