The Crazies Almost Got Us Into A Nuclear War With China

NeCons should be deported or something..

These people are NUTZ!

Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide
By Jeff Stein,
CQ National Security Editor

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.

The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson’s account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials.

Under the deliberately fuzzy diplomatic formula hammered out between former President
Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong in 1971, the United States agreed that there is only “one China” —with its capital in Beijing.

But right-wing Republicans in particular continued to embrace Taiwan as an anticommunist bastion 125 miles off the Chinese coast, long after their own party leaders and U.S. big business embraced the communist regime.

With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, some of Taiwan’s most fervent allies were swept back into power in Washington, particularly at the Pentagon, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

They included such key architects of the Iraq War as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, and Steven Cambone, Rumsfeld’s new intelligence chief, Wilkerson said. President Bush’s controversial envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, was another.

While Bush publicly continued the one-China policy of his five White House predecessors, Wilkerson said, the Pentagon “neocons” took a different tack, quietly encouraging Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian.

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”

Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”

“This went on,” he said of the pro-independence efforts, “until George Bush weighed in and told Rumsfeld to cease and desist [and] told him multiple times to re-establish military-to-military relations with China.”

Routine military ties had been suspended in early 2001 after China forced a U.S. reconnaissance plane down on Hainan Island off Vietnam.
Strong Denials

Feith, now teaching and working on a book at Georgetown University, responded that Wilkerson’s “remarks are not even close to being accurate. They are phrased so vaguely and sweepingly that it is impossible to deny them with precision, but they are not right.”
Rumsfeld’s former spokesman Lawrence DiRita called Wilkerson’s allegations “completely ridiculous—clear and simple . . . absurd.”

“The idea that there was some kind of DoD attempt to favor some faction in Taiwan, as described by Wilkerson ... is just crazy,” DiRita said in a brief telephone interview.
Wilkerson told a similar story in a recent critical biography of Rumsfeld by Washington-based British journalist Andrew Cockburn.

He elaborated on the episode during a May 7 panel, organized to discuss the controversy over Iraq intelligence at the University of the District of Colombia, as well as in subsequent conversations last week.

“It was a constant refrain of they said one thing, we said another thing for months on end,” Wilkerson said by e-mail. “They said, ‘Don’t worry, you are our allies and we will defend you—regardless.’ We said, ‘Do worry—if you declare independence, we may not be there; so be quiet and let sleeping dogs lie. . . .’ ”

Rewriting Bush

Another key character in the minidrama was Therese Shaheen, the outspoken chief of the U.S. office of the American Institute in Taiwan, which took on the functions of the American embassy after the formal 1979 diplomatic switch.

Shaheen, who happens to be DiRita’s wife, openly championed Chen and the independence movement, at one point even publicly reinterpreting Bush’s reiteration of the “one China” policy, saying that the administration “had never said it ‘opposed’ Taiwan independence,” according to a 2004 account in the authoritative Far Eastern Economic Review.

“Therese Shaheen . . . said don’t sweat it, the president didn’t really mean what he said,” Wilkerson said.

Coming from the wife of Rumsfeld’s spokesman, Shaheen’s remarks sent off angry alarms in Beijing.


Powell asked for her resignation.

Douglas Paal was then head of the American Institute in Taiwan, effectively making him the U.S. ambassador there. He backed up Wilkerson’s account.

“In the early years of the Bush administration,” Paal said by e-mail last week, “there was a problem with mixed signals to Taiwan from Washington. This was most notably captured in the statements and actions of Ms. Therese Shaheen, the former AIT chair, which ultimately led to her departure.”

Now retired, Paal said he, too, “received many first- and second-hand reports of messages conveyed to Taiwan by DoD civilians and perhaps a uniformed officer or two during that time that were out of sync with President Bush’s position.”

DiRita defended his wife, saying “she understood U.S. policy and executed it to the very best of her abilities and wasn’t trying to play games with” Taiwanese independence forces.

“That was always kind of a mythology of what happened over there,” he said.


Mushroom Clouds

“They are dangerous men who will lie about almost anyone or anything,” Wilkerson angrily responded by e-mail, singling out Feith, DiRita, Cheney and Rumsfeld for scorn.

He called back-stage encouragement of the Taiwanese “even more serious” than the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, because it could provoke China to attack the island, triggering a U.S. response and the world’s first nuclear shooting war.

