Nicholas D. Kristof: "Cheney's Long-Lost Twin"

That there can be even one Cheney has cost many meals and countless times worshipping the porcelain goddess" after reading about the Bushies' latest atrocities; the idea, as Kristoff proposes in this Times OpEd column, he may have a twin is beyond frightening (read it all here):

Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?

The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.

Both men are hawks who defy the international community, scorn the U.N. and are unpopular at home because of incompetence and recklessness — and each finds justification in the extremism of the other.

“Iranians refer to their new political radicals as ‘neoconservatives,’ with multiple layers of deliberate irony,” notes Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University, adding: “The hotheads around President Ahmadinejad’s office and the U.S. foreign policy radicals who cluster around Vice President Cheney’s office, listen to each other, cite each others’ statements and goad each other to new excesses on either side.”

So one of the perils in the final 18 months of the Bush administration is that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad will escalate provocations, ending up with airstrikes by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites.

Already we’re seeing a series of leaks about Iran that echo leaks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The reports say that Iran is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda, is using Hezbollah to wage a proxy war against U.S. forces in Iraq, is transferring bomb-making skills to Iraq insurgents and is handing out armor-piercing bullets to fighters in Iran and Afghanistan so as to kill more Americans.

Yet the jingoists aren’t all in our government: These leaks may well all be accurate, for Mr. Ahmadinejad is a perfect match for Mr. Cheney in his hawkishness and contempt for the international community.

It’s worrying that Iran has just recalled its most able diplomat — Javad Zarif, ambassador to the U.N. — and sent him out to pasture as an academic. Hard-liners always hated Mr. Zarif; goons from a mysterious Iranian security agency detained me on my last trip to Tehran and accused me of being a C.I.A. or Mossad spy, apparently because they were trying to get dirt to use against Mr. Zarif (who had given me my visa).

[...]A recent opinion poll in Iran found that 70 percent of Iranians want to normalize relations with the U.S., and 61 percent oppose the current Iranian system of government. Any visitor to Iran knows that it is — at a people-to-people level — the most pro-American Muslim country in the region, and the regime is as out of touch and moribund as the shah’s was in the late 1970s.

The ayatollahs’ only hope is that we will rescue them with a military strike, which would cement them in place for many years to come. But look out, because that’s what may happen if bilateral relations are driven by those jingoistic twins, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad.

JP at Pottersville offers more.

More Bushian Drumbeats Toward War With Iran

Now another American general is claiming - at the behest of the Bushies who would very much love to "control" Iran's oil as well - that Iranian security forces are training both Hezbollah and Iraqi militants. Uh huh.

If you want to blame someone for the terrible state of affairs in Iraq, you need to look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to two treasonous tyrants named Bush and Cheney with a hell of an assist from the Pentagon.

Bolton, Bush, And The Middle East Meltdown

Worthy of note from Buck at Pensito Review:

Lest we forget: The Bush administration’s hard-on for Israel has a name: John Bolton. The former U.S. envoy to the United Nations has spilled the beans to the BBC in an interview where he pretty much says that U.S. interests were best served by Israel dropping shitloads of cluster bombs on Lebanon during last summer’s dust-up.

Please either read the whole thing or at least drop down to the end where it gets into the disparate casualties on the Lebanese side versus the Israeli side, keeping in mind that whole thing was supposedly over a couple of Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped.

Mr. Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was ‘damned proud of what we did’ to prevent an early ceasefire.(Emphasis added)

Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.

Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been “dangerous and misguided”.
He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel’s campaign wasn’t working.

Israel was reacting in its own self-defence and if that meant the defeat of the enemy, that was perfectly legitimate under international law. The former envoy, who stepped down in December 2006, was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary, The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April.

Mr Bolton said the US was deeply disappointed at Israel’s failure to remove the threat from Hezbollah and the subsequent lack of any attempt to disarm its forces.

Britain joined the US in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire.The war began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, but it quickly escalated into a full-scale conflict.
BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says the US-UK refusal to join calls for a ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy.

British, US and Israeli ambassadors at the UN, August 2006
The UK, US and Israeli were alone in resisting an early ceasefireAt the time US officials argued a ceasefire was insufficient and agreement was needed to address the underlying tensions and balance of power in the region.

Mr Bolton now describes it as “perfectly legitimate… and good politics” for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting “in its own self-defence”.

Keep reading here.

