STRAIT OF TONKIN

So it looks like the neocons really are bent on attacking Iran and will try to manufacture/manipulate any evidence they need to create an excuse to do so. The latest, of course, was the non-event of an "attack" by Iranian patrol boats, which has now been revealed to have been greatly trumped-up by the Pentagon.

WASHINGTON - Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.

Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would "explode" in "a few seconds". Although it was ostensibly a navy production, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defense Department.

The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three US warships occurred very early on Saturday January 6, Washington time. No information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.
The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are "just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination".

Does it strike anyone else as, um, unusual that this non-event in the Strait of Hormuz was blown way out of proportion just over a month after the Iran NIE was released saying that Iran had stopped their nuclear weapons program in 2003 and were unlikely to be able to produce a nuclear weapon in this decade? Do the neocons think we're that stupid? Do they really think we'll fall for a scenario that reads almost exactly like what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin 40+ years ago, another non-event that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War which just this month was revealed to have been even more manufactured/manipulated than previously thought?

And what's with Bush kissing Saudi Arabia's ass now? Here's what I wrote about that on the Hattiesburg American forum today:

It's no accident that all this is happening while Bush is trying to kiss up to Saudi Arabia and ask them to pump more oil (isn't more and cheaper oil what we're supposedly in Iraq for?). It's Saudi Arabia that would welcome an attack on Iran (even SA's enemy Israel supports this). Iran is Shiite, SA is Sunni. Iran is moving away from the dollar, SA is clinging to it (for political reasons rather than for economic reasons).

Essentially, this falsely trumped-up Iran situation looks like Bush is demonstrating that he'll give the Saudis what they want (i.e., an attack on Iran) if they'll give us what we want (i.e., more and cheaper oil).

So let us count the ways the neocons have tried to manufacture excuses to attack Iran--we'll put this latest non-event at the top of the list:

1. Accused Iran of provoking U.S. warships using small patrol boats
2. Accused Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program
3. Declared Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be a terror group
4. Accused Iran of providing weapons to the Iraqi insurgency
5. Accused Ahmadinejad of wanting to wipe Israel off the map

And so on. What am I leaving out?

IF IRAQ INTEL WAS WRONG, WHY BELIEVE NEW IRAN INTEL?

That very interesting question was asked today on the forum of my local paper. I posted the following answer...

1) It goes against what Bush wants, i.e., some sort of conflict with Iran. If the recent NIE had said that there was "high confidence" that Iran was working on nuclear weapons, it would have been seen as merely being what Bush wanted to hear. Since the NIE said the opposite of what Bush wanted to hear, it seems more trustworthy.

2) Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which it is allowed to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Since Iran in fact ratified the treaty before the U.S. did, it seems likely that Iran is in fact developing nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.

3) Iran is aware that the U.S. military is sitting right across the border in Iraq (and special ops-type troops have been reported to be in Iran) and Afghanistan--the U.S. already has Iran boxed in to the east and the west. They know that if they were found to be developing nuclear weapons, they'd have a real problem on their hands.

4) Iran has been enduring IAEA inspections and made good-faith efforts to be transparent, even letting the IAEA visit their heavy-water reactor at Arak in July of this year.

5) The U.S. intelligence community knows it's under scrutiny and has every incentive to get it right with regard to Iran.

And so on. That's why the Iran intel seems trustworthy. Also, I should point out that before we invaded Iraq, we had a very intrusive inspection regime being imposed on that country under the threat of war. The inspectors on the ground before the war never found any WMD and said so before our invasion. And that's why the Iran NIE is trustworthy.

WHO GAVE IRAN NUCLEAR PLANS? THE UNITED STATES, OF COURSE!

Today George Bush had this to say:

"So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

For one thing, if one is interested in avoiding WWIII, one ought to tone down one's rhetoric about attacking Iran. And also toning down one's shows of force in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.

