An original article by Madhoosier;

The Bush administration’s impending attack on Iran has always been about Saudi Arabia, Israel, oil, and regime change. Iran’s supposed nuclear program was just a convenient excuse for the attack.

America’s disintegrating economy, the plunging dollar, and a probable blowout by the democrats in 08 make a Bush administration attack on Iran an almost certainty, Bush will attempt to create his own scapegoat to blame for the mess his policies have created by attacking Iran.

What I expect to happen now that he can no longer use Iran’s nuclear program as an excuse is that we will get a new round of propaganda from the administration; “Iran is arming Iraqi militias with Explosive Formed Penetrators and they’re killing our soldiers” or a false flag incident which “America must respond to protect our honor.” Either way there is no way Bush is going to give up on attacking Iran. Israel wants it, the Saudi Royal family wants it, the American Neocons want it and with Halliburton’s new digs in Dubai within missile range of Iran, Halliburton wants it.

Now that the NIE says Iran is not making a nuclear bomb the question becomes “Will Bush start a war of aggression that is blatantly illegal? And if he does, does that mean that he has quit pretending to observe the rule of law? And if he is no longer even bothering to pretend to observe the rule of law will he implement full blown fascism, declare a State of Emergency, implement National Security Presidential Directive 51 and cancel the 2008 elections?

The damage Dick Nixon did to the republican party is miniscule compared to what Bush and Cheney have done during their seven year crime spree, if they go out of power and are no longer able to cover up their many misdeeds and the American public learns the extent of their crimes the word bush will become a swear word. Bush and Cheney have always governed with the mentality of tin horn dictators and after drinking the nectar of power for seven years I doubt they are going to give up the juice cold turkey.

Since we now know that this administration’s stated need for an attack on Iran was horse manure we need to ask what the real reason is: The Neocons need to attack Iran because there are two basic models of society, in the Neocon model of society the resources and labor of a society benefit a tiny minority while the majority live in poverty. In the other model of society the wealth is more evenly distributed, the largest class is the middle class and there is a small minority of both wealthy and poor. Since the fall of the Shah of Iran Iranian society has tended toward the second model of society, and serves as a good model especially when compared to the Saudi model of society where the royal family lives with unimaginable wealth while the average Saudi citizen has seen no improvement in their standard of living for over a generation.

The second reason for an attack on Iran is to provide another shock like 9-11-2001 so Americans will accept that there is no longer a middle class in America. The largest investment of most members of the middle class is their home and the value of that investment is probably going to shrink by at least half as food and energy costs skyrocket as the housing bubble pops like a balloon on a county fair dart board.

After never calling for any sacrifice for either the Afghanistan War or the Iraq War now Bush plans to use the Iranian War as the excuse for the economic plight of America’s middle class.

And because our conventional troops are allready exhausted from the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War America’s attack on Iran will be with the only unused part of our military; nuclear weapons. If Bush uses nuclear weapons (his only option) to attack Iran, going completely outlaw, he will also attempt to implement fascism here at home.

The NeoCon Endgame to Control the World

An Original Analysis by Madhoosier

It has always been obvious that implementing the NeoCon agenda would bring ruin to the overwhelming majority of people for the benefit of a tiny minority. The policies of the NeoCons are to bring not just the United States but the entire world under their control. The NeoCon bible “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” states that no nation shall be allowed to challenge American hegemony. With Russia’s vast energy resources and China’s rapid economic expansion both are poised to do just that. At the same time the predatory economic policies of the NeoCons have nearly destroyed America’s middle class and their international policies have greatly weakened the United States. Since the domestic policies of the NeoCons were designed to transfer the wealth and power of America’s middle class and working poor to the elite there is little doubt that the premier thinkers among the NeoCons have a domestic endgame strategy. We are now seeing their endgame with America’s trend toward Fascism and in the following article I will expose what I believe is the NeoCon endgame for control of the world.

Real Men Go to Tehran

The continuing saber rattling towards Iran and the MSM meme of critical stories toward both Russia and China are in preparation for the main international play in the NeoCon endgame: The NeoCons plan preemptive nuclear attacks on Russia and China’s nuclear arsenals and use nuclear attacks on Iran to secure their oilfields for exploitation by the giant western petroleum corporations.

The lesson the NeoCons learned in Iraq is that when you try to steal the natural wealth of a nation the citizens of that nation get pissed off, even if they were oppressed under the dictatorship that you toppled. Iran, which has a partially elected and reasonably popular government, has no reason to greet American attackers as liberators and after seeing the catastrophic disaster the Americans created in Iraq the people of Iran would no doubt resist an American attack with every possible means, this is one reason why the American attack on Iran will be an attempt at nuclear genocide.
The talk of using “tactical nuclear weapons” and “nuclear bunker busters” is the cover story for this premeditated genocide.

Two facts of geography make a conventional air attack against Iran very difficult, Iran commands the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz with an arsenal of anti-ship missiles, positioning aircraft carrier attack groups in the gulf for an attack on Iran would be criminally negligent because thousands of American sailors would die as their ships were targeted by these missiles. The only military tactic that I’m aware of to defeat these anti-ship missiles would be to carpet nuke an area the size of the state of Illinois along Iran’s gulf shore. This is also another reason for nuclear genocide. (America’s oldest aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk, stationed out of Japan, and scheduled to be replaced in 2008, operated in the Bay of Bengal, only a few days’ sail away from Iran, on maneuvers, the first week of September, 2007.)

The second fact is that most of the targets in Iran are over 1,300 miles from where aircraft carriers could launch an attack from the northern Arabian Sea and American pilots would be over enemy territory for nearly 2,000 miles of the round trip. Iran has state of the art Russian anti-aircraft defenses, an attack on Iran using conventional forces and weapons would cost dearly in downed American aircraft, carpet nuking Iran is a means of avoiding these air defenses and is another reason for nuclear genocide.

While much of America’s military is exhausted from repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s arsenal of nuclear tipped ballistic and cruise missiles remains completely intact, an incident on August 30th where six nuclear armed cruise missiles were “accidentally” shipped from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, the Iraq staging base, suggests that America’s nuclear arsenal is being deployed to the Middle East.

As the government of Nuri al Maliki in Iraq disintegrates, leaving a power vacuum, the United States could just ignore Iraq’s prohibition of attacks on Iran from Iraqi air bases, further weakening al Maliki, this would pave the way to install a minority Sunni government aligned with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states of the gulf region when Iraq’s Shia turn on their American allies after the attack on Iran.

Additionally there are not enough troops to follow up on a conventional attack on Iran, the real reason Bush announced a troop reduction in Iraq is that there aren’t enough troops to maintain the surge there, let alone any for Iran. Because Bush exhausted the conventional Armed Forces in Iraq Bush is forced to use nuclear weapons for an attack on Iran, yet another reason for nuclear genocide in Iran.

The International Politics of Attacking Iran

Two of Bush’s closest international allies very much want Bush to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, the Saudi Royals and the Likudniks of Israel. The Saudi Royals fear that since a Sunni dominated Iraq has been destroyed there is nothing to prevent Iran from dominating a Shia crescent that would stretch from Iran to Jordan and would include some of Saudi Arabia’s largest oil fields. The Likudniks have defined Iran as an existential threat to the nation of Israel.

