Drumbeats category archive

Thoreau hears the war mongers mongering war with Iran with other persons’ children once more, because Afghanistan and the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq have worked out so well.

A nugget:

The great thing about being a hawk is that if the people you wish to attack are rational and self-interested you can argue in favor of attacking them because they aren’t crazy enough to, say, fight back. Conversely, if they aren’t rational and self-interested you must attack them because they might attack you.

Of course, the fact that they are rational and self-interested apparently doesn’t mean that we should try anything drastic like, say, negotiating.

In the world of wingnut poliltical theory, the road to media success is intellectual failure. The resolution to what’s happening in Iran lies in Iran, not in the U. S.

Gary Kamiya on the resurgence of the Iran warmongers:

One of the things the neocons would like the rest of us to forget is that they were the most ardent proponents of invading the very country whose people they now piously claim to support. Back in the heady “Mission Accomplished” days, the neocon slogan was “Wimps go to Baghdad — real men go to Tehran.” Leaving aside the fact that the neocons were a bunch of paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks who never “went” anywhere that didn’t have room service, the point is that they have been burning to attack Iran for years — an attack that would inevitably result in the slaughter of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Yes, some of them claimed that invading Iran would be a cakewalk, that the long-suffering Iranian people would welcome Americans as liberators, and so on. (Some of them even managed to keep a straight face while saying this.) And if you believe them, there’s a bridge in Fallujah I’d like to sell you.

Will Bunch hears the rhythm.

Over there, at the Booman Tribune.

From the comments to a story on Market Watch (follow the link and look for a comment from Stormy):

A friend of mine serving in IRAQ has just been moved to the eastern border with IRAN under orders to assume a defensive position. The only reason I can see for a defensive position is to prevent Irainian (sic) troops from retaliating after an Israel strike. It may get really hairy soon.

Ray tells me that Market Watch has a habit of deleting comments they don’t like, not just for incivility, but for content, so here’s a screenshot. Click the excerpt to see it in context:

H/T Ray for the tip.

Addendum:

The Booman Tribune has more.

War.

More war.

They love war.

War makes them feel like men.

It’s their Viagra:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to use his White House visit today to push President Bush to take a more aggressive approach toward Iran — and there are some signs that he’ll have a receptive audience.

Both Olmert and Bush are badly wounded and looking for salvation. Olmert is facing corruption allegations that could drive him from office. Bush is wildly unpopular, desperate to salvage his legacy and fighting irrelevance as the general election begins in earnest — with even the Republican candidate trying to keep him at a distance.

It’s in this environment that the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports: “Ehud Olmert will urge President Bush to prepare an attack on Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported.

“Citing sources close to the Israeli prime minister, Yediot Achronot reported on its front page Wednesday that Olmert, who is due to hold closed-door talks with Bush in Washington, will say that ‘time is running out’ on diplomatic efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

The Current Federal Administration claimed that arms found in Iraq came from Iran.

They didn’t. See ASZ for the scoop.

Another example of Bushie wishful thinking a lie. This surprises you how?

Warmongers on parade:

Despite the doctrine of the Republican Party, war should be a last, not a first resort.

Via Josh Marshall.

War tickles Bushie testosterone.

The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.

Via Rubber Hose.

Balloon Juice digs the rif.

The Booman Tribune hears the rhythm.

So the best that can be said about this latest news is that the Bush administration and its allies in the Israeli government continue to play a game of chicken with Iran, to coerce concessions from the Iranian government, or perhaps to bully others into agreeing to a tougher sanctions regime (the “Madman is loose again” ploy). The worst? Cheney was sent to Riyadh, Tel Aviv and other destinations in the Middle East to shore up support to a plan to strike Iran before the end of President Bush’s term in office. . . .

They want another war. Be afraid. History has proven that there is no lie too great for this bunch.

Dan Froomkin distills the lies (emphasis added):

President Bush on Wednesday said something demonstrably false and inflammatory about Iran — asserting that the Iranian government has “declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people.”

The Iranians have never done any such thing — and for Bush to say so at a time of great tension between the two countries is bizarre at best.

So why did he say it? Was he actively trying to misrepresent the situation? Was it just a slip of the tongue? Or does he believe it, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary?

