Strait of Hormuz Spinning 101

For those who want a roundup of how BADLY the Bushies tried to spin the story of two little speedboats somehow presenting a MASSIVE THREAT to two big ass U.S. warships (who perhaps do NOT themselves belong in the fucking Strait of Hormuz in the first place) in Bush's latest attempt to launch war with Iran, see Cernig's (excellent) Newshoggers.

Myself? I laughed at the incident once I saw the video (wow, was that dumb) but laughed less when CNN's poll yesterday said that 44% of Americans agreed that Bush is right about Iran being "such a threat". However, CNN's damned poll is also REALLY easy to vote multiple times in, so it could be Karl Rove with an hour on his pudgy, murderous hands changing the vote (not exactly the first time he's done that, is it?).

Benazir Bhutto's Assassination

Since Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf plunged his country of Pakistan into one of its maddest states ever in his efforts to control the results of voting a few months ago that threatened to unseat him, it became not a question of IF his major opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, twice elected and twice unseated as a Muslim country's first major woman leader, would be assassinated, but when.

I find much about the reaction to her death to be completely disingenuous. The first was the Bush Administration's reaction, acting like they were saddened when I doubt they were; my biggest questions with her death, in fact, center around just how much involvement Musharraf - who was to face Ms. Bhutto in elections in less than two weeks - and the Bushies may have had with her assassination earlier today.

While we've heard that the Bushies really wanted her there in a power sharing arrangement with Musharraf, there is far more evidence that neither Musharraf nor Bush actually did want her there, since the progressiveness she represented is hardly what the Bush Administration wants in trying to control that part of the world.

But I am just as suspicious concerning the rush by the Bushies and their ilk - including "I see 9/11 everywhere" Rudy Giuliani - to identify al Qaeda as responsible for Bhutto's death. Sure, Bhutto did not pose herself a good candidate for al Qaeda; she also wasn't who Musharraf and Bush want either.

In truth, there are any number of groups and individuals who could have put the hit on this woman. Sadly, the more the Bushies point to al Qaeda and boast "they know" Osama bin Laden is behind it, the more questions I feel arise as to their own culpability here. After all, the Bushies - and this is clear right from their administration HERE at home - are no champions of democracy; they like the "absolute monarchy" kind of arrangement. While Bush is hardly the first "monarch" to decide who lives and dies, a hell of a lot of destabilization and attempted coups around the world since 2000 (including the short ouster of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) point right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pakistan and Osama Bin Forgotten Laden

See my post here for why I think we should be paying very close attention to the Pakistan mess and the possible "resurgency" of the Bushies' favorite bogeyman, Osama.

Rice/Other Bushies Subpoenaed to Testify

Secrets passed to pro-Israel lobbyists? Hmmm.

Our media pays little attention to this, but you can bet it's getting noticed elsewhere.

Pakistan Under Emergency Rule - Uh Oh!

If you haven't had the news on, that "pal" of ours, Musharraf of Pakistan, has a mess on his hands... and this time, it's not directly George Bush. The road to the country's Supreme Court is closed and all hell is breaking loose there with a huge honking state of emergency declared.

This has everything to do with the Supremes there set to rule on whether Musharraf can declare himself the winner in the election a few weeks ago which many said was rigged in his favor (sound familiar... Bush 2000? Diebold making Pak voting machines, perhaps?).

Coalition of the willing, indeed.

Carter Is Worth More Than A Stinking Bush With Root Rot Anyday

Over the weekend, there was much hooing and hawing in Washington and the media as a whole about remarks ventured forth by former President Jimmy Carter that touched on, among other things, foreign policy - how men like Nixon and even Reagan (to some degree) worked the idea while the current (Bush) administration is either "anything goes" kissing cousins or "we'll nuke ya if we don't like the set of your eyes".

Bush fired back with his dismissive smirk, in which he not only dismissed Carter as irrelevant but more than 7 out of 10 of his fellow Americans because they don't see the great Bush "vision". [I also hear Bush gets very ticked when any former president is addressed as "Mr President" when that is the proper address.]

Hey, Carter was not a perfect president, but he's probably the most intelligent, walks the walk as well as talks the talk, well reasoned, and American-and-world loving a former president we have... or have had. Carter's built homes, monitored voter fraud watches, and done so much more since he left office that it's not hard to day Jimmy became a great man only after he left the Oval Office. Compared to the "never will be a MAN" in office since January 2001, give me Jimmy anyday. Bill Clinton's gifts to America need another decade yet to see if any of his acts do more than for his memory and Hillary.

Cheerfully signed, one of only two thirds of all Americans whom Bush finds irrelevant.

Seymour Hersh's Latest Absolute Must Read: "The Redirection"

You must read this from Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker (March 5, 2007th edition) and then imagine the Bushies are helping those (the Sunni jihadists, who Hersh says the Bushies are secretly arming) who would help al Qaeda:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”

There is ever so much more here.

More Snow Jobs, With Noxious Hume Fumes Added

Tony Snow, who was never a journalist to start with despite what he called himself, as White House spokesvillain, claimed today that any politician voicing concern about a possible war with Iran simply wants to protect Iran. What? Oh please! Tony, go fight in a fucking war and come back to us once you do! I think your insight might change a little. It's very easy to sit in Washington's toniest restaurants and opine like you know something (you don't, that's very clear) about a war you wouldn't be caught dead getting within two continents of.

Meanwhile, the best Fox NoiseNews Channel's Brit Hume can do is call Jack Murtha "senile" for trying to do the will of the people and get us out of the Iraq war that only profits the Bushies, the neocons, the energy companies with their sweetheart deals, AND the military industrial complex.

As Think Progress points out:

Numerous military and regional experts agree that there is no military solution for Iran. They say it would be “disastrous for the United States,” “empower reactionaries [in Iran] and validate their pro-nuclear argument,” and “usher in chaos and instability.” None of them are trying to “protect Iran.” Tony Snow’s hysterical rhetoric is false.

Absolute Must Read: Brzezinski's "The Road Map Out of Iraq"

This op/ed - this copy from the Salt Lake Tribune - by former military man and Carter-era NSA chief Zbigniew Brzezinski truly is a must read (what are you waiting for, hmmm?); here's a big snip:

The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

Yet major strategic decisions in the Bush administration continue to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals - perhaps not more than the fingers on one hand. With the exception of the new Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, these are the same individuals who have been involved from the start of this misadventure, who made the original decision to go to war in Iraq and who used the original false justifications for going to war. It is human nature to be reluctant to undertake actions that would imply a significant reversal of policy.

From the standpoint of U.S. national interest, this is particularly ominous. If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the Islamic world. Here, for instance, is a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran: Iraq fails to meet the benchmarks for progress toward stability set by the Bush administration. This is followed by U.S. accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran. This plunges a lonely United States into a spreading and deepening quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war is being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al-Qaida are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack that precipitated U.S. involvement in World War II. This simplistic and demagogic narrative, however, overlooks that the Nazi threat was based on the military power of the most industrially advanced European state and that Stalinism was not only able to mobilize the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.

In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al-Qaida is an isolated, fundamentalist aberration. Most Iraqis are engaged in strife not on behalf of an Islamist ideology but because of the U.S. occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state. Iran, meanwhile, though gaining in regional influence, is hardly a global threat; rather, it is politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that the United States must respond militarily to a wide Islamic threat with Iran at its epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy. No other country shares the Manichean delusions that the Bush administration so passionately articulates. And the result, sad to say, is growing political isolation of and pervasive popular antagonism toward the United States.

Get the rest here.