So our L.W.M., for whom my respect has grown considerably since first tangling with him here, inverts the neo-con dictum (was it Larry DeRita?) that "the path to Tehran lies through Baghdad", to "the path out of Baghdad lies through Tehran." If we are to extricate ourselves from Iraq with a minimum of American or Iraqi blood - "as carefully as we went recklessly in", you might say - that only has to be posited for its truth to be obvious.

Not me.

Gen. Odom, may he rest in peace, and other experts who opposed the Iraq invasion, we were never allowed to hear on the TV.

Odom primarily.

http://hammernews.com/odomspeech.htm

A gentleman's C, maestro?

-- nicteis

I don't grade my peers but I will offer you a cabinet level position in my administration!

Do you mean a non-loopy-doopy-dipshit POTUS may have to have a "conflict" with Iran, as in the U.S. going to war with Iran? Yes? No? What do YOU mean by that comment, bromides aside?

But first, a straightforward: Yes, or No.

Conflict is ubiquitous.

Deal with it and stop being a nudge.

No. I don't expect conflict with Tehran at any time in the near future (10-15 years, Obama's likely tenure) but I cannot predict the future and do not attempt to and neither should you.

No.

It's not true.

The Administration is NOT threatening to veto the House's version of the FISA bill.

Mike&Mike wrote that letter to urge Reid and the Senate to pass the House bill without further amendments.

The veto threat in the letter from Mike&Mike (the D.N.I & the A.G.) refers to the Bingaman amendment.

Which does raise a question.

Is it possible that Mike&Mike were genuinely concerned that the Bingaman amendment might have had some slight chance of passage?

I can't believe that it was ever a possibility, and, anyway, it's certainly impossible now.

The Senate won't defy Mike&Mike now that Mike&Mike have claimed that the Bingaman amendment would endanger "national security".

More about the Bingaman amendment:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/bingaman-amendment

Contrary to CW, I don't expect a hot war breaking out with Iran if they have a nuke, and Odom felt that we shouldn't make proliferation an issue, specifically with Iran, because there is nothing to stop it. We should get used to it, he said.

That doesn't make the Israelis happy, and what would happen if they started a war with Iran? How do we manage to stay out of that one? And don't put it past some of the hardliners there to do just that if they got a chance. So no, I do not like to predict the future when it comes to wars in the ME, whether it is to say they may or may not happen, or who might start them, or what the outcome would be.

Take a deep breath.

The veil is pierced.

Information is gushing.

Though our politics is a warmed up corpse, remedy will appear.

I think of California's experiences with statewide referenda.

Of a State enacting legislation to control not guns, but their ammunition, the bullets. Stricter codes as the weapon increases in danger.

Of Iraq and Iraqis suing for reparations from the U.S.A., and Blackwater.

The Pentagon or Veterans' Groups and family suing KBR and Haliburton.

C-Spans are jammed with apt related examinations and discussions of current, recent and precedent histories revealing fact, ethic and explanation significantly on path to where our dialogue would lead.

The rock star nomination news is awful. Just wrong. Personality driven glamour is anathema to representative integrity.

Reagan came from there. I didn't like him, but the publicity factory still churns it. They'd put him on Mt Rushmore if they could. But he was too busy napping and losing his criminal memory to rate that rock.

McCain, like Bush, is the wastrel son of a power connected mediocrity. Reagan invoked FDR to further his ambition. That Roosevelt cared deeply for the very people which Reagan raped never breeched the myth.

Obama said once that Reagan was transformative. That was a tell.

Faith based conflusion of smirch and spate, completely amoral blurring of indispensable division of president and pulpit.

Didn't anybody cringe when Huckabee proposed to rewrite the Constitution to fit the Bible?

If Obama loses this election, it will be his own stupid weasel fault. And the fault of his glamour campaign.

I don't know where the campaign will go. McCain just got some better help 3 weeks after Obama forked off the high road.

If telecoms, oilmen, war manufacturers and the intelligence industry now run our part of the world, White House in thrall, we may need an international network to be successful in opposition.

Maybe we'll need an 'Alternet,' to back up the internet in case it's shut down.

But, a lot of evidence is coming out which will on some fronts partly tame the permanent warrior fortress.

-Is all that too wild to contemplate?

I'm cheering for Feingold, Dodd, Boxer and Waxman to survive and fight on.

If we weren't so polluted in disinformation and deceipt, they'd prevail.

Jesse Helms dying 60 years too late gave us an extra day of advocacy. Apparently, though we used it well, no rescue is near.

Exhale.

I spent my tears on this Democracy when the House went under on the new FISA.

If the Justice Department reappears in January, some pleasant RICO cases may distract us from the horror shock recall of our immanent govermental mutilation.

At McCain's frown hall meeting tonight, an audient spoke of some citizen mechanism effort afoot in aid of restoring the Constitution.

I didn't get what it entailed nor hint of its viability or success likelihood. I wouldn't mind knowing more about it.

I'd also like to know who's destroying Obama's campaign from the inside.

The 2 Party System is a ridiculous nonstitutional derange of elective chicanery. I'll take my politicians one by one from now on.

And maybe some hacker will devise a need for all the unwarranted unnecessary illegal surveill product to be erased.

If you focus correctly, a good thought can be sent out like a prayer. (Religion has nothing to do with it.)