It seems unlikely that Bush would choose this particular venue to launch a disinformation campaign: His comment came midway through a softball interview with an obscure U.S.-funded Farsi-language radio station, on the occasion of Persian new year. And the Iranian audience knows best that what he said is untrue. Such a blatant distortion only strengthens the Iranian government’s position that Bush is a liar.

So did Bush just misspeak? The White House certainly suggested that yesterday, with a spokesman insisting that Bush had simply spoken in “shorthand,” combining Iranian threats against Israel with concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.

And yet, as disturbing as the third possibility is — that Bush is operating in an alternate reality — it’s supported by this simple fact: He’s said almost exactly the same thing at least once before.

There was a lot speculation in Left Blogosphere that Admiral Fallon’s resignation was a prelude to more war from the Bushie War Machine.

(Interestingly enough, many of the same Left Blogospheristas speculated, when the good Admiral was appointed, that his appointment signaled preparations for carrier-based air assaults on Iran, since he was an Admiral of the Navy, rather than a General of the Army. Here is one such speculation.)

Dan Froomkin has a thorough analysis of the situation and the possibilities and reaches the following conclusion on the fourth page of his post today:

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that, ever since December’s National Intelligence Estimate threw cold water on Bush and Cheney’s insistence that Iran was on the brink of nuclear weapons development, a preventative attack on Iran was no longer in the cards. But Bush has repeatedly brushed off the NIE’s findings. Administration pronouncements blaming Iran for fomenting attacks in Iraq are on the upswing again. And now Cheney’s on his way to Israel.

It’s still not really beyond Bush and Cheney to order a full-scale preemptive attack on Iran. But the more likely scenario is that there will be an asymmetrical U.S. response to a (possibly trumped up) Iranian provocation. And the most likely scenario is that the U.S. will encourage (or certainly not oppose) an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities — which in turn would lead the U.S. to come to Israel’s defense should Iran strike back.

I suspect he nailed it. The War Mongers in the Current Federal Administration know that they can’t market another war. So, if they have the opportunity, they will happily resort to trickery.

Because they like war.

(And, I suspect that, since none of them have been personally touched by it, they think it’s more like this than like this. It’s something that happens to other people. Like my son.)

Just as they like torture.

Sing we all together now: “Gulf of Tonkin.”

Here is William Arkin’s take on the situation.

Where have we heard all this before?

Scott Ritter in the Guardian:

With all the courage of conviction that comes from being anonymously sourced, a “senior British diplomat” has cast doubt on the veracity of a recent US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. This unnamed official was backed up by Simon Smith, the British representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who noted that a recent briefing given by the IAEA had raised doubts about Iran’s claims that it never had a nuclear weapons programme.

Smith is no unbiased observer. As the spokesperson for the so-called “EU-3” (Great Britain, France and Germany), he serves as the face of a group which has a considerable political investment in maintaining the notion of Iran as a non-compliant player in the diplomatic game that is Iran’s nuclear programme. The EU-3 has been attempting to walk the tight wire between a desire to moderate hardline US policies through placation, and their responsibility under international law to respect the provisions of the non-proliferation treaty. In doing so, the EU-3 has married itself to a policy that centres on Iran’s requirement to suspend unconditionally its uranium enrichment programme, since such a programme could be used in any nuclear weapons program.

(snip)

(In the prelude to the War in Iraq–ed.) Iraq had been placed in the impossible position of having to prove a negative, a doomed process which led to war. I am fearful that the EU-3 is repeating this same process, demanding Iran refute something that doesn’t exist except in the overactive imaginations of diplomats pre-programmed to accept at face value anything negative about Iran, regardless of its veracity. The implications of such a morally and intellectually shallow posture could very well be disastrous.

It moves me to poesy:

He was a warmonger,
And sure ’twas no wonder,
For so were his buddies, neocons all.
And they each wheeled their humvees
By courtesy of teevees,
Crying, “Send others to fight the battles, we are alive alive oh.”

Addendum, Just a Few Minutes Later:

Digby has more.

Via Susie.

