but I didn't think they'd invade Iraq without even a fig leaf of international legal cover and with an occupation and reconstruction "plan" that could have been the direct transcription of the Friday night drunken ramblings of 3 freshman libertarians either.

...impeachment. Now.

Oddly, by impeaching Bill Clinton for no good reason, the GOP trivialized the entire process I think, and that is one more reason no-one is able to get the process started now.

That...and a bunch of chickenshit democrats who seem concerned solely with their desire to keep their cushy jobs beyond 2008. At this point I'm about ready to blame the dems as much as the GOP for this mess: dems voted to give Bush war powers he never should have had. Anyone who read Gail Sheehy's "The Accidental Candidate" in Vanity Fair in 2000, wouldn't have voted to give Bush the right to use the White House bathrooms, let alone the right to make war. The man is a sick fuck, and Cheney is worse: a crypto fascist behind the scenes. And everyone in Congress who worked with Cheney knew exactly what he was, and how dangerous he was and is, and they all ignored that for their own short-sighted political gain.

The dems bear responsibility for this, and now that they're in charge, the fact that they don't begin impeachment proceedings against both Bush, and Cheney, is simply irresponsible.

I wrote off the GOP 25 years ago, when Reagan was elected, and NOTHING they've done since has disabused me of the notion that they shouldn't run anything more important than a used-car dealership, if that.

The dems are our only hope, they're failing, miserably.

It's time folks. It's time to impeach them both, and convict them, and remove them from office. Televised hearings that detailed their lies, and the ways they have been responsible for the slaughter of thousands of people for their own political gain and nothing else, these things would make it easy to convict them in the Senate.

But the Dems better get started, before GW decides that nuclear war with Iran looks like the perfect way to wag the dog.

I don't care how stupid 50 million american voters have been--twice--our congress should be a little smarter than those voters and do what has to be done. Now.

This needs to be repeated again and again - the neocons are working against America's short and long term interests.

But can we put one tired old fox news meme to rest?

its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is an ignorant and bigoted blowhard who questions the Holocaust

Ahmadinejad has not questioned the holocaust happened, he questions its use as propaganda - essentially the mythication of it. This misconception of his words has arisen from consistent mistranslation of his speeches by western media.

A fine article, but I question the contention that most Iranians would like to see the current 'regime' overthrown. That may be true of the westernized middle and upper classes, but the numerically superior proles are probably reasonably happy with the status quo now that a Man of the People is President.

I'd really like to see some empirical evidence either way.

George W. Bush is hellbent on driving our nation over a cliff, just to prove that he can. Dick Cheney is delusional and if anything, worse than Bush. The Republican Congress either shares in Bush's mania, or is too intimidated to stop him.

It is up to the Democrats. Perhaps the failure of the nonbinding resolution was a good thing, since it would have been as ineffective as the way Robin Williams once described unarmed British bobbies: "Stop, or I shall say Stop again!"

The Democrats won Congress for a reason: to end the Iraq War. It is time for them to use the power given to them by a majority of voters. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid: forget useless declarations and half-measures. End the war, now. Stop Bush, now.

Before it is too late.

If Gary thinks the Neocons are going to pack up their bags at the end of the Bush administration, he'd better think again. The US has become a country that is "interventionist." The precedent has been set; and even though the war was proven to be based on a fraud, THEY STILL RE-ELECTED BUSH!

That voter coalition isn't going anywhere, and everybody knows it.

I'm not sure it pays to suggest their reign is over for any reason whatsoever. No doubt, they will do what they can to provoke a war with Iran in the next two years, and beyond that with whatever candidate they can influence. William Pfaff makes the case from the foreign policy standpoint in the Feb. 15th edition of The New York Review Of Books.

It is worth learning just how far this country has leaned to the right.

Pfaff calls it "Manifest Destiny: A New Direction for America," It is a neo-colonial mentality in a form close to oligarchy. The government is currently bankrupting itself to perpetuate it, and still liberals are sitting back on their asses saying it will be too bad if the Dems nominate Hillary because she can't win! They still aren't taking the threat seriously.

The Neocon/Rove coalition did not gain the control they have with that sort of thinking. Something bigger is going to have to happen soon in moderate circles to wake these folks up. Call me the alarmist and the paranoid, but after the election in '04, I don't see how you can dismiss the possibility.

That Bush escalated the war since the mid-term election only further proves the point, as does the chest beating with Iran. He's not going to quit, and either will his successor until a new coalition is created that wants to go forward instead of backward.

***Administration’s Nuclear Saber Rattling on Iran Threatens Global Security****

Statement by Dr. Kurt Gottfried, Chairman, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Emeritus Professor of Physics, Cornell University:

"Plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran also fail to recognize the immediate dangers inherent in the use of nuclear weapons. The administration is reportedly considering using the B61-11 nuclear 'bunker buster' against an underground facility near Natanz, Iran. The use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand, depending on the weapon yield and weather conditions."

The UCS is a non-commercial, non-governmental, non-political,

non-profit association of scientists. It is what it says it is: A union

of concerned scientists: ie a 'professional association'

They have created a very informative animation, on the effects

of the use of a bunker buster nuclear weapon in Iran, showing

the severity and fallout pattern downwind from the Iranian

targets.

LINK ( repeated below also)

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/nuclear-bunker-buster-rnep-animation.html

Various military, governmental, and self interested spokespersons

(mostly of the 'unidentified official' attribution), have poo-poo 'd

the warnings illustrated on the UCS site. I have not seen any

statement that provides a technical justification for this opinion.

Without proof, it is just --Spin-- .

Clicking on the internal site-links will provide other, ghastly

scenarios-possibilities, in which millions die. I emphasize

the integrity and independence of this association, necessitated

by the ocean of self serving spin which surrounds us.

The Israelis, have a plan to blast holes in the earth, into which

nuclear bunker busters will be smartbombed, supposedly

reducing fallout levels to insignificant levels. Never been

tried or proven to my knowledge.

The attitude seems to be the same as most of the decisions

of the last 6 years: 'Lets Try It ---Maybe It Will Work' with

'We Had No Choice', as a fallback when it becomes catastrophic

failure.

LINK (2nd posting) http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/nuclear-bunker-buster-rnep-animation.html

After Chernobyl, exhaustive medical research was done to

discover the effects of the resulting worldwide nuclear fallout.

Hospital and other records were analysed for indications of

statistically abnormalities. This is History now, but think about

it: -there occured a very significant statistical 'Spike' in death

rates especially from cancer, especially among the elderly.

Extrapolated to absolte numbers, it was in the tens of

thousands. So yes, it will affect you, even if indirectly, and

buried in statistics. Iran is a 'technically comparable' distance

from western NA as the Ukraine.

We cant seem to change Washington's policies, but at least,

we can know Exactly what was done, and by what means. It

tells you What your representative knows now. Or the information

that your representative 'didnt know' or was shielded from/didnt

want to know, or was influenced to ignore.

LINK (3rd posting)

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/nuclear-bunker-buster-rnep-animation.html

--Without pages of explanation, --I think Day 1 will be between the 10th

and 14th/Feb, ie in a few days... You cant keep 20,000 pilots, sailors on

active alert forever, and probaby 40,000 on shore, if they do, cracks will

start to show... I would be Very happy to be wrong, but this isnt going to

go away anyway. Dont worry about the lights, They will go out by themselves.