For another thing, Bush acts like he's clueless that we gave Iran plans for nuclear weapons in 2000. Did no one read James Risen's "State of War" to Dumya? Here's a little refresher:

"The CIA may have helped Iran to design a nuclear bomb through a botched attempt to channel flawed blueprints to Tehran's weapon designers, according to a new book on the US "war on terror".
In an excerpt from State of War, printed today in G2, the author and New York Times intelligence correspondent, James Risen, writes that the abortive operation misfired when a Russian defector on the CIA payroll, chosen to deliver the deliberately flawed nuclear warhead blueprints to Iranian officials in February 2000, tipped them off about the defects.

The operation, codenamed Merlin and approved by the Clinton administration, was intended to send Iranian scientists down a technological dead end, according to this account. They would spend years building a warhead which would fail to detonate. Instead, Risen writes, the operation may have helped Iran to "accelerate its weapons development" by extracting important information from the blueprints and ignoring the flaws."

BUSH IS THE "BOY WHO CRIED NUKES," Part the Second...

So today Bush says the following:

"'Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,' he told a veterans group here."

I sure wish the talking point I came up with almost a year and a half ago had been hung around Bush's neck--he's the boy who cried nukes. How can anyone still trust this asshole? How can anyone think that yet another war with a country who's never attacked us is a good idea?

Then he has the nerve to say this (from the same link as above):

'Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and the United States is rallying friends and allies to isolate Iran's regime to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late,' he said.

Iran's actions threaten world security? Can the boy who cried nukes really expect us to believe that if and when Iran is able to successfully manufacture a single nuclear warhead, that that warhead would be a threat to the U.S.? To Israel? To anyone?

Let's think about this

Let's say that right now, at this very moment, the first Iranian nuclear warhead is rolling off an assembly line somewhere. So the fuck what. Who would they use it against? Why would they immediately fire off a rocket that contains their only nuclear warhead? The Iranians are not stupid--they don't want to get in the middle of a nuclear war.

But here's the thing--every reliable estimate says there is no possible way for Iran to create a nuclear weapon before George Bush leaves office, and not even for a few years after he leaves office. Not only that, Iran says they don't want nuclear weapons--they want energy. And frankly, I don't find that so far-fetched. Who wants a bunch of nuclear weapons sitting around that cost millions and billions to build, house, maintain, etc.--oh, that's right: our stupid ass. I don't know whether or not Iran has their own military-industrial complex that constantly demands to be fed, but I'm guessing they don't, at least not on the scale of ours.

The "holocaust" Bush foresees has nothing to do with non-existent Iranian ambitions for WMD. The holocaust will be when the military-industrial-neo/theocon-complex finally gets its way and we start bombing Iran. That's your holocaust right there: a third unnecessary war that will only demand that we surrender even more civil liberties (if not all of them). Oh, and it will likely engulf the entire world in either actual war or at least economic war.

Good night and sweet dreams!

I quit my job today

I told the bastards they could go to hell. I told them to take their job and shove it--they won't have ol' LHL to kick around anymore. Hopefully my other irons in the fire will continue to heat up until they're glowing bright orange...

“BECAUSE OF IRAN”....

So as mentioned in previous entries, the New York Times reports that we have to arm the Middle East to the teeth “because of Iran.”

Let’s see, how many unwise actions has the U.S. justified over the years by saying (either in so many words or just through implication): We’re doing this “because of Iran.” If you can think of more examples, please feel free to leave them in the comments or email them to me and I will add them to the list, which follows:

“Because of Iran....”

1. We supported Saddam Hussein throughout the 80s

2. We had to invade Iraq in 2003–that’s a post-invasion justification

3. We have to stay in Iraq because if we don’t, Iran will take over

4. We’re losing the Iraq war

5. We have to put missile defense systems in Europe, to Russia’s chagrin

6. We have to sell arms to the Saudis, the people who attacked us on 9/11 (according to the official story)

I’m sure there are many more examples of this kind of warped thinking. But let’s debunk this idea that we’re forced, yes, forced into feeding the military-industrial complex all because of Iran.