The independence issue, agrees China experts Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon, is Beijing’s third rail—touch it and you die.

“Even if the odds are fairly low of miscalculation leading to war, and war then bringing in the United States, this scenario is scary,” they recently wrote in The Washington Times.

A Taiwanese declaration of independence, they said, “could result in the first major war between nuclear weapons states in history, with no guarantee it would be successfully concluded prior to a major escalation.”

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Huffing and Puffing In Wingnutia

Right Wing Itches to Strike Iran
By John Tirman, AlterNetPosted on May 26, 2007,
Printed on May 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/52384/

The case of Haleh Esfandiari's imprisonment in Iran is sparking the kind of commotion that periodically grips America's intellectual class and, more ominously, is providing reasons for America's right wing to attack Iran.

Dr. Esfandiari, 67, was born and raised in Iran but has spent much of her professional life in the United States, now as the much-respected director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a leading think tank in Washington, D.C. At the end of a visit to her ailing mother in Tehran last winter, she was detained. She was recently arrested and is now in prison awaiting trial. A citizen of both America and Iran, she has been charged with trying to foment a "velvet revolution" in Iran -- soft, nonviolent regime change. She and everyone associated with her deny the charges.

Editorials have been lambasting Iran's Intelligence Ministry, which many see as responsible for this, and a number of important public intellectuals are calling for action. Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and a specialist on the region, wrote in his highly regarded blog, Informed Comment, "I had been planning to go to a conference in Iran in July, hosted by some French scholars, but I have cancelled in protest against this detention of my friend. I don't see how normal intellectual life can go on when a scholar at the Wilson Center can't safely visit Iran."

A boycott was rumored but apparently is not actually afoot, as Ali Banuazizi, the eminent scholar at Boston College and past president of the Middle East Studies Association, told me. "Boycotts punish too many innocent people," he says, "but letters and statements send a signal."

A strongly worded letter that Banuazizi helped craft and is signed by a Who's Who of Iran scholars in the United States, protested the arrest and imprisonment, rightly noting that "in her capacity as the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, Dr. Esfandiari has been a staunch advocate of peaceful dialogue between Tehran and Washington in resolving their disputes."

Noam Chomsky, possibly the most influential intellectual in the world, also weighed in with a sharp rebuke, as have several others.

As if on cue, the hard right in the United States has tried to exploit the Esfandiari arrest to ridicule cooperation and dialogue. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Reuel Marc Gerecht, an American Enterprise Institute fixture who describes himself as belonging to the school of "suspicious, cynical, hawkish and religiously oriented analyses of the Islamic Republic," argued that those seeking to have some dialogue with Iran are getting their deserved comeuppance in the Tehran regime's treatment of Dr. Esfandiari.

The arrest is undeniably troubling, as was last year's arrest and long detention of Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Canadian intellectual, and detentions of many others, including the Open Society Institute's representative in Iran last week.

Beyond the simple human rights considerations, there are two other aspects of this grim matter that deserve mention. First is the way in which the intellectual elite in this country pick and choose their battles. Haleh Esfandiari, whom I know, certainly deserves the protest being stirred on her behalf. But we have many cases of abuse of freedom of travel and speech -- some committed by the U.S. government -- that gain little notice. Why some and not others? To some extent, the protest in effect reflects U.S. policy preferences and the drumbeat of anti-Iran media coverage in this country.

More important, however, is how the case is becoming fodder for the attack-Iran posse. As Chomsky says in his statement, "These actions [by Iran] are deplorable in themselves, and also are a gift to Western hardliners who are trying to organize support for military action against Iran. Now is a time for diplomacy, negotiations and relaxation of tensions, in accordance with the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians, as recent polls reveal."

The U.S. Navy is conducting extensive exercises in the Persian Gulf, what William Arkin tartly calls "dumbboat diplomacy," but is clearly meant as a signal that the United States is ready to strike. Bush is proposing new sanctions to punish Iran for its alleged nuclear activities. A covert operation by the CIA to degrade Iranian financial assets and step up anti-cleric propaganda was revealed last week by ABC News, another set of actions -- among many reported -- to bring down the regime. In the political game in Washington, "Bash Iran" is a free card used by nearly everyone to look tough on foreign policy.