Because the United States has maintained economic sanctions against Iran since the American Embassy hostage crisis of 1979/1980 Iran has became a strong economic ally of both Russia and China, both of which have massive investments in Iran. Russia is building the nuclear power generating plant at Bushehr that is at the center of much of the Iranian nuclear development controversies. China has invested extensively in Iranian energy development and imports a lot of Iranian energy.

The type of attack that has been bandied about in the pro-Bush press, with over two thousand sites targeted for bombing, would destroy much of the economic investments of both Russia and China in Iran. Because of the strong economic relationships between Iran and Russia and China there is a high probability that they would retaliate against an American attack on Iran. Because there is a real danger of retaliation from Russia and China it’s probable that an attack on Iran would be accompanied with a preemptory attack on Russia and China by the United States. In “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” they state that no nations shall be allowed to challenge American hegemony and with Russia’s extensive energy resources and China’s economic expansion both will to do just that if current trends are allowed to continue.

I know that many of you are thinking “What about Mutually Assured Destruction?” or MAD, the doctrine that an attack on any nuclear power would assure that the attacker was also destroyed.

Unfortunately last year the in the NeoCon Council on Foreign Affairs’ magazine “Foreign Affairs” there was an article published that postulated that the era of MAD had ended and that the United States had nearly achieved “Nuclear Primacy” and that an American first strike would destroy nearly all of Russia’s ability to retaliate with a nuclear attack on the U.S.

Here are a couple of the key paragraphs of the article and a link to the article.

Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come...

...For 50 years, the Pentagon's war planners have structured the U.S. nuclear arsenal according to the goal of deterring a nuclear attack on the United States and, if necessary, winning a nuclear war by launching a preemptive strike that would destroy an enemy's nuclear forces. For these purposes, the United States relies on a nuclear triad comprising strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and ballistic-missile-launching submarines (known as SSBNs). The triad reduces the odds that an enemy could destroy all U.S. nuclear forces in a single strike, even in a surprise attack, ensuring that the United States would be able to launch a devastating response. Such retaliation would only have to be able to destroy a large enough portion of the attacker's cities and industry to deter an attack in the first place. The same nuclear triad, however, could be used in an offensive attack against an adversary's nuclear forces. Stealth bombers might slip past enemy radar, submarines could fire their missiles from near the enemy's shore and so give the enemy's leaders almost no time to respond, and highly accurate land-based missiles could destroy even hardened silos that have been reinforced against attack and other targets that require a direct hit. The ability to destroy all of an adversary's nuclear forces, eliminating the possibility of a retaliatory strike, is known as a first-strike capability, or nuclear primacy.

Given the repeated times the Bush administration has cherry picked facts and ideas that happen to agree with their policy goals is there any doubt that this article was immediately given the status of gospel handed down from God?

http://tinyurl.com/rq3sc

The Domestic Politics of Attacking Iran

One of the biggest the influences in American politics is the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee which lobbies Congress and the White House on Israeli political issues. While AIPAC is not a political action committee and doesn’t contribute directly to campaigns they have a heavy influence on campaign contributions, from Wikipedia;

Pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. ... Between the 2000 and the 2004 elections, the 50 members of AIPAC's board donated an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political action committees.Politicians that openly speak out against an attack on Iran will face recriminations when trying to raise contributions and will lose votes come Election Day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Isra...

One of the biggest voting blocks in American politics is the Christian Fundamentalist voting block. These people have made the “Left Behind” series of novels instant best sellers, my local Wal-Mart piles hundreds of copies by each entrance whenever a new novel in the series is released. Here’s what Jerry Falwell had to say on the “Left Behind” series; "In terms of its impact on Christianity, it's probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible.” In the uberviolent Left Behind series the world is wracked by nuclear war and conflict and many of the followers of this brand of Christianity actually hope for nuclear war as a necessary prerequisite to the second coming of Christ.

The Bush administration has used fear as a potent political tool since the attacks of 9/11 but since they’ve failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice using the specter of bin Laden to bring fear to the heart of their base also reminds people that the man responsible for the attacks of 9/11 is still free. By raising the specter of an Iranian nuclear bomb the Bush administration creates a new boogie man to bring fear into the hearts of their base.

The Economic Motivations for Attacking Russia, China and Iran

While many of Bush’s supporters favor an attack on Iran for religious reasons there are other reasons an attack on Iran might be advanced by the NeoCons, as I noted at the onset of this article the policies of the NeoCons harm the majority to benefit a tiny minority. Those policies have now come to fruition, with the middle class and working poor now feeling severe economic hardship. Inflation is far worse than the so called “core economic numbers” indicate, prices for food, energy, health care, are skyrocketing while the value of the largest investment of most of the middle class, their home, is disappearing as the housing bubble has burst and housing values are in freefall in many markets. An accurate measure of unemployment would double the rate currently published by the federal government. The transfer of the wealth of the middle class to the elite is a direct result of Neoconservative economic policies but a war with Iran gives the Bush administration a scapegoat for the economic woes of the masses, after an attack on Iran Bush will finally call the financial plight of most Americans “their sacrifice for freedom.”

Yet another reason for the NeoCons to attack Iran is seen in the September 18th tax policy speech by democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, Obama called for a five hundred dollar tax credit for one hundred and fifty million Americans, noting that income from labor is taxed at nearly twice the rate of income from investments, he then called for tax equality, called for closing corporate tax loop holes, called to end tax shelters, and called for the repeal of the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest top one percent of Americans. The NeoCons know that should someone like Obama be elected many of the policies to transfer wealth to the elite will be reversed. War with Russia, China and Iran would give President Bush the excuse to declare a National Emergency then implement National Security Presidential Directive 51 which effectively transfers all federal authority to the executive branch of government. Then Bush would attempt to cancel the elections of 2008.

Even in the corporate owned main stream media the “R” word, recession, is gaining traction. Thanks to the economic policies enacted by the NeoCons, and the trade policies enacted before they took power, the economy of the United States is plunging toward a recession or depression. The value of the dollar against the Euro has dropped by nearly half and the supply of dollars has been growing at an unsustainable pace for years. The price of the dollar against the Chinese Yuan is pegged by the government of China at an artificially high rate helping to create the trade imbalance that has allowed China to amass vast quantities of American dollars. (Even though China has allowed the Yuan to devalue nearly 15% against the dollar that rate is still artificially high.) Should China decide to unload these dollars suddenly the value of the dollar would plummet, the price of imported goods like oil would skyrocket sinking the American economy to a deep depression.

Ending trade with China would create jobs in the United States, an attack on Russia would likely take much of the Russian energy off the market, propping up oil company profits even during a world wide recession, and a broad based nuclear attack on Iran would leave their oil fields free for the taking. The western economic model of corporate capitalism would be installed as the only economic model on the planet and the fruits of the bounty of the planet would be concentrated into the hands of the western elite. With America’s military now in control of the resources of the planet the few remaining holdouts, like Chavez in Venezuela, would have no option but to follow the dictates of the United States.

The Implementation of Fascism in the United States

Since this section of this article could fill volumes I’ll not attempt to cover the many diffrent affronts to the Bill of Rights and the rule of law under the Bush administration, instead I’ll concentrate on the changes in American society that make the implementation of Fascism easier today than in times past.