Why “Because of Iran” excuses are bullshit:

1. We overthrew Mossadegh in 1953, using fake terror, fake stories in the press, etc.

2. We then installed the shah–we toppled a democratic government and replaced it with a monarchy, and the shah was not a nice ruler

3. We cut off diplomatic relations in 1979 because of the Tehran embassy hostage crisis, which was a direct result of our continuous support of the shah

4. We gave chemical and biological weapons to Saddam for him to use against Iran

5. Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entitles them to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, among other things.

6. Iran expressed great sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11

7. Bush said Iran is part of the “axis of evil”

8. In 2003, Iran offered to open a dialogue with the U.S. and put everything on the table: support for Hezbollah, nuclear programs, recognition of Israel, etc.–Bush administration ignored Iran’s advances. You can read the offer for yourself here.

Looking at these lists, surely anyone can see that what we have done is use Iran as our bogeyman, our go-to country for demonization, overthrow, and weakening. Then when they naturally react against the things we’ve done to them, we say they’re evil and the biggest threat in the world.

We say they’re violent and outrageous and can’t be trusted. However, the Iranians know that’s just projection–that the U.S. is really the state that’s violent and can’t be trusted.

MALIKI, IRAN "IN LIMBO," PAKISTAN PERMISSION

Wrote a letter to the editor last night about avoiding war with Iran, even though the House and Senate have each overwhelmingly approved amendments saying that Iran is very, very bad.

Way to go, al-Maliki! I wonder how long he will live now:

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts about his government's military and political progress yesterday, saying his forces are capable and American troops can leave "any time they want."

One of his top aides accused the United States of embarrassing the Iraqi government by violating human rights and treating his country like an "experiment in a U.S. lab."

When aides of the PM of Iraq say your behavior is embarrassing, you know we're doing some shameful shit over there. And Maliki's quote says it all: the U.S. can leave "any time they want," and that's just it--Bush doesn't want to leave. The majority of the country wants us to leave and believes the war was a mistake, but Bush doesn't want to leave. And Cheney doesn't either. That's why these fuckers must be impeached and removed, impeached and removed.


Letter to editor
Here's the letter, followed by a post I made on the forum on basically the same topic.

The Guardian newspaper has reported that “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.” On top of that, the Senate recently passed an amendment stating–with little to no evidence–that Iran is “murdering” our troops in Iraq.

Suppose for a minute that this is true. As Stephen Kinzer has pointed out, Chinese-manufactured weapons killed our troops in Korea but we didn’t invade China. In Vietnam, we knew the North Vietnamese were using weapons from the Soviet Union, but we didn’t invade the USSR. What’s so different about Iran?

What’s happening is that Bush is looking for someone to blame for his failure in Iraq, a war of aggression we should never have started in the first place. Iran fits the bill perfectly, even though Iran has not violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has not invaded any other nation, and is years away from having even one nuclear weapon.

For years now, the Bush administration has demonized Iran, laying the groundwork for war, even though in 2003, Iran offered to start a dialogue with the U.S. with everything on the table–acceptance of Israel, nuclear programs, etc. The Bush administration rejected the offer. After all, you can’t have perpetual war if you go around making friends all the time.

Any U.S. military aggression toward Iran will be unprovoked, immoral and catastrophic, both for the Middle East and for us here in this country. As James Madison said: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

For the sake of innocent people across the Middle East and our own civil liberties here at home, we must demand that the United States stay out of Iran and withdraw immediately from Iraq.

And the forum post:

Blame Bush for Osama/al Qaeda

Just like the CON-serviles around these forums like to blame Clinton for 9/11 because he didn't get Osama when he supposedly had the chance.

Well, why doesn't Bush get Osama now when he has the chance? "Intelligence" officials are saying that al Qaeda is now stronger than they were last year at this time. And these same "intelligence" officials "know" where al Qaeda (and presumably bin Laden) is--in Pakistan.

So why doesn't Bush invade Pakistan rather than Iran? There's a whole lot of noise about invading Iran, but al Qaeda's not in Iran. Tom Fingar, an intelligence official recently testified before Congress that it's Bush's policy not to go into Pakistan without their permission.

