That was a very smart post. You laid out a part of the dynamic that does not get discussed nearly enough and gave it some good historical context. Thanks for that.

I'd add that after 1973, our security establishment was in a panic over what the soviet-trained Egyptian and Syrian armies could accomplish. Shifting the containment burden to diplomacy ... detente in this case ... was also a reflection of that panic over the threat and our sudden loss (due to our own stupidity) of options and strategic flexibility. Sounds familiar, eh?

You also spoke to one of the things that's frustrated me for the past several years (just one, all the unnecessary carnage, the destruction of our institutions and evisceration of the constitution and rule of law may have actually produced more nausea, but I digress), which is just how unserious the Serious discussion is.

If you're serious about fighting a war, you use all the tools at your disposal ... the 'total war' doctrine, our inheritance from Clausewitz, again, doesn't mean we bomb the shit out of everyone, it means engaging the entire spectrum of resources ... economic, legal, political, diplomatic, intelligence, and those of allies ... to achieve your political purposes, and that what you engage should be proportional to those.

But all we ever talk about is bombing and invading, the must crude tools available with the greatest risk and most likely unanticipated and undesirable side effects. The 'debate' is whether to Bomb OR Invade, do it now or wait until Iran has a nuclear weapon, do it ourselves or let the Israelis do it, and so forth.

The Unserious summary we used to coin: these are people who only know how to fish with dynamite.

Nicely said at 7:06am ... I want to say something substantive about it later, right now I gotta run to the pharmacy because allergies are giving me three rivers of ... um, something other than rage.

Re Lacan, gaze and voice as love objects, et al: a minor keerection, according to those guys it isn't about 'reducing' something to a mere object, as if you had a non-reductionist choice, it's just that this is how it works. In the context of Freidman and this whole emerging Iran war narrative, I think that's another discussion we'uns could take further ...

I have no control over your imagination. ;-}

Oh, but you do.

One might even call it an 'occupation'.

But in this case, you really are greeted with roses ... :-]

Is it morning in America yet? I think someone changed my clock.

It's spring. We're getting an extra hour of the Bush Administration (Iran).

The colonel you asked about who committed suicide in Iraq was Ted Westhusing.

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2440

It's a heartbreaker. Bryce followed up this past February on questions about Westhusing's death. Some think suicide is unlikely, and that someone killed him. I think the suicide story is right.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77313/

These guys have also written a lot about the case:

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/?s=Westhusing

Interesting extract. You're right, there would be a limited number of generals who fit that description. But Petraeus got a PhD from Princeton, so the "I didn't even graduate" doesn't make sense ... nor the idea that he 'taught there', as it says, since he didn't.

Not sure it would matter if it *was* Petraeus; it would be natural enough, after they cooked up this little program, to get them in front of Petraeus at some point if he was in the country then. I'm not sure that makes him 'part of the propaganda' program; given everything else, that would have to be one of the more innocent roles.

I think we ought to eyeball Petraeus separately, on the basis of his performances during testimony before Congress about the conduct of the war. He's walked a fine line there between setting expectations, maintaining support for the war, and manipulating the facts in a misleading way. Seems to me he's actually crossed the line, especially last Sept, though this spring he seemed to have reined that impulse in.

Still, if you'll spout the line once for your masters (if that's what he did), then you've shown that you'll do it, and can be made to do it again with the right pressure ..

Ha! Actually that looks more like something one would carry your other eyeless 'little fellow' in ...

Thanks, I got my Allerex and jet spray. It isn't actually allergies, something called 'non-allergenic rhinitis', which translates into, 'we don't know what it is but here's some prednisone and a bunch of expensive drugs you can put up your nose'.

There's something funny about the shape of that nostril invader on the tip of the spray cannister, though...

And we could start by, I don't know, actually declaring war

I think we could start by identifying an actual threat, assessing the alternatives for dealing with it, having an actual public debate over said alternatives that doesn't include shouting the other side down or an orchestrated farce of 'leaks' about tactical battle plans (to narrow the focus of debate), then a debate in congress and finally a vote on thet thar declaration, but hey, that's just another one of those quaint 'laws' we used to live by, pre-9/11.

You make a good point about our war 'policy', I think. Did you read the NSS that first included mention of 'preventive' war? It sounded so reasonable, you had to actually read it again and again and say, wait, what are these guys trying to say ... ?

And you could read it a thousand times without ever anticipating Cheney's 'one percent doctrine', if you were a reasonable person. Another quaint idea ...

Huhuh. That scene in 'The Untouchables' gave me wood. Nhuhuhuh.