Right wing talk radio is possibly the most threatening when you consider that the genocide in Rwanda was facilitated through hate speech broadcast on that nation’s radio stations. The listeners to Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing radio spectrum add up to forty million listeners that after having listened to their radio heroes deride liberals for more than a decade consider liberals to be anti-Americans, anti-Christian, anti-gun (and therefore powerless), dupes of the liberal media and unworthy of any respect what so ever. I have little doubt that a call to oppose an antiwar protest with violence would turn out a large number of right wing Dittoheads willing and able to carry out acts of violence against liberal protestors.

A second threat to civil society can be found in the explosive growth of the private “Security Industry” that include companies like Blackwater that are very right wing, have heavy political influence, are extremely profitable, and are largely unrestricted by the rules that apply to police. These forces can be brought into an unfamiliar community that they have no emotional connection with like the local police. They are also staffed with people who’ve seen the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan up close and have military backgrounds in addition to their new chosen profession as mercenaries. As former soldiers and mercenaries their inhibitions to kill other humans have been weakened and given their choice to become mercenaries it’s likely that they aren’t defending any lofty ideals beyond their own bank accounts.

A third threat to the rule of law in our communities is the degree that local police departments have been militarized, with the equipment of a SWAT team and that of a rifle company having become virtually identical. In the aftermath of 9/11 local police departments have obtained armored personal carriers, high powered sniper rifles, remote controlled robots, and a host of other high-tech weaponry. A second indication of the transition to a police state can be seen with the roll of policemen becoming administrators of instant punishment in cases like the recent tasering of an overzealous questioner at a John Kerry speech. Just as the military draws an inordinate amount of authoritarian personality types to its ranks so does the police profession. The era of limiting police powers ended with the election of Dick Nixon who started the war on drugs which has caused police powers increase at a steady and alarming rate. After 9/11 policies once thought unthinkable like black bag searches have become standard operating procedure.

Finally nuclear war on the scale needed to destroy Russia and China’s nuclear arsenals would be all of the excuse needed by the regime now occupying the White House to declare a National Emergency and implement National Security Presidential Directive 51 which transfers federal authority to the executive government giving Bush the ability to cancel elections, and crack down ruthlessly on political protest. Corporate owned companies like Blackwater could be employed to break up protests that local police might hesitate to quash because they’d be moving against their friends and neighbors. Right wing talk radio is also available to give marching orders to the dittoheads providing another means to quash dissent and Halliburton has allready built a series of concentration camps that only lack occupants to revive the tactics of Hitler. And there is little doubt that corporate America would back Bush’s declaration of a National Emergency since congress as the only counterbalance against corporate power would cease to exist.

The only possible check against America adopting full fledged Fascism is the courage of the America people to actively protest against an attack on Iran and to demand that the democrats in congress stand up to President Bush.

The prognosis for democracy in America is poor.

A while back, BP America honcho Stephen Elbert made a telling remark about all the furor stirred by the company's plans to dump more pollution into Lake Michigan. "We are a lot of things," Elbert said. "Stupid, I hope, is not one of them."

On Thursday BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone proved that. He announced that his company would do the smart thing: It won't discharge more pollution into the lake.

But Malone added a warning: The company could be forced to cancel the $3.8 billion expansion project to process more heavy crude oil from Canada, if it cannot be done under the old limits.

The rest of the story;
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...

By madhoosier,

Thirty five years ago, on June 8th, 1972 one of the world’s most famous photos was taken by Nick Ut of nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a naked little girl fleeing after her village of Trang Bang had been napalmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Th%E1%BB...

The already famous photo of a distraught Paris Hilton in the back seat of a Los Angles Police cruise was photographed thirty five years to the date later by the same Nick Ut, on June 8th, 2007

A. P. caption of that photo; “Paris Hilton is seen the window of a police car as she is transported from her home to court by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles on Friday. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) “

“http://www.680news.com/news/entertainment/...

This week a new policy was announced to news photographers in Iraq. Photos of wounded soldiers will no longer be published unless the photographer has a signed release from the wounded soldier.

Here’s a quote from photographer Michael Shaw from an article he wrote on The Huffington Post on June 6, 2007 on the new policy.

“What you're looking at, I'm afraid, is a potentially historic image.

Specifically, the photo above -- taken by embedded photojournalist Michael Kamber two weeks ago during a fateful patrol in search of missing American soldiers -- could well become the last visual evidence of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.

In a message to colleagues earlier this week, Michael shared his personal thoughts about the new military restrictions on photographing American wounded in Iraq. He writes from Baghdad:
The embed restrictions have tightened up considerably since I was last here. You now need written permission from a wounded soldier to publish his photo if he is in any way identifiable. and even if his face is not visible. If unit insignias or faces of others soldiers are visible, that also disqualifies a photo from being used, according to one of the highest-ranking PAO's in Iraq. As I'm told, the wounded man's family can figure out who he is from the other people in the picture.

I was on an operation last week that suffered five casualties including one KIA. One soldier was temporarily blinded and put on a plane to germany. Should I have asked him to sign a piece of paper giving permission to use pictures he can't see as he's lying on a stretcher in great pain?”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw...

Here is the comment madhoosier posted to Michael Shaw’s article when it was reprinted on Common Dreams;

“There have been so many journalists killed in Iraq that out of respect for the dues that profession has paid I won’t fault the journalists.

My wrath for the men in the chain of command who placed these restrictions in place however is without limit. If the true purpose was to protect the families of the wounded a 24 or 36 hour embargo on transmitting the photos would more than protect a soldier’s family until the military had notified them. These regulations serve one and only one purpose; censorship. The next time you hear an officer say one freakin word about America’s freedoms you can know he’s spreading propaganda instead of truth.

To the journalists I would suggest that when they are sold the next pack of lies like the Jessica Lynch story or the Pat Tillman story by the chain of command that they file a formal complaint to the Sec. Def. and report on it continually till every aspect of the story is in the public domain.
The troops in the field have paid far too high a price for the mismanagement of this war of choice; the time to hold their commanders to account is long past.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/0... /

Had the new photo policy in Iraq been in effect on June 8, 1972 in Vietnam do you think America would have seen the terror in that poor child’s face?

By Madhoosier

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Peter Pace, the President of the United States top military advisor, resigns, while the U.S. is fighting three wars and CNN covers Paris Hilton being transported to a hearing with the Judge that sentenced her to jail for 45 days. You've got to be kidding me.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated the reason for Pace to step down (the papers to nominate him for another term had already been drawn up) was that the renomination hearings in Congress would have been too “contentious.” Congress had indicated that they'd question the conduct of the war (seems reasonable as the conduct of the war to date has been a catastrophic failure) but Secretary of Defense Gates wanted to look forward, not backward. How often has the Bush administration made this exact mistake? Pace’s term ends in September of 2007, which also happens to coincide with the reevaluation of President Bush’s surge policy in Iraq.

It has been widely reported that there would be no attack on Iran so long as Pace was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as in this quote from a timesonline article from Feb. 25, 2007.

"But General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said recently there was “zero chance” of a war with Iran. He played down claims by US intelligence that the Iranian government was responsible for supplying insurgents in Iraq, forcing Bush on the defensive.

Hillary Mann, the National Security Council’s main Iran expert until 2004, said Pace’s repudiation of the administration’s claims was a sign of grave discontent at the top.

“He is a very serious and a very loyal soldier,” she said. “It is extraordinary for him to have made these comments publicly, and it suggests there are serious problems between the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...