Say what? Since when does Mr. "War President" Li'l Bush have to ask permission to go kill people? Apparently, he even has to ask permission from ol' **** Blossom, who recently said "The United States has concerns about taking unilateral action in a sovereign nation without their approval.”

When he said that, the audience laughed, as well they should have.

So if we're in a "war on terror" and our main problem is al Qaeda--according to the Bushies--why won't they go get them? Because that ain't what the "war on terror" is about, don'tcha know. It's about making money and keeping George Bush in power. Oh, and indiscriminately killing brown people. Just like always.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22065811-601,00.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABP4znt2dzw
(Rove clip starts around 1:22)

WHY KUCINICH IS A BADASS



Kucinich proved almost 30 years ago that he has the massive balls it takes to stand up to the corporatocratic privatizers that want to create an "ownership society," all right. One in which they're the owners and we have to pay through the nose to get what was rightfully ours to begin with.

I wonder why more parallels weren't drawn between Gray Davis' recall and Kucinich's recall which, like Hugo Chavez, he survived. And again, like Chavez, the corporatocracy put out a hit on Kucinich (see above). But they didn't get him!

Why I'm glad I didn't vote for Lieberman (and Gore) in 2000

Because of this nonsense:

''I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,'' Lieberman said. ''And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.''

Yet Lieberman insists that we're making progress in Iraq, so we have to stay there. What an immoral, warmongering jackass.

IRAN AS AN EXCUSE...

...to find new ways to make enemies out of the whole world...

I'm kind of relieved in a way, now that I realize the Bushies know they're full of shit when they accuse Iran of "meddling" in Iraq, which of course is the ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black. How do we know this? Because of this story from the AP (so this link will be dead soon):

President Bush is defending plans to set up a missile defense system in Russia's back yard, despite the strain it has put on already-tense U.S.-Russian relations.

The president told a group of foreign reporters that the weapons system is in response to Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and that the missiles will be aimed at Iran, not Russia.

Bush wants to base part of the system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Bush is telling Putin, who correctly refers to this move as imperialism (note that I didn't use quotation marks), to "get over it." Get over it? Really?

Too bad we don't lead by example in "getting over" things. Or I should say, we only "get over" things that we can make money on. Like for example, we've never "gotten over" the fact that Cuba is a communist country, but we've really put China's communism behind us. If Russia put a missile "defense" system in South America somewhere, the right-wing freakos would never "get over it," no matter how many times Russia assured us the missiles weren't aimed at us.

And all this is happening at at time when we need to be reducing our military presence around the world, not increasing it. But I guess the military-industrial complex won't rest until there's a missile aimed at every person on earth, depleted uranium in every river, and unexploded ordnance on every playground. It's an ugly, yet highly profitable, vision of the world.

IRANIAN WEAPONS IN IRAQ? IS BUSH PLAYING THIS CRAPPY TUNE AGAIN?

I thought we had debunked this whole Iran-in-Iraq thing. Maybe the Bushies thought that the Iranian detention of the 15 Brits set the stage for people to buy this bullshit story about Iran "destabilizing" Iraq.

The best post I've read so far about it is here at Americablog. The title of the post gets it just right:

" Iran reportedly training Sunni insurgents. In related news, government is full of it."

Here's a great quote from the CNN story linked above:

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

The sheer fucking arrogance of this is unbelievable--the U.S. is the "outside interference" that did not/does not "respect Iraq's sovereignty!" Who is fooled by this utterly transparent fakery? I guess the piddly one-third of the populace who still clings to Bush and his stupid, horrible war, that's who. Oh, and of course, the media.

From the same story, here's another way you know this shit is fake:

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

Iraq and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1990 but still have a lot disputes. Caldwell doesn't given any specifics about the detainees he mentions, but one can imagine that if they're Iraqis and/or being tortured, why the hell wouldn't the Iraqis try to pin something on Iran? After all, these detainees may figure that the U.S. will leave Iraq to go after Iran, which is what people fighting againt the U.S. would like to see. So it's perfectly logical for an Iraqi detainee to blame "EFPs" on Iran.