In this hostile climate, some elements in Tehran are in effect saying, "We want nothing to do with America," and they are sending that message with harsh actions. Engagement by American intellectuals, athletes, NGOs and cultural groups has proceeded for several years now and can be viewed as, at worst, harmless and, at best, beneficial toward building bridges of dialogue. It was precisely such activities during the Cold War that lowered tensions and empowered a peaceful conclusion to that far more dangerous confrontation.

Very few serious analysts of the situation in the Gulf believe that hostile American action will result in a more placid outcome. Many in the U.S. military are vehemently opposed to air strikes, not least because of the catastrophe in Iraq. The Tehran state is sturdy and, like it or not, democratic in many respects. The NGO and academic engagement must continue, just as we must continue to object strenuously to unwarranted arrests. Neither tactic, however, is aided by Washington's contemptible and counterproductive strategy of regime change.

John Tirman is executive director of MIT's Center for International Studies.

2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Plan for War and Hysteria-mongering

Drums of War and Orchestrated Hysteria about Iran
by Rodrigue Tremblay


"And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
William Shakespeare (from "Julius Caesar")

"Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other."
Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826), 3rd US President

"The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant."
Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, acceptance speech


I have believed for quite some time now that once the Bush-Cheney tandem reached a dead-end in Iraq, as was amply predictable, they would try to save face and camouflage their failure by raising the ante and launching a new war of aggression against Iran, all the while wrapping themselves in the flag. For that, see my article of April 16, 2006, where I wrote (after the disaster in Iraq): "Bush may thus be tempted to raise the ante and go after Iran to reclaim his 'Commander-in-Chief' mantle." I would add now that the Bush-Cheney duo want to complete what they started in Iraq during the few years they have left before them. Most military experts believe that Iran can be contained militarily. But, make no mistake about it; the main rationale behind the pressures being exercised upon Iran at this time has little to do with concerns about weapons of mass destruction, but a lot to do (as in 1953 when Mossadegh was overthrown) with this country's oil reserves and how it uses them. Regime change in Tehran; that's what the Bush-Cheney administration is after.

As to war preparations, the current situation resembles what prevailed during the fall of 2002, when lies and misinformation were used all over the place (by the administration and by the neocon press) to stir up passions against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Today, the objectives are the same and the tactics used are also the same. Indeed, the same forces are at work in the same two countries—the U.S. and Israel—to exaggerate the military threats posed by Iran and to attempt to link Iran to the al-Qaida terrorist network in order to justify an attack. There is something very pathetic about the rage with which the pro-war lobby is beating the drum for military action against Iran, and the Bush-Cheney administration's musings about using nuclear weapons of mass destruction.. It is political madness in action. But why is such madness occurring seemingly only in these two countries?

The first thing to be understood is that all these wars in the Middle East have been planned for more than ten years by a small group of Washington Neocons who penned a document, in 1996, calling for such wars, in order to balkanize the Middle East for Israel's sake and to allow American companies to take control of the enormous oil reserves present in that part of the world. In 1996, in a report on strategy prepared by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (a think-tank created by AIPAC) and titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," future advisors to the Bush-Cheney administration (Perle, Feith, Wurmser, etc.) proposed "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," and then to go on "engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran."

The Clinton administration refused to embrace fully this incendiary strategy, but large campaign contributions behind the scheme and promises of an oil bonanza persuaded oil-men Bush II and Cheney that American military power could be used profitably to implement the neocon plan. That is why, after 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration requested a blanket approval Resolution from the American Congress to take control militarily and reorganize politically the entire Middle East. The senators reduced this mandate to Iraq, but the Bush-Cheney intentions were crystal clear: Total domination of the entire Middle East

The second overlooked reality is the tight grip the pro-Israel neocon establishment holds over the Bush-Cheney White House, both sides of Congress and the American corporate media. For years now, not only the American Neocons but also the Israeli government itself has demanded that the U.S. attack Iran. Its Lobby has spearheaded the campaign. In Colin Powell's words, the 'JINSA crowd' at the Defense Department, which is full of transferees from the neocon Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), has been most active and effective. What's more, we have been warned: Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said it: "2007 (will be) the decisive year,” to deal with Iran. —He might be proven right. He made this comment just after he talked, on January 21, (2007) with visiting U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns. Besides, the Israeli government has usually gotten what it wanted from the Bush-Cheney administration, even if it meant committing the United States to a disastrous policy.