It should be noted that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Armed forces serves at the pleasure of the Commander in Chief, President Bush. It is also of note that this announcement happened while Bush was overseas for the G-8 conference and virtually out of reach from the press.

It was also announced that General Pace was to be replaced by Admiral Mullen, another Navy man like Admiral Fallon, Commander of CentCom. the theater that includes Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

It has long been questioned why Admiral Fallon, whose area of expertise was air warfare, would be placed in command of two ground wars. One would wonder why now a Navy man is nominated for Chairman of the Joint Chief while America is fighting two ground wars and the Global war on Terrorism. Did al Qaeda get a Navy?

Barbara Starr, CNN's Pentagon correspondent did note during CNN’s limited coverage of the story that Admiral Mullen was an expert on the Middle East and “kept a close watch on Iran.”

An original article by Madhoosier.

On this Memorial Day we’re encouraged to remember those who have served and sacrificed for their country, this year we can add America’s Intelligence Gathering Community to those thoughts.

Friday, May 25th Special Council Patrick Fitzgerald filed a memorandum in the I. Lewis Libby sentencing process for lying and obstruction of justice during the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame’s covert status in the CIA. The Plame outing also compromised the Brewster Jennings and Associates covert weapons of mass destruction intelligence gathering organization. No specific details have been released on the impact of destroying the covert cover operation but informed sources suggest that a very large and important intelligence gathering organization was destroyed and deaths of covert operatives or their contacts ensued in the aftermath of Robert Novak’s public disclosure.

If this breach were the only affront to the intelligence gathering capacity of the United States from this administration they would be guilty a grievous affront to the nation’s security in destroying the Brewster Jennings covert intelligence gathering apparatus.

However the Valerie Plame-Brewster Jennings and Associates is but one of MANY EGERGIOUS BREACHES OF VITAL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING CAPABILITIES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THAT ALL FIT TWO SIMILAR PATTERNS.

FIRST, THE BREACHES OF INTELLIGENCE SOURCES;

Breach # 1; In December of 2001 the Bush administration released a video tape of Osama bin Laden talking with a crippled Saudi Sheik about the attacks of 9/11/2001. The stated purpose of the release of the tape was to prove to the Islamic world that bin Laden was indeed responsible for the attacks. The tape had been filmed by a Saudi Arabian agent that was attempting to set up an operation to take out bin Laden. By releasing the tape the Bush administration tipped bin Laden of the Saudi operation causing bin Laden to change security methods preventing bringing bin Laden to justice.

Breach # 2; To justify a bogus amber terror alert* a few weeks before the 2004 elections National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice disclosed information on an arrest in Pakistan that lead to the disclosure in the press of the identity of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani computer expert and communications agent for the highest levels of al Qaeda. After Khan’s arrest the Pakistanis had turned Khan into becoming a double agent, giving them a direct window into the inner workings of al Qaeda. Imagine had this source been allowed to come to fruition bin Laden’s location might well have been determined and the plans of al Qaeda could have been disrupted. *(The alert on financial centers in New Jersey and New York was based on information that was over two years old found on one of Khan’s captured computers.)

Breach #3: According to leaked intercepts of Ahmed Chalabi a drunken senior government official told the NeoCon darling Chalabi that the NSA had broken the Iranian diplomatic code and the code breakers at the NSA were reading the diplomatic dispatches to their embassies around the world. Chalabi, who sat with Laura Bush during the 2003 State of the Union address, promptly told the Iranians who then stopped using the system we’d compromised. I have little doubt that the combination of hardware, software and human input in cracking the Iranian diplomatic code cost the American taxpayers many many MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. What’s Chalabi’s most recent job, aside from being Iraq’s Oil Minister? Promoting President Bush’s Baghdad surge.

There is also no doubt that when news of the Iranian diplomatic code intercepts broke every nation on the planet reviewed their communication and encryption systems.

Like in the Valerie Plame, Brewster Jennings breach, not one person has been disciplined by the Bush administration for the breaches in the Khan case, the Chalabi case, or the bin Laden tape case. All of these breaches of national security advance the cause of Bush’s endless Global War on Terrorism, and all of these breaches have reduced America’s abilities to gather accurate and timely intelligence on America’s adversaries.

Advancing the NeoCon foreign policy agenda of regime change requires faulty intelligence that other nations presents a dire threat to America’s security. The Bush administration's pattern of compromising America’s intelligence gathering capabilities to advance their un-American NeoCon agenda crosses the threshold of treason.

An original article by Madhoosier, aka H. Kevin Cloyd

With a 28% approval rating and less than two years left in their presidency Bush and Cheney know that a turn around in the polls is impossible since their dismal popularity is a direct result of the policies they have implemented. They’ve given tax cuts to millionaires while they’ve mortgaged our children’s future, they’ve deployed America’s military to do the bidding of the Israelis and the Saudi royal family and they’ve bastardized America’s government into a republican political tool. But even with this abhorrent record there are still worse things left undone on their “to do” list; Iran is poised to become the preeminent Islamic power in the Middle East as a direct result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the Neocons simply will not allow Iran to assume the roll they’ve reserved for the Saudi royals.

Within the next few days a third American aircraft carrier will arrive in the Middle East, the U.S.S. Nimitz will join the U.S.S. Stennis and the U.S.S. Eisenhower as part of a rotation to allow the Ike to return to the U.S. Accompanying the carriers are dozens of American warships armed with the largest concentration of missile firepower in the history of the world. Since the Nimitz left San Diego April 2nd there has been no mention of the naval buildup in the Middle East in America’s corporate owned media. The buildup of naval power is significant because all of America’s allies in the Middle East have refused to give the U.S. permission to use airbases in their countries for an attack against Iran (although they did accept American Patriot anti-missile missiles to guard against missile attacks from Iran.) I fear that the rotation of carriers is really a buildup of naval power for the long promised attack on Iran.

An attack on Iran would be completely outside the boundaries of International Law. Since Tehran is at least 600 miles from America’s aircraft carriers an attack with aircraft or cruise missiles would allow enough time for Iran’s political and religious leadership to disappear into Iran’s vast countryside. If the purpose of an attack on Iran is regime change then the first wave of the attack will probably be with ballistic missiles in an attempt to take out Iran’s leadership, these missiles will, in all probability, be tipped with nuclear weapons. These so called tactical nukes are as much as ten times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of W. W. II. The United States affront to international law would dwarf Japan’s breach of law at Pearl Harbor.

The clues of the coming attack are limitless, Divine Strake, the trial run bombing campaign in Lebanon, the naval buildup in the Middle East, McCain’s “Bomb Iran” quip, Dick Cheney’s day after Thanksgiving rush to Saudi Arabia, the President’s January 10th speech where the Patriot missile deployment to America’s Sunni allies in the Middle East was announced and the President’s saber rattling toward Iran went into overdrive, leaks from the Pentagon that Bush had demanded plans be made to bomb Iran, the leak that any terrorist attack on American interests anywhere would be used as the excuse for the attack on Iran, then there’s the little Neocon ditty “Anybody can go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran” and the biggest clue of all, America’s surge into Baghdad, a policy that makes no sense at all unless you expect an attack from the Shia militias aligned with Tehran.