Also, since it's probably very obvious what the U.S. forces want to hear during "interrogations," detainees--particularly if they're Sunni--are more than happy to blame something on Iran so that we'll go over to Iran and leave the detainees' domestic operations alone.

One more thing

One more quote from the CNN story:

"Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, he said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, Caldwell said."

Let's suppose that it's actually true that Iranian weapons were found in Iraq. That does not necessarily mean that it is the stated policy of the current ruling government of Iran to provide Iraqi insurgents with weapons. For all we know, insurgents go into Iran and steal weapons.

Plus, so what if Iran trains Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. doesn't own the world--Iran is a sovereign country and has a right to conduct foreign policy according to international law. Is it anymore illegal under international law for Iran to sell weapons to Iraq than it is for us to rush cluster bombs to Israel in the midst of a conflict (which I guess would mean pretty much at any time)?

PERSIAN GULF OF TONKIN...

Prison Planet asks what everyone's thinking--"Was The British-Iranian Hostage Crisis Staged?". However, the article basically seconds comments made on BBC NewsNight and exhorts people to watch it, which I started doing but the video wasn't synching very well to the audio and so forth...

I am of the mind that this event had to be staged, in the sense that the British knowingly entered Iranian waters and set themselves up to be captured in order to provoke Iran into doing something that the Brits can justify losing their cool about so that the bombing can begin.

But I admit I don't have a lot of evidence to feel that way--I just don't trust Blair/Bush. And why should anyone trust them after their outlandish claims about Iraqi WMD?

For instance, if the Brits were purposely going into Iranian waters, did they know they'd be captured and treated as well as they seem to have been treated? I would guess they couldn't know that for sure. Did they think they would be fired on by the Iranians? I'm sure they felt that was a possibility.

I mean, the Iranians have to feel threatened--the Western anti-Iran rhetoric has been building for at least the last couple of years, and now there are U.S. and British carrier strike groups doing war games supposedly in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

However, despite the threats, the Iranians have successfully thumbed their nose at Bush/Blair and basically thwarted all the neocon attempts to wrongfoot Tehran. But we know that Iran is/has been a target of the neocons and they must be getting desperate to gin something up against Iran since nothing so far has worked, i.e., the "reasonable offer" gambit or the fake "Iran-in-Iraq" dossier gambit.

So intentionally sending 15 soldiers into Iranian waters as bait to do one of the following:

1) Be taken hostage--in the planning meetings at 10 Downing St., this was probably the hoped-for scenario because a) no one dies b) it reminds the world of the '79 Iranian hostage crisis, and c) gives Blair a chance to huff and puff and go to the U.N. for--a resolution or something to be used against Iran and inch that much closer to war

2) Be fired upon and retreat/take casualties--in the planning meetings, this was second-best mostly because of the deaths or injuries involved, but also because it wouldn't put Blair on the world stage, pleading for Iran to just act right and follow international law, which will eventually make war with/bombing of Iran seem more justified in the long run. But drawing fire would've been the quickest way to get the war going.

At any rate, I have no trouble believing that these 15 Brits would do this, even with the full knowledge of what may happen to them. They're in the military--they follow orders. They want to be there--they believe in the mission. And all that jazz.


And the Iranians probably saw their chance to get back at the West but they're not stupid, so they just arrested the Brits. They were surely aware that firing on a British boat would be a very bad idea. And they of course knew that this exact same type of thing had happened in 2004 to no big fuss. But that was before Iran outmaneuvered Bush/Blair.

So was it staged?

I suspect yes, but we'll never know for sure--I can't prove it was, but there's no proof it wasn't. But at this point, it doesn't really matter whether or not this hostage-taking was staged or more accurately, I think, provoked. Now, the damage has been done--the media will unceasingly talk of this new "Iranian hostage crisis" and it will be painted as an act of "terrorism" despite the fact that the U.S. has itself taken Iranian hostages in the last few months and that the captured Brits are not civilians.

