Letters to the Editor
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Missile defence
-I mean, seriously? Missile Defense? The most famous defense research fiasco in recent memory?-
One might expect that they would have a rather advanced surface to air missile installation ringing the Pentagon for the past few decades.
Something that's capable of protecting the command and control center of America's forces from incoming missiles and, ahem, other *airborne threats*.
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Accountability
Where is the completed Phase II of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence? Where is the completed investigated of the Office of Special Plans. Senator Pat Roberts did everything to delay, divert and dilute that investigation. Did Senator Jay Rockefeller fall into line?
The very least our representatives can do for those people who have died been injured and displaced by this unnecessary war is hold these liars and warmongers accountable. This is the very least our Reps can do.
These same warmongers, Micheal Ledeen (just go everything he has written the last six years, he has always been part of the war team), Reuel Marc Gerecht, Micheal Rubin, Cheney, Bolton, Woolsey,, Richard Perle. These psychopaths have been beating the "bomb bomb bomb Iran" drums for six years or longer.
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Read Ledeen and Scream!
Read what Ledeen has been saying about Iran and Iraq for the last six years and longer for yourself.
This guy is truely a psychopath
http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjE2Nw==
There are plenty of "bomb bomb bomb" Iran articles to choose from
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTQ0MTg5MmQ3NDgyZmRhNWRhYzhiZTE4NTk3ZDMxMjk=
Read about Ledeen's security clearance coming under question
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-green.html
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@LWM
ADL perhaps. Not AIPAC. They move in the more rareified atmosphere of policy makers. CAMERA - or FLAME (perfect name), to a lesser degree - are the organizations that monitor media.
Thanks for that intelligence.
Of course there's always a moat of alphabet soup surrounding any such operation. I'm sure Scooter would be technically truthful if he denied working for the GOP. But I have no doubt he is a professional political operative/communications specialist of some kind.
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History
@orbitboy
Iran's efforts to obtain nukes pre-date Bush, by decades.
Yes, it dates to the time of the US ally, the Shah of Iran. At that time Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons was not a problem.
After the revolution, Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons started after Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on the Iranians; Iran took it to the United Nations, and the western powers and US in particular sat on their hands. With that is was a rational conclusion Iran, indeed for any state, that it needs WMD if the Western powers are antagonistic to it. -- macgupta
Not to mention (yet again) the US/British orchestrated coup of the democratically elected Iranian government headed by Mossadegh, which subsequently put that monster the Shah back into power and ultimately lead to the blowback we see now. Something that wingnuts would love to sweep under the rug. We are a nation composed primarily of two-faced imbeciles. With people like NOB leading the pack.
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Some things don't ever change. Empire is Empire.
We hear much in these days about the dangers of innocence, much that is false and a little that is true. But the argument is almost exclusively applied to sexual innocence. There is a great deal that ought to be said about the dangers of political innocence. That most necessary and most noble virtue of patriotism is very often brought to despair and destruction, quite needlessly and prematurely, by the folly of educating the comfortable classes in a false optimism about the record and security of the Empire. Young people like Barbara Traill have often never heard a word about the other side of the story, as it would be told by Irishmen or Indians or even French Canadians, and it is the fault of their parents and their papers if they often pass abruptly from a stupid Britishism to an equally stupid Bolshevism. The hour of Barbara Traill was come, though she probably did not know it.
"If England keeps her promises," said the man with the beard, frowning, "there is still a chance that things may be quiet."
And Barbara had answered, like a schoolboy:
"England always keeps her promises."
"The Waba have not noticed it," he answered with an air of triumph.
The omniscient are often ignorant. They are often especially ignorant of ignorance. The stranger imagined that he was uttering a very crushing repartee, as perhaps he was, to anybody who knew what he meant. But Barbara had never heard of the Waba. The newspapers had seen to that.
G.K. Chesterton, Four Faultless Felons. 1930. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300781h.html
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Dishonest and Bloodthirsty
"They're as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty."
Absolutely correct. But, then what is one to make of a prominent Democrat named "Hillary" repeating the neocon's persistent war howl?
Quoting an inaccurate translation of Ahmadinejad, she insisted - contrary to all the evidence - that an attack on Iran now was absolutely essential to the survival of Israel. Was that just a "sop" for the Jewish vote?
I have a question: exactly when did the United States Senate approve a mutual defense treaty with Israel? When was the extension of our "nuclear umbrella" to Saudi Arabia debated and approved? Maybe I'm not paying attention.
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I need to eat a bit of humble pie about one thing
I have spent quite a few months telling people that at least some of the rocket and mortar fire that comes out of Gaza is being done by Fatah squads, trying to provoke Israel into counterstrikes against their "arch-foe," Hamas. While there have been recorded cases of this, I have just managed to work my way round the rather badly organised web pages that Hamas and the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades put up, and I have finally been forced to accept that Hamas are genuinely proud of their rocket and mortar campaign, and have no desire to evade responsibility for it, whoever may have fired any particular one. This is especially important because of the timing, which is often clearly intended as a dismissive retort to any peace moves : today, for example, a mortar shell killed a Jewish Israeli. Finally facing up to this has put a different complexion on the issues regarding Gaza, at least for me. It has no direct bearing on any other battle-front, it just wakes me up a bit.