two bodies of thought in constant collision. Thank God for atheists and agnostics. They make the rejection of evangelistic religious trespass into world politics look moderate and appealing.

Then comes Douthat.

...loathsome logic...and it's time for a guillotine to be erected on the people's mall in D.C.

When Andrew Bacevich can shave neocon warmongers down to size with a 100-word razor of low-budget, state-managed intelligent community policing writ large, there's a point at which Cheney and his ilk should be absolutely muzzled with shame. That's not Obama's style...but he's doing it with a thousand cuts.

Perhaps it's the influence of the Nobel Prize and his rational temperament....we'll see.

The Republican Party is utterly corrupt. These Glenn Beck and AM radio themes will kill their electoral chances in 2010.

Bankrupt of any populist ideas that might actually help the citizenry, and unable to generate any more fear, they would use hate to persecute the smallest minorities, ginning up support from only their most radical base.

pathetic.

Who cares? Suppositions on either side are really boorish (to quote pundit Peggy Noonan.) I am absolutely split on 'whether or not he deserved it.' This matter's a lot like burlesque.

But to object to it, as the right wing have determined - notably, David Brooks, who says he 'should give it back,' or Limbaugh, who is now 'allied with the Taliban' - is freakish.

And to unflinchingly adhere to the idea that he absolutely deserves it is mawkish. I am not so sure...yet. (But, I do like the fact that he is giving away his monetary award of $1.4 million to charity. I'd love to have heard THAT conversation with the First Lady.) Even Maddow did a great job of quietly straddling the ambivalence of historic expectations in what will be an interesting game of watching Peacemaker Obama.

So far I'm sixty-to-forty for it. I'm dying to see new treaties and nuclear accords and how the hell he is going to tell the neocons that their disproportional misadventure in Afghanistan is over. Perhaps that's why blathering idiot Dick Cheney has shut the f**k up. That's worth a few laughs. What a waste of life he is.

Leaked Paper on Iranian Nuke Based on Disputed Intel

The Iranian Rift in the IAEA

By GARETH PORTER

October 6, 2009

Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.

Contrary to sensational stories by the Associated Press and The New York Times, the excerpts on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) reveal that the IAEA's Safeguards Department, which wrote the report, only has suspicions – not real evidence - that Iran has been working on nuclear weapons in recent years.

The newly published excerpts make it clear, moreover, that the so-called "Alleged Studies" documents brought to the attention of the agency by the United States five years ago are central to its assertion that Iran had such a programme in 2002-03.

Inter Press Service:

POLITICS: U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

Analysis by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.

But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.

Iran's notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the second enrichment facility in a letter on Sep. 21 was buried deep in most of the news stories and explained as a response to being detected by U.S. intelligence. In reporting the story in that way, journalists were relying entirely on the testimony of "senior administration officials" who briefed them at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh Friday.

U.S. intelligence had "learned that the Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised", one of the officials said, according to the White House transcript. The Iranians had informed the IAEA, he asserted, because "they came to believe that the value of the facility as a secret facility was no longer valid..."

Later in the briefing, however, the official said "we believe", rather than "we learned", in referring to that claim, indicating that

it is only an inference rather than being based on hard intelligence.

is more noteworthy as it is manipulated by principally CIA & also DIA. What is so obviously forced is President Obama's "revelation."

It shows foreign affairs is pure manipulation, as usual.

Internal conditions in Iran are stressed...population since the revolution has doubled. This is unsustainable.