But however you look at it, this is still no casus belli. Faye Turney doesn't look as though she's been kept in stress positions or waterboarded or anything. The Iranians obviously gave her a pack of smokes. I'm not suggesting that she or any of the Britons are enjoying their captivity, but I am saying this is not something to go to war over.

IRAN: ANYTHING SEEM "FISHY" ABOUT THIS TO YOU?

Does this sound like a fisherman to you? The following sentence is attributed in quotes to a "fisherman":

"Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters."

Here's the account of who the "fisherman" is and how he came to tell the official story in one detailed yet concise sentence:

"A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from the southern city of Basra fishing in Iraqi waters in the northern area of the Gulf said he saw the Iranian seizure. The fisherman, reached by telephone by an AP reporter in Basra, declined to be identified because of security concerns."

Does that seem the least bit, um, fishy to anyone else?



Border incidents

"Border incidents" are the perfect way to start illegal wars. Especially when the border is disputed! They're a perfect excuse for starting wars! Look how effectively they were used to start the Mexican War, the Israel-Lebanon War of last year, WWII (the Gleiwitz incident--Operation Himmler), and so forth and so on.

When we will frigging learn?

DOES BUSH THINK CONGRESS IS IRAN?

Here's Bush, telling Congress that his offer to let Rove and Miers be "interviewed" without oaths or notetaking is a "reasonable" offer:

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

Bush is doing his opposite game! He knows very well that his offer is unreasonable, just like he did when he tried to get Iran to fall for his "reasonable" offer to get them to stop enriching uranium:

VIENNA (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday Iran's plan to reply by late August to a big power offer of incentives to halt nuclear work was "an awful
long time for a reasonable answer".

"It should not take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders in Vienna.

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal. I said weeks, not months. I believe that's what the other partners (say too)," he added, referring to Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.

Iran knew better than to accept Bush's bad faith deal--they told him to go fuck himself.

Will the Democrats have the same courage as Iran?

God, I hope so. This has the potential to bring down Bush's entire house of cards. Fingers crossed!

DON'T FALL FOR IRAN PROPAGANDA

That was the headline they came up with for my letter to the editor that was printed today in the Hattiesburg American. I'll post it as published with the parts they edited out in italics...

Don't fall for Iran propaganda

The Bush administration is gearing up for an attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran is "meddling" with our meddling in Iraq.

However, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons before 2015 if at all. Iran says its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, and they are entitled to pursue this course under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which they are a signatory.


In the past two weeks, the U.S. has produced supposed evidence that Iran is providing insurgents in Iraq with weapons that only Iranians can produce. However, this supposed "evidence" falls apart under the slightest scrutiny [as the weapons use devices readily available at Radio Shack or similar electronics stores and copper discs that can be produced by anyone with the proper machine tools].

Various administration officials have stated that the United States has no plans for war with Iran and no plans to attack Iran. However, so far we have moved at least two aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf which would provide us easy access to Iran.

There is no reason for us to have a military confrontation with Iran - they pose no threat to us. Iran even tried to enter into negotiations with the Bush administration in 2003 but their overtures were ignored. A war with Iran would be a disaster for our country and the Middle East, indeed, for the whole world.

We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts. Then it will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not "embolden terrorists." [This was originally one sentence which read: We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts, because if and when it starts, the fact that it has started will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not “embolden terrorists” and so forth.] I hope that everyone will urge their friends and family not to fall for administration propaganda designed to take us into another war to divert attention away from the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Clinton Kirby

Hattiesburg

Nice editing job--can't complain too much. I wish the copper disc and Radio Shack parts had been left in, but that's okay...

EFPs FROM BAGHDAD, NOT TEHRAN?

I did not see this earlier today, but apparently it is possible to make EFPs somewhere besides Iran (how stupid must they think we are?):

US troops reportedly raided a Baghdad machine shop back in November, uncovering a cache of 5-inch diameter copper disks--EFPs--obviously being produced as part of an ongoing operation. If true, this makes another pretty big hit against Sunday's presentation of evidence that Iran's Qods Force is providing "EFP kits" to insurgents.

Well, well. The plot doth thicken.