Just as for the Iraq war, the coming Iran war will be orchestrated by the same Neocons, and will also be a product of a campaign led by the Israeli government and its all powerful fifth column in America. On November 15, 2006, for example, Israel's outgoing U.S. ambassador Danny Ayalon seemed to have been privy to Bush's intentions: "U.S. President George W. Bush will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program." — On January 21 (2007), chief Neocon and former director of the U.S. Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, Richard Perle, made it very clear when he said: "If all options were exhausted in the attempt to stop the Iranian nuclear project, and US military involvement was needed for a successful strike on Tehran, President George Bush would give the green light for the operation."

American politicians of both major political parties also seem to trip over each other in their rush to go to Israel and declare that their country, the USA, should attack Iran. In the last two months, a host of presidential candidates did just that, from John McCain, to Hillary Clinton, to Mitt Romney, to John Edwards, all pledging allegiance to a pre-emptive defense of Israel with a war of aggression against Iran. The last in line is former Senator John Edwards a Democratic presidential candidate who, in a mid-January trip to Israel, also established his own credentials for becoming president by declaring: "Americans can be educated (sic) to come along with what needs to be done with Iran." And, to be sure he is well understood, he added: "All options are on the table to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon."

And third, less we forget, a war against Iran has also been promoted by Bush's Christian fundamentalist supporters. The latter meet frequently in the White House to discuss foreign policy, and some are openly praying for a coming Armageddon that they see happening soon.

And that is where we stand today, after the disastrous 2003 American-led war against Iraq, the murderous, American-supported Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, and now, with the table being set for an American-initiated war of aggression against Iran, possibly involving the use of nuclear weapons. This is all part of a grand Middle East neocon plan that we see slowly unfolding under our very eyes.

We may ask, who is happy with all these successive illegal and immoral wars of aggression? Answer: the Israeli government, its sycophants in the U.S., the arms industry and certain big oil interests who have already mapped their foray in the region, plus George Bush's wild-eyed fundamentalist supporters, for whom an attack on Iran is just what God has ordered.

Who is unhappy? The young Americans who are sent half way around the world to die or be maimed, and their families left behind; the people in the Middle East, who are bombed and massacred and who see their countries destroyed and their resources stolen; the American taxpayers, who are footing the obscene bill for these whimsical and imperialistic wars; and the entire world population who look on, unbelievingly, to this return to calculated barbarism and lawlessness, and who witness, powerless, the destruction of the United Nations.


Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

God, Help Us!

Well, duh..this all seems so damned obvious to most of us and has for many of us, for a very long time.

...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere....

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst....

Are full of passionate intensity...And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Y. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

In the Vietnam-War era, which was the crucible of activism for my generation, we had a devil of a time trying to get the Democratic Party to recognize the necessity for withdrawing our troops from that ill-advised, unwinnable war. With regard to Bush's misadventure in Iraq, it turns out not all that much has changed. The midterm election and many polls since have clearly demonstrated that Americans recognize that Bush's Iraq policy is and has been a thoroughgoing disaster -- from taking us into war based on lies and deceptions to the way the Occupation has been totally mismanaged. Our troops are now caught in the middle of a brutal sectarian civil war. But the Democrats appear to be divided about how to proceed: give Bush one last chance to "win," whatever that may mean, or start pulling out our troops while we still can with at least a shred of dignity.

Given this situation, the time for politeness, for speaking around the truth, is gone. Civility yes, holding one's tongue, no. Not while more and more young Americans are dying in Iraq, 3000 to date, with an estimated 25,000 maimed; not while up to 3000 innocent Iraqi civilians are being slaughtered every month; not while billions of dollars each month (half-a-trillion! total so far) are being siphoned from the U.S. treasury, and vital social programs, to pay for this moral monstrosity of a war. And definitely not while CheneyBush are determined to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops into Iraq's civil-war hellhole.The "surge" scenario is one written to satisfy the Administration's political goals, not one expected to change much on the ground in Iraq, which is why so many military leaders are opposed to it. Clearly, the "surge" is a public-relations, fig-leaf operation to cover Bush's embarrassing exposure of mendacity and fecklessness.