How does it make sense to burn the side that isn’t blowing you up in Iraq to appease the Saudi royal family, the same old friends that have threatened to openly support the same Sunni insurgents that have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of American casualties? Apparently in Bush Bizarro World it does.

To describe the Bush administration as reckless is an understatement, so far there have been repeated prolonged visits to the White House by a male prostitute. Dick Cheney has shot a man in the face. It’s widely reported in the underground press that the once dry drunk W. is back on the juice. During the first seven months of the Bush administration, while the threat of a terrorist attack was an extreme concern to America’s counter terrorism professionals President Bush set a record for vacation days. During this same time period then Attorney General John Ashcroft quit flying on commercial flights because of an unspecified “risk assessment.” The President told the Aug. 6th National Security briefer “You’ve covered your ass.” upon the delivery of a briefing entitled “bin Laden determined to Strike in U.S.” The President has crashed his bicycle repeatedly, once bowling over several of London’s finest. And the President and his Neocon advisers have started a war in the Middle East, based on a case of premeditated lies that they now seek to expand because they are powerless to stop it. Were it not for the deaths of over a half a million innocents their accomplishment would be suitable fodder for the next generation of comedians.

The international repercussions of an attack on Iran are nearly limitless, first a quarter of the world’s oil will stop- flowing through the Straits of Hormuz and skyrocketing energy prices will cause a world wide depression. The dollar will fall as nations dump their holdings of dollars. China and Russia are not going to stand by and watch the United States hijack the petroleum resources of the Middle East, while they probably won’t retaliate militarily they may economically. Further American intervention in the Middle East could cause domestic trouble for Musharraf in Pakistan, the real potential source for a nuclear bomb falling into the hands of terrorists.

Religious war between the Shia and the Sunni could spread across the Middle East with the high probability that virtually all oil from the region would quit flowing? Hugo Chavez in Venezuela would also cut off supplies of oil to America.

Then there are the domestic repercussions of war with Iran. American casualties in Iraq would explode as formerly trusted Iraqi Shia turned on their former American allies. Iran’s anti-ship cruise missiles have a high probability of inflicting serious damage to America’s war ships in the bathtub sized Persian Gulf and Iran has at least a dozen cruise missiles stockpiled for every American warship in the Middle East. The combination of massive American casualties coupled with the massive anti-war rallies that an expanded war would generate are a recipe for a bloodbath between the anti-war protesters and the right wing war supporters. In Rwanda hate radio was a major factor in spreading the genocide, in America right wing talk radio has the potential of inflaming its dittohead listeners into unprecedented violence. Also many left wing organizations have been infiltrated by police agencies since 9/11 and these infiltrators acting as agent provocateurs are virtually guaranteed. Finally as the Los Angles police department on Monday demonstrated America’s finest have no qualms about beating the crap out of innocents.

Since the likely scenario for the attack on Iran involves the United States using ballistic missiles in a surprise attack there is also the Constitutional crisis of having President Bush start a war without Congressional consent (as opposed to acting in self defense). The overdue Constitutional crisis between the Unitary Executive and the Congress could no longer be avoided. With America’s Supreme Court packed with ultra-right wing judges God only knows what absurdities they’d rubber-stamp.

Another probability is that President Bush will declare Martial Law, ban war protests, and round up anybody that violates the ban. In addition to these arrests thousands of additional Federal prosecutions will be levied against left wing activists using minor tax violations, trumped up drug charges, alleged pornography violations, and any other violation of the law, no matter how flimsy, that would be able to provide a federal arrest warrant to justify rounding up the left and locking them in jail. The recent dismissals of the United States Attorneys may well have been motivated by the need to place rubber stamp USA’s in position to argue that massive arrests are legal and send the message to the rest of the USA’s to lock’em up and throw away the key.

At a 28% approval rating the Bush administration is backed into a corner, instead of placing the Republican Party in a position to dominate America’s politics for a generation the grand dreams of the Neocons appear to have had the opposite affect. They now have nothing left to play but their endgame, which will be far worse than anything we’ve seen so far.

An original article by madhoosier, aka H. Kevin Cloyd

There is a definition of a Hoosier that goes like this; a Hoosier is somebody dribbling a basketball around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while looking for mushrooms. As the pleasant days of spring approach talk in Indiana turns to mushrooms, specifically morel mushrooms, with reports of finding the little grays now filtering in from central Indiana and some of the big yellows showing up in the southern third of the state. It is commonly accepted that Indiana has three species of morel mushrooms, the little grays, the big yellows and the horsetails, also called peckerheads due to their resemblance to...

It is also commonly accepted that mushrooms appear overnight completely grown; the phrase “popping up like mushrooms in the spring” is common vernacular.

Some of my earliest memories are of hunting mushrooms on the family farm in Tippecanoe County, the floor of the woods covered in maple and oak leaves, patches of may apples scattered through the woods. Trips usually started by going directly to last year’s patches to see if they had produced any mushrooms before the general scouring of the woods. Dead elm trees, usually spoken as two words, "deadelm trees" were always explored for something about the conditions under a recently deceased elm tree is favorable to morels. As a rule of thumb once the bark starts to fall off the dead elm tree it no longer produces many morels.

Traditionally the little grays are cut in half lengthwise, rinsed, allowed to soak in lightly salted cold water so any bugs are removed, the water is drained off, the mushroom is allowed to dry off then is rolled in flour and fried in butter, bacon grease or lard. In my family mushrooms were often accompanied by pounded round steak (also rolled in flour and fried) but a mess of crappies or T-bone steaks broiled over a bed of coals from corncobs were also favorites. The big yellows are prepared the same except they are cut into strips lengthwise. The big yellows followed the little grays by two or three weeks but very often were found in the same patches as the little grays.

In the spring of 1995 I was working on the yard of my newly built modest little home in Wabash County when I discovered a patch of the big yellows under a deadelm tree by the edge of my yard. Four hours later nearly a hundred big yellows graced my refrigerator and a couple of hours after that a mess of crappies were ready to be filleted. The Wabash County property didn’t have a reputation as a great mushroom producer but an outbreak of Dutch elm disease had killed off most of the elm trees the two previous years.

In 1996 as the pleasant spring weather approached hopes grew for another harvest of morels, in late April I spotted a few little grays where the big yellows had been found the year before. My niece was supposed to visit from the city the next day and as these mushrooms were just off the edge of the yard I thought I’d let her pick them, early the next day, after surveying the landscape to make sure nobody saw me I checked the mushrooms and they were still fine, so when the phone rang and my niece canceled the visit the mushrooms were spared the frying pan for another day. A shower that evening provided a nice drink for the mushrooms but once again my sister canceled the visit, after making sure nobody was looking I checked out the mushroom patch again. After this pattern of my niece or her mom canceling the visit repeated a couple of more times, my regular checkups on the morels disclosed that they had grown ever so slightly. As a week or so passed my little gray morels were now pretty good sized gray morels, in fact soon they were as large of a gray morel as I’d ever picked. As another week passed the pale gray was replaced with the warmest shad of yellow and my little gray mushrooms were now five times the size they were as little grays.

As the pleasant days of spring turn into the truly hot days of summer the growth period of morels ends, and anytime during the growing season a spell of dry weather will cause the morels quality to diminish rapidly, and while I’m sure that there are some individual critters that have discovered the tasty morel most learn that eating random mushrooms is not wise, so really the only critter to worry eating your morels roams the forest upright on two legs.