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note

I loved this poem when I was in high school, and I was thinking about it today for some reason--I always wanted to name a band "The Holes They Leave," a line from the Baraka poem below. I just did a search and discovered some of his poems online, so here it is:

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

"A LONG HISTORY IN FABRICATING EVIDENCE"

The above is unfortunately a very accurate quote from Ahmadinejad. He could be referring to, I don't know, the Maine incident. Or maybe the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He might very well be referring to Operation Ajax, which replaced the democratically-elected (for Iran, anyway) Mossadegh with the repressive Shah. He could be referring to 9/11. Or he could be referring to Iraq's non-existent WMD. Or any number of other such incidents.

And now, we've proven him right again, with the release of this Iran-in-Iraq dossier, with its fake evidence that provides the basis for fake claims intended to get us into a very real war. The dossier falls right in line with all of the above-mentioned ploys.

The good news is that neither the public nor the media seem to be falling for it--at least not as much as they fell for the claptrap about Iraq. Many are speculating that this newfound skepticism will force the hand of the neocons to manufacture some sort of "terrorist incident" along the lines of 9/11 or the Bush plan of painting a US plane in UN colors and tempting Iraq with it. This seems plausible to me--maybe even probable.

Prosecute the dossier fabricators?

But I'm curious about something else--does this fake dossier evidence violate any laws? Is there any way to prosecute anyone (from the president on down) involved in this scheme to deceive the public? If not, how can we keep this kind of thing from happening over and over again?

I'm afraid it isn't possible to prosecute anyone for such acts, simply because of the difficulty of proving evidence fabrication beyond a reasonable doubt when "national security is at stake." I would imagine that every time a prosecutor would request some piece of evidence from the government, they'd claim that providing it would be a breach of national security and stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Bullshit infrared sensors

So maybe the best offense is a good defense. All of us need to keep our bullshit detectors--or, active bullshit infrared sensors, if you like-- on high alert 24 hours a day and expose junk like this as soon as possible, and as accurately as possible, forever--or until the fabricators catch on that pulling a fast one on the public is gonna be more work than just telling the truth.

IRAN: PASSIVE INFRARED SENSORS, ETC.

Nemo over at Entropic Memes has yet another brilliant post on the fake dossier put out a couple days ago by the U.S. government.

Nemo left a comment on my last post about the ubiquity of passive infrared sensors, which were fingered by the unnamed U.S. briefers as being one of the devices that supposedly proves that these EFPs are being manufactured by Iran (and only by Iran). A Newsweek story on the briefing puts it thusly:

The Iranian fingerprint, these officials claimed, was in the pieces used to manufacture the EFPs, as well as the usage of the infrared triggers. "Some components are solely found in Iran," the senior defense official said.

Now I originally read this as the senior defense official saying that the infrared sensors were the component of EFPs that are "solely found in Iran." That's not what exactly what he said, obviously, but in the dossier, the claim is made that "Passive Infrared Trigger (PIR) tied to Iran" (on page 9).

Nemo correctly points out that PIRs are widely available, and don't just come from Iran (see comment in last post below). Now perhaps the senior defense official meant to convey that the use of PIRs in roadside bombs is what is uniquely Iranian. But he didn't say that either, that I'm aware of.

Here, for example is a website of an American company that is marketing PIRs for use in Automatic Pedestrian Doors. Here is some of the text on their website:

Passive Infrared Sensors

Passive Infrared Sensors are used for the activation of Automatic Pedestrian Doors. This technology has been successful where other types of sensors have been troublesome. These sensors are not vulnerable to wind blown debris, extraneous radio signals or adverse weather conditions.

Passive Infrared Sensors detect persons or objects, which have a surface temperature difference of at least +/- 2°C compared to that of the scanned zone and which are moving at a rate of at least 10cm per second. Both movement and temperature difference are required for detection.

Bircher-Reglomat remains on the cutting edge of IR Technology providing the Automatic Door Industry with safe, reliable sensors that come in the most compact housings available in today's market, making Bircher-Reglomat products the best solution for automatic door applications.