"REPUBS ARE NERVOUS ABOUT BUSH'S "SURGE"

If we all spoke something like the truths discussed below, our words would not change the minds of the Bush Bunker crowd; they've set their course, and intend to stay that course. But such truths surely are catching the attention of Republican powers-that-be and office-holders, who saw what happened to their ilk in the midterm elections over the Iraq issue. They would like to keep their jobs and influence in 2008 and perhaps have a shot at getting back in power. It will be those Republicans who are best able to get the message through to the Bush Administration on the necessity for drastic changes in policy -- only a small chance of that happening -- or, even more far out, to get Cheney and Bush to resign. Definitely not going to happen. If it comes to it, they seem willing to take the country and Constitution down with them.With no major foreign or domestic victories to his credit, Bush's legacy is Iraq, and he doesn't want to leave office with yet another "loser" sign slapped on his back. Ergo: the "surge," one last attempt to stabilize the stalemate in Iraq. Best-case scenario for the Bushistas: something, anything, that can be called a "victory." Alternative best-case scenario for Bush: The "surge" takes two years to fully unfold, and the inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq happens on the next President's watch.For the Bush Administration, those two alternatives would be a win-win, and to get there our brave young men and women in uniform will just have to "sacrifice" -- in many cases, their lives -- for the Bush cause.So here are five truths that need to be aired, and their implications:

1. THE USUAL: IGNORING REALITY

CheneyBush and their cohorts have decided to ignore the voters with regard to Iraq, ignore the military, ignore the troops, ignore the allies, ignore the experts, ignore reality on the ground in that country, and are moving America full-speed over the cliff of catastrophe. As Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden suggested the other day, the Bush Administration is willing to sacrifice thousands of more young American troops as long as it delays the inevitable U.S. retreat from Iraq until after the 2008 election. And, to sweeten the pot, Bush -- per usual, years late and smarts-short -- is advocating a jobs program for young Iraqi men. Might have worked in 2003, ain't gonna work in 2007. The Bush-botched situation is way beyond that now, deep into outright sectarian warfare.

2. THWARTING THE CHENEY-BUSH POLICY:

Since CheneyBush and their court lackeys are determined to try to stalemate the war in Iraq for another two years, and have the power to do so -- fully aware that Iraq is a lost cause (see Biden link above ) --there are only three ways to stop them.A. Cut off funding for the escalation. Speaker Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha are flirting with this idea of putting restrictions on the use of appropriations for the Iraq War. This in order to make sure that funds are spent for the drawing down of U.S. troop levels, rather than for the introduction of more soldiers. And, to avoid the charge of "not supporting our troops," the Democrats will continue to fund the soldiers currently in Iraq.Congress could pass a bill requiring that the Administration consult with the appropriate committees before major shifts of policy occur in Iraq. Bush might veto, or ignore, such a resolution, of course, but at least he'd be on the record as impeding the effort to close down a war that the American public, in the election and in poll after poll, has decided is not worth continuing.B. Impeach Bush and Cheney for their high crimes and misdemeanors, which would include their lying and deceiving Congress and the American people into supporting the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq and the escalation of the war in 2007.Impeachment may or may not have traction at first, but it will grow as the congressional committees, chaired now by Dems, hold hearings on Bush policy and corruptions; besides, if the Administration is forced to deal full-time with impeachment, they will have less time and energy to focus on getting involved in mischief elsewhere. C. Refuse to participate in this politically-motivated escalation of the Iraq War. Rather than waiting to be fired for indicating that the "temporary" surge (which rightwingers correctly define as at least 18 months and probably longer) is a reckless, doomed idea, let there be mass resignations at the Pentagon, with the generals and colonels publicly denouncing the escalation madness.To stanch the flow of increasing opposition, Bush and Cheney have cleared the Administration's decks of anybody but pro-escalation loyalists; Generals Abizaid and Casey, both of whom have questioned the wisdom of escalation, are gone, and perhaps the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly are leery of implementing a politically-motivated "surge," may be on the chopping block next. Public support for the "surge" is at about 11%; not even Bush's base is buying in. Republican politicians already are out there with their opposition, and it's not just conservatives Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman anymore. Hard-Rightists Ollie North and Heather Wilson, for example, also have come out against Bush's "surge" scam. As that snowball of public opposition rolls down the political slope, more Republican leaders will have "cover" to denounce CheneyBush's war policies. More troops in-country or those ordered to Iraq likely would refuse to participate in a war the generals themselves -- as well as many of their civilian bosses in the Administration -- have abandoned as unwinnable. The refusal of Lieutenant Ehren Watada to return to Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg of resistance inside the officer corps, and among the rank-and-file troops as well: Hundreds of on-duty soldiers have signed a petition calling for "redress," urging the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq.