On the Media explores two beating drums in the Bushie campaign to monger more war:

First: The Current Federal Administrator’s tour of the Middle East. From the website:

President Bush returned this week from the Middle East, where he toured with a three-point agenda: peace, Iran and oil. According to The Week’s Susan Caskie, editorials from the region were all in agreement – thumbs down.

Go to the website or listen here (MP3):

Second: The claims of Iranian speedboats threatening U. S. warships:

Both Iran and the U.S. released doctored videos recently of a January 6th confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. The Washington Post’s Bill Arkin says the awkwardly produced videos, plus a prankster called the ‘Filipino monkey,’ have overshadowed the real story in the media.

The story analyzes the how both the tapes–the one released by the Pentagon and the one released by Iran–were doctored.

Go to the website or listen here (MP3):

From the Department of Redundancy Department:

If you think your government won’t lie to you, remember the Gulf of Tonkin.

Then, again, Lyndon didn’t lie all that much. Not like the Current Federal Administration, which wouldn’t know a truth if the truth bit it in the tush.

Gulf of Tonkin Reprise.

Addendum, 1/11/2008:

From upyernoz, who doesn’t believe in upper case:

it’s really remarkable how the story of the belligerent iranian boats confronting the u.s. in the gulf of hormuz has completely fallen apart. after some pointed out that the threatening voice’s accent didn’t sound iranian and that there was no ambient noise or wind and waves that one would expect from a transmission from a small boat speeding across the water, the pentagon is now acknowledging that the voice may not have come from the boats at all. the pentagon admits that it separately recorded the audio portion and then edited it together with the video of the iranian boats, making it appear as if the audio was coming from the boats.

Keith Olbermann’s Cavalcade of Stars: “Grant, Hays, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, . . . Bush.”

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Afterthought: He left out Harding, who is perhaps the most apt comparison in terms of both competence and integrity.

Ya know, I don’t think I could stay in a job that required me to lie all the time.

Some of the time, maybe.

But not all the time.

Via Talking Points Memo.

As I pointed out earlier, the recently released National Intelligence Estimate puts the lie to statements of the Current Federal Administration.

(Actually, I reckon putting the lie to a Bushie statement is pretty much–hmmmm–the default selection. Just look at the record.)

Josh Marshall deconstructs the spin on the NIE:

Dan Froomkin deconstructs the spin over the last five months:

Bush yesterday said he was only briefed about the new estimate last week.

But a close examination of his word choice over the past year suggests that he learned something around August that got him to stop making claims that were apparently no longer supported by American intelligence.

Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon.

Even as he did that, however, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent. Bush went so far in late August and October as to warn of the potential for a nuclear holocaust.

Indeed, a careful parsing of Bush’s words indicates that, while not saying anything that could later prove to be demonstrably false, Bush left his listeners with what he likely knew was a fundamentally false impression. And he did so in the pursuit of a more muscular and possibly even military approach to a Middle Eastern country.

It’s an oddly familiar pattern of deception.

Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure, and while it continues to develop an enriched uranium program, it apparently has not resumed moving toward a nuclear capability, according to a consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community released today by Director of National Intelligence John M. McConnell.

The assessment states “with moderate confidence” that “Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program” as of mid-2007, but suggests that Tehran continues to keep that option open.

This belies the continuing fulminations of the Current Federal Administration about the “danger” posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And from whom does this come?

The Government of the United States of America.

“Belies” is, of course, the only appropriate word.

For almost everything out of the mouths of the Current Federal Administration be lies.

Addendum, 12/4/2007:

NPR analysizes the timelies timelines.

Once again, facts belie the statements of the Current Federal Administrator.

And Dick Polman considers what obstinant things facts can be (emphasis added):

President Bush just can’t catch a break. It seems like every time he tries to be bellicose, the facts come along and trip him up.

Five years ago, he railed against the “grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, only to suffer irreperable domestic political damage when it turned out that he had committed American blood and treasure to the overthrow of a dictator who had no WMDs. And now he has been embarrassed again: Just six weeks after he raised the specter of the Iranians wielding a nuclear weapon, and invoked “World War III,” America’s 16 intelligence agencies have concluded in a new National Intelligence Estimate, with “high confidence,” that the Iranians actually halted their nuclear weapons program…

In 2003.

In the words of the Old Sailor, “Thar be (Bushie–natch) lies!”