Kudos to Nemo, who is doing yeoman's work on this fake evidence that's being used to try to railroad us into a war with Iran.

IRANIAN WEAPON UPDATE

Looks like the media are being less credulous this time when the government is trying to drag us into a war. That's great!

I think the blogosphere has determined that where the Iran-in-Iraq briefing is concerned, these are the most relevant points:

1. The weapons probably were made in Iran.
2. That doesn't mean that Ahmadinejad or the Supreme Leader authorized giving them to Iraqi insurgents--this is what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said.
3. The weapons very likely were sold or given to Hezbollah to fight Israel in Lebanon. Israel may have recovered some and shared them with us--just in case we wanted to start a war with Iran or something like that.
4. The weapons could have other origins.

These conclusions deal mostly with the mortar rounds picture in the dossier. I haven't read much about the infrared triggering devices--I would guess that it's highly unlikely that those are made only in Iran. But again, I don't know that for a fact.

P.C. ROBERTS IS RIGHT: THE DOLLAR IS OUR WEAKNESS

Great piece by Roberts. I'm not sure that the average American is hip to this--I say that because I wasn't until recently. But he makes great points, in this piece called "How The World Can Stop Bush: Dump The Dollar!:

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime's military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime's two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the "sole superpower" myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government's ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America's will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran.

And the first part of the piece is really informative as well...

EVERYONE IS POINTING OUT...

...how this whole Iran dossier reeks to high heaven. Like Newshog and his merry band o'commenters.

And now General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is not toeing the line on this supposed evidence:

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this," he said. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

That's basically what Bill Scher said today on the Sam Seder show and at Liberal Oasis:

1. Just because a weapon is made in Iran, doesn't mean the Iranian leadership sent the weapons in.

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jack Reed, who sits on the Armed Services Cmte, was asked "how solid is the evidence":

"I think the evidence is confused ... The question is: is this a deliberate policy of the Iranian government at the highest levels. Is it rogue elements within the government?
And then the other question is: to what extent are there countervailing signals that the Iranians actually are trying to ... not ... further raise the stakes in Iraq.

So it's a very complicated situation."

Reporters at yesterday's briefing backed up Reed's skepticism.

NYT's James Glanz was at the briefing. And he noted that hard evidence was lacking:

The officials also gave fresh details on recent American raids ... in which they said members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or the Qods Force, were picked up and accused of working with extremist groups to plan attacks on American and Iraqi forces.
Because the elite Qods Force is involved, a senior military analyst said, the American intelligence community believes that the weapons shipments have been approved at "the highest levels of the Iranian government."

Still, no direct evidence was presented of how the intelligence community has made that link.

MORE IRAN WEAPON MARKINGS INFO

From the blog "Entropic Memes," which I was thankfully alerted to in the comments. The writer makes a very good observation--on page 11 of the Iran dossier, there is a picture of a mortar casing that was supposedly made in September 2006 and seized in Iraq on September 9, 2006.

While that scenario is not out of the realm of possibility, it certainly seems unlikely.

The writer also links to a site that shows artillery cartridges from various countries. Some Iranian cartridges do in fact have Farsi rather than English markings (on p. 57, for example).

From "Entropic Memes":

"I’m extremely skeptical about the printing on the mortar tubes; if the date codes follow the widely-used standard of mm-yyyy, then the rounds on the left on this page, which were supposedly seized in central Iraq on September 9th, 2006, are a week old or less. Come on, do those look brand new to you?"

Another excellent point the writer makes:

"That brings me to a second point: If you discount the “9-2006″ mortar tubes, the other weapons with date codes in the report, even if “found” in January 2007, were made between March and May, 2006. In other words, they were made before the July-August 2006 conflict in Lebanon. If you were intent on waging war with Iran, the Iranian-made weapons seized by Israel from Hezbollah could be used (and abused) as “evidence” of Iranian involvement in the insurgency. If not, there’s nothing to prove they didn’t come from Hezbollah themselves, who certainly have an interest in furthering the civil war in Iraq."

Very nice work--you should check out the post. Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out!