3. IRAN IN THE CROSSHAIRS:

It's clear that the neo-con goal of changing the geopolitical face of the Middle East, by threat or use of force, remains in place as the operating principle of the Bush Administration. Iran and maybe Syria are still in the crosshairs. If the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities does not happen in the next few months, either by the U.S. and/or ally Israel, it is being planned for before Bush leaves office. This may explain why an admiral is taking over the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, supplanting Abizaid at Central Command: the navy will be tactically important in any move on Iran.

4. CHENEY-BUSH POLICY ENDANGERS AMERICA:

Not only is CheneyBush policy endangering our national interests abroad -- U.S. actions are the best recruiting tools for expanding extremist jihadi ranks -- but America's military is stretched way too thin for the country's good. The Reserves and National Guard are being overused in Iraq to the point of angry frustration and exhaustion, and Army/Marine recruiters are told to get new bodies into the training pipeline however they can: huge bonuses, lowering the moral and educational and psychological requirements, going abroad for foreign soldiers for hire -- even, I kid you not, asking those already slain in battle in Iraq to sign up for a new hitch! (Yes, of course, the last named was a bureaucratic screw-up, but symbolically it seems quite in keeping with the Bush Administration's overall tendency to FUBAR whatever they touch.)

5. OUR FREEDOMS ARE ENDANGERED SPECIES:

Our freedoms, supposedly what we're fighting to protect, have been snatched from us, mostly in secret, by the Bush Administration. The concept of habeas corpus -- of justifying to a court why someone has been arrested -- is dead. The right to a jury trial: dead. The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment (i.e., torture): dead. Attorney-client confidentiality: dead. Guaranteed access to a lawyer: dead. Right of privacy in one's home: dead. Letter and email privacy: dead. And so on. All these police-state actions are in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Articles of the Bill of Rights. Under a cockamamie theory that a president can ignore or violate laws whenever he claims he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime," Bush has: authorized secret "disappearances" and tortures of suspected "terrorists," including American citizens; has established a network of secret CIA prisons around the world; has authorized "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries that specialize in especially brutal torture. Police agents can enter your home, tap your phones, peek into your computer and emails (and now snail-mail) -- and are not required to present a court warrant or even tell you that you are being subjected to an investigation. The Constitution is in shreds.

The Republican Party for most of its modern life (especially after Waco) has been vehemently opposed to the federal government amassing too much police power in its hands. But this White House crew these days is after as much power as it can get its hands on -- and is aided in this by their GOP lackeys in Congress and in the corporate-owned mass-media -- and has created huge bureaucracies to snoop and spy on its own citizens.

SO WHAT'S TO BE DONE?

Ordinary Americans have to see politics less as a once-every-election activity and more as an ongoing, daily campaign to save our country. That means actively opposing the worst of CheneyBush policies, of course, but it also means constantly letting Democratic leaders and our members of Congress know how we feel about their vacillations and timidity; we must hold their feet to the fire and demand that they truly act differently than the Republicans -- not just with regard to Iraq but to a whole host of domestic and foreign issues, where all too often they have caved in the past and let Karl Rove and his minions roll all over them.No more. The issues for which we're fighting are far too important for us to slip back into our lethargic, let-someone-else-do-it mode. Keeping democracy alive and well ultimately is up to us, each of us. In the Vietnam-War era, five different presidents were told by their national-security experts that there was no chance for the U.S. to win a stalemated war with guerrillas in that country, but those presidents persisted in the disastrous folly anyway. More than 54,000 U.S. troops and an estimated two million Vietnamese died in the slaughter before the Americans conceded that they had made a terrible error. Unless the Democrats, and the rest of us, step up now to stop Bush's nonsensical escalation of the Iraq War, a similar catastrophe awaits. The Democrats have to be warned in no uncertain terms about their responsibilities with regard to rescuing our troops in Iraq. Either act as an authentic Opposition Party should, or risk being abandoned in 2008 by the activist base that returned them to power. Perhaps the prospect of the incumbent Democrats reverting to non-relevancy, with the Republicans back in the majority with their boots once again on the Dems' necks, may finally concentrate their minds on what American voters sent them to Washington to do.

