Time for Bush to Stop Holding Our Breath and Turning Us Blue

So far, the Bush administration policy of freezing out governments who disagree with it and “enemy-izing” them is — who would have thought — not working. With North Korea and Iran, it’s taken us closer to nuclear annihilation. It’s made formerly friendly Central and South America defy us. European allies who thought that maybe the U.N. inspectors could be right about Saddam not having weapons of mass destruction have been turned into alienated exes.

The Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group is expected to suggest we commit to pulling troops out of Iraq. It will also say we need to stop acting like four-year-olds using the silent treatment on playmates who didn’t share their ice cream cones.

James P. Pinkerton in the Dallas Morning News says the Baker Commission will be right.

Back in the good ol’ days before that spoiled child who is our president took over, talking to people used to work.

[Baker] started the controversy in October: “I believe in talking to your enemies. I don’t think you restrict your conversations to your friends.” Then, anticipating his critics, he added: “In my view, it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies.”

…Baker was doing his best to clear a path toward negotiating with players in the Middle East – most notably Syria and Iran – without those negotiations being tagged with the scarlet letter “A,” for appeasement.

It didn’t work. On Monday, the hawkish Wall Street Journal editorial page sounded the alarm [and] worried that Baker and the “foreign policy establishment” might pressure Bush to “appease” Syria.

But there’s no good alternative to diplomacy, Pinkerton says. […]

Hersh: Cheney Lying About Iran Nukes

History repeats itself. Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to bury a classified draft assessment by the CIA that shows Iran, like Iraq before it, might be telling the truth about it nuclear weapons program. Be sure to pick up the Nov. 27 issue of the New Yorker, with the full article by Seymour Hersh.

The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it.

The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency….

But Cheney and the Bush administration aren’t going to let little details like the truth stop them from pursuing their goals, whatever the hell they are.

Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re not looking for a smoking gun,” the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. “They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission.” […]

Draft Women First

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-New York) says he will reintroduce a bill to reinstate the military draft. Rangel believes putting the lives of sons of the middle class on the line would deter the Republicans’ penchant for war-making. I think he should go one step further and draft young women first. Putting their daughters in harm’s way would really give the chickenhawks pause before going to war on whim.

This won’t happen, I know. We haven’t even had the debate yet about whether to draft women when (not if) the draft is needed again.

As a feminist, I believe the argument against drafting women in moot. Women have demanded equality in our society, and that means they should be called up equally with men in an involuntary muster.

Still, I think Rep. Rangel is right. We need the draft to keep rightwing hawks like Pres. Bush, Vice Pres. Cheney and the rest of their cabal honest in their war-making.

One solid indicator that the threat to the United States is real would be the willingness of the country’s leaders to send their daughters into the conflict first.

(Except, of course, Cheney’s daughter Mary is who is gay and thus would get a free pass.)

U.S. Conducting War Games off Iranian Coast

Tick… tick… tick…

There is a massive concentration of US naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Three US naval strike groups off the Iranian coastline are deployed: USS Enterprise, USS Eisenhower and USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group.

The naval strike groups have been assigned to fighting the “global war on terrorism.”

Tehran considers the US war games to be conducted in the Persian Gulf, off the Iranian coastline as a provocation, which is intended to trigger a potential crisis and a situation of direct confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf:

“Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as describing the military manoeuvres as dangerous and suspicious.

Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

The Iranian foreign ministry official said the US-led exercises were not in line with the security and stability of the region. Instead, they are aimed at fomenting crises, he said.” (quoted in BBC, 23 October 2006)

Surprise! Bush Will Have Warships in Position and Ready to Bomb Iran This Saturday

Bombing Could Start 17 Days before Mid-Term Elections

Based on stories last month in Time magazine and The Nation, it appears that the U.S.S. Eisenhower Strike Group left Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 1 and will reach the shores of Iran at the Strait of Hormuz this Saturday, Oct. 21 — 17 days before the mid-term elections.

First word of the Eisenhower’s deployment to the Persian Gulf came from angry Navy officers, who contacted military critics of the Iraq war and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

According to the mid-September 2006 article in The Nation, the strike group includes:

[The] nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship…

And:

First word of the early dispatch of the “Ike Strike” group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

“This is very serious,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers’ complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)

Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is “very important evidence” of war planning. He says, “I know that some naval forces have already received ‘prepare to deploy orders’ [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date” of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date–in this case, reportedly, October 1.)

So why has the president sent the strike group to Iran?

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Sweden to Deport Gay Iranian to Iran Where He’ll Probably Be Hanged

Don’t swish, don’t swing: A Swedish migration board ruled Friday to deport a gay Iranian back to his homeland despite the fact that he might be hanged by the Iranian government. The deportation would be the first since a moratorium was imposed a year ago after two gay teenagers were hanged after being deported from Sweden to Iran.

The moratorium was lifted after the Swedish embassy in Tehran was assured by the Iranian government that it would not hang gay deportees as long as they didn’t act gay. Right, and those guys aren’t developing nuclear weapons, either, right?

It sounds like the system is set up so that there’s almost no way a gay Iranian wouldn’t be caught, according to The Local, an English-language newspaper published in Stockholm:

The court referred to a 2005 report from the Swedish foreign ministry, which said that Islamic law as applied in Iran prescribed “terrible penalties” for homosexual acts. Men who are found to have had penetrative sex can face the death penalty.

But the report also said that most gay people in Iran managed to avoid danger by living “discrete and withdrawn” lives.

