Skip to main content

It's About Iran, Stupid

It seems both incredibly frightening and obvious that Iraq has become a distraction serving to keep us off balance and unable to focus on the administrations actual intents (if it hasn't been that from the beginning). I don't pretend to know exactly what all of this is about beyond expanding executive power for its own sake, sick minds are unpredictable. But Jim Webb is right, the congress does need to get ahead of the White House on Iran. I've said it before, I actually thought it would happen sooner, but the administration obviously intends to bomb Iran. They have been planning and making obvious moves in that direction for a while, essentially using the same type of unsupported rhetoric and intelligence that they used to take us to war in Iraq. Supposedly the Iranians are arming insurgents but the British, who are in a better position to know, say it's not true. There's a reason that Blair has finally found a bandwagon he won't jump on, he has been damaged and tarnished enough, his legacy is obvious to him; even as Bush continues to assert that his legacy is assured through this continued march to madness.

Mark Hosenball writes in Newsweek: "U.S. officials still maintain that Iran is helping Iraqi Shia insurgents build bombs that are particularly deadly because they can penetrate armored vehicles. But three U.S. officials familiar with unpublished intel (unnamed when discussing sensitive info) said evidence of official Tehran involvement is 'ambiguous,' in the words of one of the officials." (White House Watch) Is it possible that the explosives penetrating armored vehicles have something to do with the 400 tons of explosives stolen after the invasion, revealed prior to the 2004 election and eventually buried. To my memory the story behind the disappearance has yet to be told.

And in terms of arming the insurgents, we have been more than helpful through black market sales and billions of unaccounted dollars, not to mention the infiltrated army and police.

Tom Lasseter writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

"U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed. . . .

"'Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night,' said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. 'People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory.'" (White House Watch)

They are rallying the Republicans in the Senate to keep the discussion on Iraq, using the surge, which even they don't believe will work, as a distraction. They are not focused on fixing Iraq, they never cared, it just helps to provide some pretext for hostilities with Iran. Everyone is so concerned with their electability that they are allowing the administration to continue damning the soul of the nation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'Anti-racism', All Trap, No Honey: A Discourse About Discourse

One of the things that prevents me from writing more often is the sense that I'm just writing the same thing repeatedly from a slightly different angle. In a nutshell, all I'm saying is that moral idealism substituted for material goals will not lead to justice, but is an argument against materialism. I'm a dumb person's low rent Adolph Reed Jr. translator. I'm a "class reductionist" who understands that when the discourse is reduced to just class there's nothing as important as food, water and shelter that's left out. I often find myself contending with people who insist that there is, unable to name anything. They don't understand that they're making an argument against economic redistribution, or they don't care. There are no concrete manifestations of systemic racism or any oppression that are not dealt with through economic redistribution. When people say that economic redistribution won't end racism, what they mean is that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Due Process Industrial Complex: "Are We the Constitutional Crisis?"

Democrats, seemingly resigned to political irrelevance, have shifted from principled opposition to obstructionism. They are seeking to stall or block the Trump administration's fulfillment of voter will.  In the face of popular demand for mass deportation of illegal aliens they have positioned themselves as self-appointed experts on due process. Their demands for due process might hold greater totemic power if not undermined by apparent hypocrisy, having supported limited due process for January 6 defendants. The demand for due process is desperate political opportunism driven by faulty political calculus. This explains why a US senator and congressional representatives traveled to El Salvador over a single deported alien. They are demanding that illegal aliens receive more vetting for deportation than they received on entering the country under Biden. In 2016, 38% of Americans supported deporting all undocumented immigrants. Today that number is 56% . There is nothing quite like i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Drowning in Denial, Grasping at Straws-- Democrat's Desperate Bid For Male Voters

The phrase "grasping at straws," from Sir Thomas More's proverb, "A drowning man will clutch at straw," captures a desperate, futile attempt to avoid an inevitable end. It evokes a person falling off a cliff, frantically grabbing for anything to halt their doom. In cinema, this creates tension as the hero snatches a sturdy shrub at the last second. In politics, it signals a refusal to face reality. The Democrats' new $20 million Speaking With American Men (SAM) initiative to attract male voters is a textbook example. This effort is less substantial than straw, likely pushing men further away. It delays confronting the obvious: the party's positions alienate men, offer little to women beyond abortion, and oppose the interests of native-born Americans-- also know as voters. A late May New York Times article by Shane Goldmacher highlights the Democrat's struggle to recover from Trump's re-election. He notes, "Democratic donors and strategists ...
Post a Comment
Read more