Copyright 2007 by Bernard Weiner

More Proof That Ideology Is A Mental Disorder!

Perhaps, we should call it cirrhosis of the brain; a condition in which deep ruts form in the cortex, causing knee-jerk reaction to anything which challenges the world view of the owner of said brain, and the executive function of the brain is severely impaired, unless the person sticks with a clearly defined thinking pattern, and talking points, delivered from on-high.

Another term for ideological brain damage could be aplastic, executive brain function.

People with this mental disorder should be prevented from holding high offfice in this country!



Neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol believes that any increase of U.S. troops in Iraq must be a permanent increase to achieve success.


There's no point having a short term surge," Kristol said on Fox News Channel. "Especially, if it's proclaimed ahead of time that it's just short term. Then [the enemy] goes into hiding for 3 or 6 months."

"We pull back and we're in the same situation," the Weekly Standard editor said. "Bush will commit -- I believe, when he speaks in a couple of weeks -- to doing this. That this is a strategy for victory and that he's willing to do this for the remaining 2 years of his presidency."

(He is willing to do just about anything to dump this mess in the lap of the next President. Karl is telling him it will be a Democrat, and do the Rovians ever have plans for him or her.)

Forecasting the president's plan for Iraq, Kristol adds, "I think [Bush] will say 'We can win. We have to win. We're going to increase troop levels as part of a new strategy for the sake of victory.' And, so, it will not be a short term surge."

(Yeah, more like a heave, after a bit to much New Years celebration.)

Kristol respects the president for increasing troops against conventional wisdom in D.C. and against the wishes of public sentiment, but mocks the majority of people that have doubts about a troop increase, saying, "This is a remarkable moment, though. I came to Washington 30 years ago. How often does a president go against -- what Juan referred to -- the wider consensus in this town, 'the military solution isn't possible?' It's a very broad consensus of the establishment and, I think, that's why there's so much anger among the establishment-types. 'Gee. The Baker-Hamilton Commission pronounced its verdict. And how dare the president make up his own mind and decide that he's not just going to just gracefully accept defeat with this nice bi-partisan patina of the Baker-Hamilton Commission. How dare he decide that we might win in Iraq."

(Mr. Kristol, how can you be such an idiot. Do you not believe in the wisdom of the "group conscious," especially when it has finally awakened from a fear and deception induced coma? )

Kristol praises the president's embrace of the neocon-preferred Iraq plan and compares him to President Reagan, saying, "It's nice to see a president showing leadership and courage. It reminds me that the only time I've really seen this was Reagan at Reykjavik [talks] in 1987.

(God, what an incredible ass!)

He turned down Gorbachev's -- what was thought to be, a very generous offer. You remember this well -- to get rid of so many weapons. And Reagan said, 'No. We're not getting rid of SDI [aka Star Wars]' He went against the bipartisan consensus, the conventional wisdom. He was right and this time Bush is going to do it. It's impressive. It's impressive to take charge in this way."

(He was not right. The cold war is not over, in case you haven't noticed, and a new arms race has already begun. Reagan, when he finally saw the light, tried to halt the cold war (or as some of us call it the nuclear threat) and was greatly aided by Gorbachav.) They are both to be commended, but their great effort has been sabotaged by the current fools who threaten the planet.

Juan Williams thinks that it may be too early to praise President Bush for an expected increase in Iraq troops. Expressing his doubts, Williams says to Kristol, "So, you can dress up the fact that [the president] might be wrong, but he might be wrong. And he's been wrong. One of the theories here, if you wanted a troop increase, it should have been done several years ago. And we have tried it, Fred. You say I'm wrong but, Fred, this has been tried -- to secure Baghdad -- this is not a new idea. We tried it and it didn't work.

( Why the hell isn't this simple fact being mentioned more often: We have incresed troops before, and to little or no avail, except the PR of yet another election in Iraq. Elections do not a Democracy make, as we have learned here, recently, in our own country.)