Sören Andersson [chair of gay rights group RFSL] said it was unreasonable for Sweden to demand that gay people live “hidden lives.”

The report also said that most gay people in Iran managed to avoid danger by living ‘discrete and withdrawn’ lives.

“We are very critical of the Foreign Ministry’s reporting,” he said.

He also pointed to a report from the United Nations’ Philip Alston, in which he detailed a number of cases in which men were sentenced to death for “private, consensual sexual conduct.”

Alston also described a Special Protection Division, which empowers police officers to conduct surveillance of citizens’ private sexual behaviour.

“There’s a certain cynicism in the foreign ministry, in the Migration Board and in courts — they don’t care whether people live or die,” said Andersson.

RFSL has also raised the case of a lesbian from Pakistan, who also faces deportation to her homeland. Andersson says she was raped by police with the aim of “rehabilitating” her.

Asked whether people claiming asylum due to persecution on the grounds of sexual orientation were treated less favourably than political asylum seekers, Andersson said he was “beginning to wonder whether that is the case.”

“People who seek political asylum do seem to be seen as more important. This is hair-raising reasoning about sexual orientation.”

The Iranian’s legal representative, Lars Lundin, said he would probably appeal Friday’s ruling.

“This case is of great interest on a point of principle, and the new migration courts lack a body of precedents,” he said.

It’s difficult to accept taht an open and accepting society like Sweden would treat victims of political sexual repression in such a manner. But then again, the country just elected a conservative government, so maybe this is just another sign of a lefty nation taking a disturbing turn to the right.

Iran Just Following Israel’s Lead with ‘Deterrence by Uncertainty’

Maybe, maybe not: Political observers are drawing parallels between Iran’s approach to developing nuclear capabilities and the way Israel developed its own nuclear program — in secrecy that breeds uncertainty.

In developing its nuclear program Iran is using strategies that allowed its enemy Israel to assemble the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal without admitting it had one, according to a leading expert on the Israeli program.

The elements the Israeli and Iranian nuclear programs have in common are secrecy, concealment, ambiguity, double talk and denial.

“Whether deliberately or inadvertently, there are elements of resemblance between the way Iran is pursuing its nuclear program today and the way Israel was pursuing its own program in the 1960s,” Avner Cohen, author of a landmark study entitled “Israel and the Bomb,” in a telephone interview.

“This is a great irony of history but Iranian policymakers and nuclear technocrats may be strategically mimicking the Israeli model,” said Cohen, senior research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies.

As Cohen sees it, the elements the Israeli and Iranian nuclear programs have in common are secrecy, concealment, ambiguity, double talk and denial.

Iran’s probable strategy, he says, is to create the perception of having a secret weapons program, or being close to it, without actually testing a bomb or declaring its possession or impending possession.

That echoes the Israeli program, which began in the late 1950s at the Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev Desert. Since then, Israel has declined to confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons, saying only it would not be the first to “introduce” them into the Middle East.

Over the decades, Israel’s attitude has been “let the world guess” or as former Prime Minister Shimon Peres called it, “deterrence by uncertainty.”

Read more here.

Poll: Most Americans Support Seeking Diplomatic Solution to Iran’s Nuclear Threat

It’s coalition time again: A new Reuters/Zogby poll released today finds us Americans viewing Iran about the same as we viewed Iraq before Bushco invaded — favoring a multilateral, international, diplomatic approach.

A majority of Americans want the United States to increase diplomatic efforts over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while 70 percent oppose the use of U.S. troops to thwart Iran, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Thursday.

Asked the best course of action for the United States in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 45 percent said Washington should join with allies to increase diplomatic efforts and another 17 percent said the United States should step up diplomacy on its own.

One in four respondents, 26 percent, said they supported the use of U.S. ground troops in Iran, while 70 percent opposed it. Nine percent favored air strikes on selected military targets in Iran.

The Reuters/Zogby poll found 42 percent supported a strike on Iranian facilities if carried out by the Israeli military, with 47 percent opposed.

The national poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted on September 22-25, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Gardiner Says U.S. Already Conducting Military Ops in Iran

War’s on: A retired Air Force colonel is making the rounds in the media saying that the United States government is already conducting military operations inside Iran, and is preparing to start targeted bombing attacks. Sound familiar?

Just now on CNN, Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, “We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army’s National War College, has previously suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he added several additional new points:

  • The House Committee on Emerging Threats recently called on State and Defense Department officials to testify on whether U.S. forces were in Iran. The officials didn’t come to the hearing.
  • “We have learned from Time magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment. That is a major step.”
  • “The plan has gone to the White House. That’s not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House, that means we’ve gone to a different state.”
‘The real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime’

In a press release issued by the Century Foundation today, Gardiner asserts that Bushco is making plans to bomb Iran into submission:

In a new report for The Century Foundation, Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner warns that some in the Bush administration are making the case for air strikes aimed not only at setting back Iran’s nuclear program, but also at toppling the country’s government. He says that these officials are undeterred by the concerns of military leaders about whether such attacks would be effective.

“If this uncertainty does not appear to worry the proponents of air strikes in Iran it is in no small part because the real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime,” he writes. “It is hard to believe, after the misguided talk prior to Iraq of how American troops would be greeted with flowers and welcomed as liberators, but those inside and close to the administration who are arguing for an air strike against Iran actually sound as if they believe the regime in Tehran can be eliminated by air attacks.”
[…]