Morels are now harvested for market, and wholesale above $15.00 a pound with retail prices in excess of $25.00 a pound additionally there are reports of morels selling for over $65.00 dollars a pound in foreign markets. Professional mushroom hunters think nothing of poaching and know which woods are owned by absentee owners. There is now talk of gang violence including murder in the harvest of morels where finding a big patch of mushrooms can return several hundred dollars on a good afternoon. There are also ethnic tensions in the harvest of morel mushrooms as they have become a favorite in many Asian communities that aren’t often in contact with the rural landowners on whose lands the mushrooms are found

On one of the very few Martha Stewart shows I’ve ever seen Martha did a show on morel mushrooms where she said that the stem of the morel is tough and should be trimmed away. Of the several thousand morels I’ve encountered I’ve never found one with a tough stem but if you’re consuming store bought button mushrooms their fibrous stems can detract from the experience. In fancy restaurants dishes containing morels sell for top dollar and are among the most expensive on the menu, ounce for ounce fetching prices usually reserved for bloated duck liver or fish eggs. Photos of morels prepared in top restaurants rarely show the stems as large morels are split in half and stuffed with various blends of spinach, nuts and exotic cheeses. I suspect the chefs don’t toss out the stems like Martha did.

On a personal level mushroom hunting is one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had, especially since hip replacement surgery in 2002 left me with a partially paralyzed leg below my left knee, causing my sense of balance to be so bad that I was unable to move through the dense woodlands mushrooms prefer. While the paralysis still remains my sense of balance has finally learned to compensate for the inactive muscles allowing me to once again navigate through the woods. The idea that one could be mugged of ones bag of mushrooms hasn’t caused me to pack my 16 ga. but the Tippecanoe County land the family owns is so heavily poached if I hunted there I’d be tempted to bring it along.

That our species could wrongly believe that morel mushrooms, unlike any other living organism magically appear, fully grown, overnight and that this idea would be so persuasive that it is a metaphor for things happening quickly tells us a lot about our need to believe in that which serves us in the short run, while also disclosing just how easy it is to ignore that which will affect us in the more distant future. That the state of America’s economy is so bad people turn to violence to collect mushrooms to sell is also a reality that’s overlooked by our corporate owned media. Finally, if the wealthy elite in America are dumb enough to believe that the stem of a morel is tough, without ever having eaten one, then I’d say their wealth is not so much a result of their superior talents as it’s a result of their superior ability to con the rest of us, as well as themselves.

An origional article by Madhoosier.

Most sane political analysts think the idea of starting hostilities with a larger opponent while America’s military is stretched to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan would be insane, after all one of the definitions of insanity is trying the same thing over and over while expecting diffrent results. Describing the results of Bush's military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan as better than a dismal failure is no longer possible, Iraq’s largest city echoes constantly with the reverberations of warring factions bombs, Osama’s been forgotten, and the Taliban and other war lords control the countryside of Afghanistan and opium poppies are thriving in the fields. But from the point of view of the Bush administration the only flaw to date in there imperial conquests in Iran and Afghanistan are those pesky people that inhabit the country to be taken over. Two simple solutions to this problem come to mind (A) Stop imperial conquests, or (B) kill as many inhabitants as possible so the next nation to be conquered will be unable to mount organized resistance. The following evidence suggests which choice the Bush administration has chosen.

Time and again leaks from the Pentagon have indicated that planning was taking place for the assault on Iran to include nuclear weapons. Time and again war planners have pointed out that the deeply buried facilities in Iran are only vulnerable to nuclear weapons. Time and again I've pointed out in posts to The Smirking Chimp and Democratic Underground that the only possible military strategy to prevent Iran from blockading the Straights of Hormuz would be to nuclear carpet bomb a strip of land five hundred miles long and one hundred miles deep along Iran's Persian Gulf coast.

As I type this the greatest assembly of missile firepower in the history of the world is afloat on American warships within range of Iran, two aircraft carriers loaded with enough aircraft to attack Iran continually, twenty four hours a day, also sail just off Iran’s coast. Additional land based airpower can be deployed to the region in a matter of a couple of days.

Attacks by uniformed American soldiers against Iran’s diplomats in Iraq are defined as acts of war by international law, as are the operations of drone aircraft in the skies of Iran, as are the operations of Special Forces reportedly on the ground in Iran for some months, as are the arming of Iranian rebel groups opposed to the present regime. Patriot anti-missile missiles have been deployed to the Gulf States allied to the U.S.

The Persian Gulf is so crowded with American war ships a U.S. submarine collided with an oil tanker a few weeks ago. Oil prices, counter intuitively, have been weak of late, but this can be explained by Saudi Arabia ramping up production in anticipation of hostilities and/or by the Saudis emptying storage facilities to reduce their exposure to sabotage when war breaks out.

Unexplained by this administration is Dick Cheney’s spur of the moment trip to Saudi Arabia the day after Thanksgiving to consult with Saudi King Abdullah. Coinciding with Cheney’s trip were unveiled threats by the Saudis that they’d intervene in Iraq on behalf of Iraq’s Sunni minority. Since the Sunni minority has targeted Americans in Iraq far more than the Shia this would have been unacceptable to Bush and Cheney. A few weeks later Bush announced his Surge into Baghdad, and that the Shia militia aligned with Iran were to be disarmed. Another twenty thousand troops were deployed to Baghdad even though supplies are so short they will have to share armor and vehicles with troops already there. The excuse that Bush gave to explain his policy of a troop surge is to quell the insurgency, yet this policy has allready been tried and all the insurgents need to do to defeat it is to wait the surge out. It seems far more likely the true purpose of the surge is to secure Baghdad’s “Green Zone” and prevent American forces by being overrun by the Shia militia when the U.S. attacks their allies in Iran.

Also evidence that the Bush administration is planning for war with Iran is the relentless propaganda campaign the administration and Pentagon has unleashed against Iran. Supposedly Iran is providing bomb making equipment and expertise to their Shia allies in Iraq. The supposedly ultra sophisticated shaped charge bombs supposedly provided by Iran to the Iraqi insurgents have in reality been common in asymmetrical warfare for decades; an article on CounterPunch stated that components for the explosives were found in a Baghdad machine shop last November. Recent successful attacks on U.S., helicopters were first blamed by administration sources on Iranian supplied anti-aircraft missiles but newer reports place the blame on conventional small arms fire in combination with 50 cal. machine gun fire. A bizarre attack on an American facility where four soldiers were kidnapped and executed and a fifth soldier was killed in the attack was initially blamed on Iran until the world press reported that one of the attackers was blond and the attackers spoke fluent English while being passed through check points manned by Iraqi forces.

Unleashing nuclear war can also be counted on filling the streets of most American cities with protesters of all stripes. Unlike the peaceful anti-war protests of recent years expect these protests to become violent either from confrontations from right wing counter-protesters, the violence addicted, rapture ready, religious cults which view a nuclear war in Iran as necessary for the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture, or from the acts of agent provocateurs seeded into the crowds to give the authorities an excuse to break up the anti-war protests.

