Life ,Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness that is what our constitution stands for

We hold these Truths to be self-evident?

My argument is not that Bush and Obama do not want to attack Iran, or that they won't give Israel the green light to do it because they don't want to do it, but that we are already attacking Iran, covertly, through the $300 Million given to the shadow government by the Democrat controlled Congress. It is Low Intensity Conflict, the United State's preferred method of regime change for a long time. In order to keep the program going, it is necessary to keep the threat alive, i.e. the propaganda, i.e. Iran is developing a nuclear weapon (even though the 11/07 NIE says otherwise). It is The Big Lie.

According to the Cockburn article:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

It is a big program. According to CNN, Bush shared intel regarding Iran with Israel, Israel backed off, and the United States' LIC against Iran continues. Where/How/When was that intel gathered, and who paid for it? Iran will still go down in the long run, and its nuclear program with it, it will just be slower than dropping bombs on them. Everyone "benefits".

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

-Harold Pinter, RIP

Give it a rest - you too, Greenwald. How helpful can it actually be for a new president to have as much criticism lobbed at him from his own party as from the opposition? As usual, all the republicans have to do is sit back and watch the left tear itself apart, then they will take over again.

I know I shouldn't be, but I nonetheless am amazed at how many people think that Obama should never be criticized, and that anyone who does so, regardless of the merits of the criticism, is being bad.

He's about to become the most powerful political figure in the world - certainly one of them. His approval ratings are around 70%. The reverence directed towards him in some circles is unlike anything since what George Bush received circa 2002. And yet that's not enough. He must not be spoken ill of -- ever. Even if you praise him one day for something, if you criticize him for something else the next, that is blasphemy.

I honestly find it nothing short of creepy, really. For those whose stomach gets queasy when reading anything that criticizes him, this is not a place to come. Just save yourselves the heartache. In 9 days, just go here, and you'll see all the praise and hagiography your little hearts desire:

WhiteHouse.gov

Same as the old boss

(Now if someone could figure out how to put "AIPAC" into a song lyric ...)

while the rest of us seek out some cave that isn't too overcrowded. Israel, a country of 7.1 million people, has nuclear weapons so why is Obama objecting to Iran, a very ancient civilisation indeed, having these as well. When Adam was a boy the Persian rulers of Iran were as rich as, well, Croesus and Iranians must be very angry at the way they are being depicted in the USA. Bush and co. apparently restrained Israel from taking a swipe at Iran's main nuclear plant last year but, judging from the fanaticism motivating Israel's current attempt to annihilate the people in the Gaza Ghetto, the Israelis haven't given up on trying to wheedle the incoming American President.

Why should Iranians have any love for Americans who can't keep their sticky fingers in just their own American pie? Mohammad Mosaddeq was the Prime Minister of Iran for two years in the 1950s until he was overthrown by a miltary junta. If you read about Operation Ajax you'll find startling similarities to the urgent need to remove Saddam Hussein more recently. Btw, Iraq was a far more secular state under Hussein than Israel is today. I've known many medical personnel who worked in Iraq without any compulsion on them to be of any particular religious faith - and none at all if that was their choice. Any time I mention that Israel is a theocracy the Zionists on a thread run away from it and want to talk about I-ran while I could say You-ran. Mossaddeq either had or wanted to natioanalise the Iranian oil industry. The Americans and the British were less than keen. Israel, in its infancy, was most likely not involved but in 2009 Israel would dearly like to have oil-wells of its own. We know where that's going but we're not quite the simpletons that we probably were (I was anyway) when Colin Powell told the UN Security Council in February 2003 whqt could be most politely called a pack of lies. Powell, a former General, was a messenger-boy for Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.

I know an old expression "Send the fool further" and now that Iraq has been demolished and Gaza is in the process of being reduced to a charnel-house, there aren't too many fools left in this part of the world. As for Americans.....Who knows?