It's Official: Israel All But Demands U.S. Pay For Its War on Lebanon

[Ed. update: Senators just went to Israel in an effort pushed by the Bushies, with the express purpose - stated by Jon Kyl for the Bushies - of indoctrinating them into feeling "an obligation" to Israel. I'm for helping... but obligation considering what we already fund? And I almost guarantee you the subject of Iran came up.]

Although I predicted this would happen, it took until this week for Israel to expressly demand that American taxpayers reimburse them in large part for the war they waged in Lebanon last summer. Before I tell you why this is outrageous - and I don't blame Israel entirely for this outrage; the Bushies' filthy fingerprints are all over Lebanon - let's get a little perspective on how generously we already fund one of the world's smallest nations.

You may not realize this, but we give more financial aid to Israel every year (starting at around $4-6 Billion - yes, that's with a B, folks) than we do most other countries put together. A minimum of $2.5 Billion of this directly funds Israel's military, one of the largest and most sophisticated in the world for a nation that is one of the smallest. Some analysts say the amount that goes to fund Israel from the U.S. actually probably is closer to $10-15 billion per year because we do a lot of "under the table" stuff for them. And this is separate from private funding that goes on not just from Jewish communities in America, but from defense contractors and a host of others.

As I've stated a multitude of times, I do believe it is very appropriate for us to help Israel. First, we allowed the Nazi atrocities to go on for years before we acknowledged any of what was going on. Second, the U.S. helped carve what is today Israel from what was, to both Jews and Westerners, a very inhospital region (I'm still not sure we did the right thing there, in terms of location, but.. what's done is done). Third, obviously, Israel is a strategic partner for the U.S. in the Middle East; granted, however, it's an oft-times unholy alliance but that is also a long story. But fourth, and in my thinking, most important: everyone should have a place to call home. Four million Jews are in Israel and we should help them survive there. [The far-right Christians would tender a fifth reason they consider almighty: that the Bible tells them that Israel has to be in place in its current configuration for the "end of times" to happen the way they want. This, to me, is both madness and something far worse than crazy. But that's also a battle for another day.]

Here's where I - and many others - have problems with the level of funding and "strategic partnership" that flows from our country to Israel. At the most basic level, it's way out of proportion to Israel's size. Divide 4-15 Billion dollars into 4 Million people and... let's just say that Americans don't get that much from their own government for their health and welfare.

Well beyond that, the degree of assistance causes us untold "blowback" - to use Chalmers Johnson's apt phrase. Because Israel has a rabid appetite for military stuff, everytime Israel launches an attack on a Palestinian refugee camp, on its neighbors, et al, those being attacked can see the U.S. logo on the big guns like the helicopter gunships swooping in. We give far less in aid to much larger Muslim-majority nations with a much, much, much lower quality of life circumstance.

But let's get to the Lebanon issue. I join a great many Israelis in believing that the war Israel waged on Lebanon last year was WRONG in every way, shape, and form. Many of those who originally supported the war and "bought" the propaganda that it was waged to weaken Hezbollah (Hizbollah with some spellings) have long since turned because they saw - much as we see with the ever-strengthening al Qaeda and Taliban after all the U.S. action - that what was done only empowered Hezbollah and made people who did not see Israel as their enemy into Hezbollah supporters. Why? Because Hezbollah was the closest thing to an army/aid organization the Lebanese saw.

Israeli sources last year were telling us that they were waging a war "in proxy" FOR the United States, attacking Lebanon to send a powerful message to Syria and Iran that Israel AND the U.S. would come after them next. While the Bushies smirked and insisted that wasn't true, the very fact that Bush WANTS to write a check to pay the Israeli government FOR the Lebanon war is just one more piece in an already sizeable pile of evidence that the war by proxy story is 99.9% accurate.

I encourage you to run, not walk, to your phone, call your elected reps, and tell them NO, you do NOT support paying Israel for the destruction of Lebanon (which, contrary to the pablum espoused by the far right, is a generally peaceful land that is far more Christian than Muslim). I also encourage you to do your own research and, if you agree that FAR too much money is flowing into Israel for its militaristic endeavors, to demand your legislators take a long and hard look at cutting the funding to Israel. I'm not saying cut it all because I don't think that would be right. But I don't want to fund the Israeli war machine anymore than I want to fund outs.

Think about it: between $4-15 billion for 4 million people, each and every year. Something is dangerously out of whack here.