The one intellectual model that has consistently predicted the actions of the Bush administration is Henry Kissinger’s theory of the revolutionary power recently revisited by Paul Krugman in the introduction to his book “The Great Unraveling”. With this theory Kissinger predicts that the existing power structure will consistently underestimate the audacity of a revolutionary power’s attacks on the existing framework of government. The elections last November were a clear signal to the NeoCon revolutionary power that elections, even with the fingers of Diebold tipping the scales, are now the enemy of their revolution. Millions of ordinary Americans volunteered through organizations like MoveOn.Org and the individual campaigns to create a tamperproof voter turnout. The poll numbers of Bush and Cheney have gotten even worse since last November.

As Scooter Libby awaits a verdict in his criminal trial the thought has to cross the minds of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gates and Company that they may also be charged with their many crimes some day should the ordinary flow of governmental change continue to take place in America. Bush and Cheney, if they feel that the republicans will be turned out in mass in 2008, need a way to derail the elections. Nuclear war provides the excuse to declare an endless state of emergency to go along with their endless Global War on Terrorism, so they can cancel elections indefinitely.

I know that many of you are now thinking “there is just no way that they could get away with it.” Don’t bet on it, the corporate owned media can be expected to back whatever actions this administration takes, the media has been complicit in every illegal act of this administration to date. One third of Americans are going to support this administration no matter what they do, and all it takes for the senate to fall into republican hands is having Joe Lieberman cross the aisle to effectively blunt the democratically controlled Congress against this administration. Since the likudniks in Israel are one of the strongest supporters for the attack on Iran, Joe can be expected to cross the aisle when the first missile is launched against Iran.

In the event of war with Iran the Iranian military and Shia militias in Iraq can be expected to inflict considerable casualties on America’s troops in the Middle East. Bush is counting on these casualties to silence political challenges to the war with Iran; “How can those damned liberals be questioning the Commander in Chief when our troops are paying such a high price?” will be the refrain on countless AM talk radio shows. Hate speech on AM radio is also a ready made tool to launch homemade sectarian violence here in the states which benefits the NeoCon cause in two ways, first by intimidating the generally peaceful liberal protestors from marching in mass, and secondly advances the administration’s case for declaring a state of emergency.

This administration is gambling that the authoritarian Russian and Chinese governments will see the transformation of America into another authoritarian regime controlled by an unaccountable elite as a political benefit. Russia stands to benefit greatly by the increased value of her energy reserves and America’s rogue attack may well split a few of the more liberal European allies away from their NATO alliance. China doesn’t have a military option to oppose the U.S. and the possibility that a deal has been made to allow China to reclaimed Taiwan while America’s military is tied down in the Middle East can’t be dismissed.

Finally, the NeoCons need an end to hostilities in the Persian Gulf theater to proceed with the rest of their agenda; they have always seen the regime change in Iran as a necessary step toward that goal, with regime change now a proven failure they’ll up the ante to societal destruction to advance their cause. With the Iranian problem thus solved they’d free up the military assets required to do a little house cleaning in the Western Hemisphere, quickly overthrowing Hugo Chavez and those other pesky socialists in South America that have been gaining power at a rate sure to be alarming to the NeoCons.

That there are a thousand unintended consequences of their actions, that could derail their utopian vision for the future, as happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, has not once crossed their faith driven minds.

An original opinion article by Madhoosier.

“Cheney is scheduled to testify soon at the federal courthouse as a defense witness, where he will be questioned about his direction of the operation in which Libby acted as his pawn.” From; "The Libby Trial: Contortions of Power"
By Sidney Blumenthal:

The complete article can be found here; http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5353

Given the damning details coming out in Scooter Libby’s trial, and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s relentless questioning of witnesses, Cheney’s upcoming testimony would be like trying to cross a minefield on a pogo stick; it’s not a question of if something’s going to explode, but how big it’s going to blow.

Once Cheney is on the stand his two choices will be to either lie under oath or invoke his Fifth Amendment Rights against giving self incriminating testimony; either option is suicidal.

By hounding President Clinton with the bogus Paula Jones sexual harassment charges the republicans have provided ample recent precedent that even a President can be compelled to present himself for questioning under oath.
As has been noted hundreds of times, everything this administration does is vetted to gauge its political impact. There is no doubt the Libby trial has been ruled as an extreme danger to the Bush Presidency. Treason is not an exaggeration in describing the exposure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative and the disclosure that Brewster Jennings and Associates was a CIA front company working to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Which brings us to the question; what will make the trial go away and how will Dick Cheney avoid the witness stand?

One possibility this administration may attempt to invoke is to claim their plenary powers during a time of war trump previous rulings that compelled Clinton to testify. Given that the war on terror hasn’t hampered the President from finding time to clear brush on his dude ranch or the Vice President from finding time enough to shoot an old men in the face, it’s unlikely this claim would stand.

The second possibility is to start a bigger war.

A couple of days before Cheney is forced to testify President Bush will provoke war with Iran and use the furor in the media to provide cover so a pardon can be granted to Libby. President Bush will cite the need to free up frivolous demands on Cheney in a time of emergency.

But it’s even worse than starting a war for crass political gain.

The reasons America is preparing to bomb Iran includes the deal Cheney made with King Abdullah during his impromptu Thanksgiving trip to Saudi Arabia, a deal designed to keep the corrupt Saudi royal family, and long time friends of the Bush family, ensconced firmly in power above the world’s largest supply of crude oil. Also demands from Israel to knock out Iran’s nuclear reactor and bomb Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities and appeasement of AIPAC to line GOP coffers with the tons of cash are motivating factors for the attack. Finally, the short sighted Iraq policies of Bush have left Iran in a position to dominate any government that emerges in Iraq; the NeoCons in the Bush administration think bombing Iran back to the seventh century will prevent Iran from having the influence to dominate Iraq’s government.

Acts of War;
IRANIAN DIPLOMAT KIDNAPPED IN BAGHDAD

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...

By Stephen Farrell in Baghdad;

“Gunmen dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms snatched an Iranian diplomat off the streets of Baghdad, elevating still further tensions with Washington as Tehran said that it held the US responsible for his safety.

The Iranian Government said that Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at its embassy in Baghdad, was seized on Sunday by an Iraqi commando unit which operated directly “under the supervision of the American forces in Iraq.” Mr. Sharafi was driving to open a new Iranian bank.

US officials denied that coalition troops had any involvement in the operation, but Muhammad Ali Hosseini, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said bluntly: “Iran holds American forces in Iraq responsible for the safety and life of the Iranian diplomat.””

The short sighted pronouncement by this administration announcing that Iranian cells and groups supplying arms or assistance to Iraqi insurgents would be countered with military action make any denials of the kidnapping of Jalal Sharafi sound foolish, even if Sharafi was not kidnapped by forces controlled by the Americans nobody outside the bush administration would ever believe.

War With Iran Approaching Boil

America’s denial of being involved in this kidnapping is greatly undermined by this propaganda inspired statement by President Bush’ Sunday;

"The president and his national security team over the last several months have continued to receive information that Iranians were supplying IED equipment and or training that was being used to harm American soldiers," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

"As a result American forces, when they receive actionable information, may take the steps necessary to protect themselves as well as the population," Johndroe said.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headli...

I have not the least doubt that America’s war machine will soon be unleashed on Iran. I have very little doubt that in the clouds of war a pardon will be granted to Scooter Libby freeing Vice President Cheney from having to appear in front of Patrick Fitzgerald. I have no doubt what so ever that America is now controlled by criminals with their finger poised on the button to unleash nuclear warfare as a tool for Imperial Conquest.

May God have mercy on us, no one else will.

America’s military chose to unveil their newest toy Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 just two days before the largest peace protest since before the start of war with Iraq in 2003.

To demonstrate the new microwave beam weapon it was aimed at enlisted airmen in full military uniforms at Moody Air Base in Georgia.

In response to being blasted by the invisible microwave radiation the airmen scampered for cover like a bunch of teen-aged girls who’d lost the top of their bikinis while diving into the pool.

The day after the video of America’s uniformed airmen scampering like girls aired all over the world Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had this to say about a Congressional Resolution in opposition to President Bush’s proposed “surge”.

"It's pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries,"

Gates continued;

"I think it's hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks,"

By allowing his department to be used by the administration to stage a propaganda stunt to intimidate those who were planning to march on Washington Secretary Gates did far more to embolden America’s enemies than the Congressmen doing their jobs.

Secretary Gates should resign.

The stated reason for Bush’s “surge” of troops into Baghdad makes no sense from a strategic standpoint. The Shia militias that Bush allegedly seeks to disarm have not been attacking American troops, rather the Sunni insurgents, who are fighting a civil war with the Shia, are responsible for nearly all attacks against American soldiers. However Iran, recipient of much Bush saber rattling and soon another Aircraft Carrier Attack Group, are Shia.


Prior to the State of the Union Address the President’s speech on Iraq January 10th was so blatantly a foundation for war with Iran that Tony Snow on the 12th labeled the discussion that erupted throughout the Internet “an urban legend” that America was planning an attack on Iran. The reason Snow used the pejorative “urban legend” to describe the discussion on the Internet was that the same discussions had broken into the main stream media and by using such a pejorative description as “urban legend” the Bush administration was sending a clear message to the main stream media to stop talking about a war with Iran.

As Snow’s “urban legend” press briefing was taking place CNN had Globalsecurity.org’s John Pike as a guest, Mr. Pike noted that two technological events scheduled in Iraq make the likelihood of an American confrontation higher. During the coming 10 Day Dawn Celebration of the 1979 Iranian revolution February 1-10 Iran will announce that their 3,000 centrifuge cascade is operational. The nuclear fuel enrichment program will be able to enrich enough uranium to produce one nuclear weapon a year. Mr. Pike also noted that in March Russia will deliver 80 tons of fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactor. Mr. Pike concluded that either event could be viewed as a “Red Line” event by the United States or Israel to proceed with attacks to take out those facilities.

In the State of the Union address, by substituting Shia extremist for direct references to Iran the message that the war in Middle East was set to expand was reinforced.

<blockquote>“The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat,” Bush said. “Whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East, and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.”...

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.</blockquote>

It is no random coincidence that Patriot anti-missile missiles are being deployed the Persian Gulf region and a second aircraft carrier attack group is sailing toward Iran at this moment. It is not random that Admiral William Fallon, an expert in large scale combined aerial warfare has been placed in charge of CENTCOM, the command currently fighting two ground wars against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. If war breaks out with Iran Admiral Fallon would also be in charge of that war as well.


I believe the decision to bomb Iran’s infrastructure back to the 19th century has been made because Iran’s centrifuge cascade is set to go online and Russia is going to deliver the uranium fuel rods to Iran’s first large nuclear reactor in March, the spent fuel from this reactor could supply enough materials for sixty or more bombs.


http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops...



It is also no random occurrence that I filled my gas tank yesterday for $1.83 a gallon, the Saudis are producing petroleum at peak capacity, or emptying their vulnerable storage facilities in anticipation of tanker traffic through the Persian Gulf being halted, remember the dirt cheap gas prices as the last two American elections approached, well gas is cheaper today than either one of those two time periods and the Saudis have no qualms whatsoever in using the gas pump as a political tool.


The reasons Bush will state to justify his attack on Iran are the two nuclear advances cited above. The real reason will be to reduce Iran’s capabilities as the dominant Moslem political power in the Middle East. With the collapse of Iraqi society and many of the former middle class of Iraq refugees and the political capital to continually deploy troops into Iraq running thin, should America’s forces be reduced in Iraq there would be nothing to prevent Iran from advancing through Iraq. Should Iran choose after an American troop pullout there would be very little to stop the expansion of Iran’s domination across the Shia crescent of the Middle East. Should Iran so choose there would be very little to stop the expansion of Iran to include Mecca.


I think Vice President Cheney’s sudden trip to consult with Saudi King Abdullah over the Thanksgiving holiday was to assure the Saudi King that the Bush administration would not allow Iran’s newly dominate position to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East.


Given the generations old alliance between the House of Saud and the House of Bush there is no way in hell that either of these dynasties will allow such a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East, especially when a Bush sibling happens to be the Commander in Chief of America’s military, as well as the self appointed Decider.


The scenario of an attack on Iran also explains Bush’s “surge” of troops into Baghdad, it’s highly probable that when America starts bombing Iran that some of the pro-Iranian militias will turn on their American allies. Extra troops would be needed to protect Baghdad’s Green Zone, a necessity likely anticipated by the Commanders in CENTCOM who’ve demanded the “surge” as a requirement to implement Bush’s attack on Iran.

Should military attacks be used against the two nuclear facilities Bush will also order broad attacks against Iran’s civilian and military infrastructure in an attempt to weaken Iran’s ability to project it’s dominance over the Middle East. Expect attacks against Iran’s electric and communications grid, dams, utilities, bridges, ports, and key industries. Expect Iran to counter with missile attacks against their Sunni neighbors and Persian Gulf shipping and since Iranians occupy many positions in the Middle East’s oil industry sabotage throughout the industry is a real possibility.

What is also a real possibility is that once again Bush will not achieve the outcome from war he expects. Rather than an attack on Iran being a single event limited by the range of Iran’s missiles and their lack of nuclear weapons, the reactions of China, Russia, and the Moslem world could have dire consequences for America.

When starting a war the wise should consider that my enemy’s friends may well become my enemies, a doctrine of war Bush has not considered.

a reply to this thread; http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Remember that the United States has built several new airbases in Iraq. These bases will be able to deploy many attack aircraft as well as AWACS, refueling tankers, etc. Also the goal of an attack on Iran is to destroy Iran's military and civilian infrastructure to render Iran incapable of absorbing the Shia areas if Iraq. The long-run effect of America's attack on Iraq is to leave Iran as the dominate Islamic power in the Middle East.

Really the only thing between Iran and Mecca, Medina, the Saudi Royal Family and all that lovely oil is the United States Military and the political pressure from the newly elected democrats to bring the troops home may be unstoppable in the coming months.

A final thought on troop levels required for an attack on Iran. If ya pop a few nukes, ya don't need nearly as many troops.

The GONAVY site updates for today have the aircraft carrier scheduled to leave for the Persian Gulf the first week of January.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/gonavy/atsugi/gonav...

Scroll down to just past halfway down the page and at the bottom of the Stennis’s deployment information it says “First week of January 2007 will leave Bremerton for the Persian Gulf.”

The GONAVY site updates for today have the aircraft carrier scheduled to leave for the Persian Gulf the first week of January.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/gonavy/atsugi/gonav...

Scroll down to just past halfway down the page and at the bottom of the Stennis’s deployment information it says “First week of January 2007 will leave Bremerton for the Persian Gulf.”