Year: 2007
Ayatollah Rebukes Ahmadinejad Over Nuclear Sabre Rattling
The slapfight between Pres. George Bush and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has resembled a pair of five-year-olds squabbling in a sandbox. Now it appears a grown-up, albeit a very scary one, has stepped in:
Iran’s outspoken president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be under pressure from the highest authorities in Iran to end his involvement in its nuclear program, a sign that his political capital is declining as his country comes under increasing international pressure.
Just one month after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program, two hard-line newspapers, including one owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the president to stay out of all matters nuclear.
In the hazy world of Iranian politics, such a public rebuke was seen as a sign that the supreme leader himself — who has final say on all matters of state — might no longer support the president as the public face of defiance to the West.
It is the first sign that Ahmadinejad has lost any degree of Ayatollah Khamenei’s confidence, a potentially damaging development for a president who has rallied his nation and defined his administration by declaring nuclear power Iran’s “inalienable right.”
Iraqi View: The Surge Is a Very Bad Idea for So Many Reasons
Canary in the mine shaft: Nadim al-Jabiri is a professor of political science at Baghdad University, a member of Iraq’s parliament, and the head of the Islamic Virtue Party (Al-Fadhila). He makes a pretty good argument why Iraqis think George Bush’s surge is a really bad idea:
Despite the overwhelming demands of the majority of Americans and Iraqis to end the war and occupation of Iraq, and despite the Baker-Hamilton report’s recommendations for de-escalation, President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki are designing a new “surge” targeting the Iraqi capital.
This will put an end to the participation of many Iraqi groups in the ongoing political process, because people like us will lose faith in achieving our goals.and getting our country back through diplomacy.
Many Iraqis welcomed the first few steps President Bush took following the release of the Baker-Hamilton report recommendations, like pressuring Mr. Al-Maliki to include more Sunnis in the government, reconsidering the de-Baathification process, and re-evaluating the laws for distributing oil revenue. But the current Bush-Maliki plan for attacking Baghdad shows that the Baker-Hamilton report was not taken seriously enough. In fact, the new Bush-Maliki strategy is the polar opposite of that report’s major recommendations.The new Bush-Maliki plan includes sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, mostly to Baghdad, and sending more Iraqi troops, mostly from the Kurdish militia “Peshmerga,” to Baghdad.
Increasing the U.S. troops will show Iraqis that the U.S. administration is against setting a timetable for withdrawing all the occupation forces. This will both increase and legitimize the Iraqi armed resistance to the occupation even more, and it will destroy all the other non-violent options. In addition, this will put an end to the participation of many Iraqi groups in the ongoing political process, because people like us will lose faith in achieving our goals
and getting our country back through diplomacy.Sending the Peshmerga, the Iraqi Kurdish militia, to fight Iraqi Arabs will activate other militias and justify forming even more militias in the middle and south of Iraq. This could lead to increasing the civil violence, and might even spark an Arab-Kurd civil war that will be added to the current civil conflict that was fueled by the destruction of the Shia Shrines in Samarra in February of last year.
The current political plan of President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki in establishing a US-backed coalition that includes the few Shia and Sunni parties that are justifying the occupation and working to divide Iraqi into three separate regions will do nothing other than increase the violence and confirm sectarian divisions.
Iraqi political groups like Al-Fadila party, Al-Sadr movement, the National Dialogue Front, the Reconciliation and Liberation Front, and many other Sunnis, Shias, Kurd, and Turkoman groups can’t see any chance for this Bush-Maliki plan to succeed. Because, unlike our plans, this plan is not based on a political solution that can put Iraqis together in building a nonsectarian government that aims to stabilize Iraq and end any foreign intervention.
Quote du Jour
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only a unanimity of the graveyard.
— Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Poll: Vast Majority of GOPers Support Bush, War
Dead-enders: According to the new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, while almost two-thirds of Americans (60 percent) no longer believe the war in Iraq is worth fighting, fully three-quarters of Republicans remain convinced that America should stay in the middle of Iraq’s sectarian civil war:
By focusing on slight drops in Bush’s approval ratings, the Traditional Media overlook the threat posed to our national security by the blind, cult-like devotion to the president.
[Only about] one-fourth of Republicans said they did not believe the war was worth fighting, and a roughly equal number opposed the troop increase.
Even more alarming is the fact that a whopping 39 percent of Americans still approve of the job performance of George W. Bush, whose incompetence has been extraordinary by any rational standard.
In its analysis of these numbers, the Times, like most in the Traditional Media, focuses on the fact that support is diminishing slightly for the president and his war. But as long as Bush and his advisers know they have even this meager level of support they will continue to pursue their disastrous course in Iraq. By focusing on occasional slight drops in approval ratings, the media overlook the threat to our national security posed by this blind, cult-like devotion to Pres. Bush by a third of U.S. citizens.
Iraqi PM: Bush, Rice Comments Comfort Terrorists
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki responded yesterday to criticism of him and his government by Pres. Bush and Sec. of State Condolezza Rice, saying that their grim assessments were giving aid and comfort to terrorists:
“I believe such statements give a morale boost to the terrorists and push them toward making an extra effort, making them believe they have defeated the American administration.”
— P.M. Maliki
— P.M. Maliki
Commenting on a recent statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said, “Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the [Iraqi] government is on borrowed time,” humorously suggesting that it might be the Bush administration that is on borrowed time.
“I understand and realize that inside the American administration there is some kind of a crisis situation, especially after the results of the last election,” he said.
Maliki said suggestions by Bush officials that the U.S. did not fully support his government played into the hands of insurgents.
“I believe such statements give a morale boost to the terrorists and push them toward making an extra effort, making them believe they have defeated the American administration,” Maliki said. “But I can tell you, they haven’t defeated the Iraqi government.”
The question this raises is whether Maliki is being told to act defiant toward his puppet masters in order to create an illusion of independence, or whether the puppet is truly cutting his strings.
Rocket Scientists, Brain Surgeons Agree: End is Near
Really smart people think, after six years of Bush, the world is in big trouble. But Bush is probably still trying to figure out how to “bring it on” faster.
The world edged closer toward nuclear holocaust and environmental catastrophe, a prominent international group of scientists warned today, moving their symbolic Doomsday Clock ahead two minutes.
“It is now five minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This change reflects the global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and by climate change.”
It is now five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock…The symbolism of the move is significant because the organization, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, has moved the clock only 18 times since it was set to seven minutes to midnight in 1947. The clock has been closer to midnight, two minutes away after the Eisenhower administration tested a nuclear bomb in 1953. But it is also a long way from its most optimistic setting, at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today’s change was the first since 2002.
The organization cited North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on military uses and proliferation of nuclear weapons and the presence of 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia. The organization added global warming to its concerns, saying in its statement, “the dangers of climate change are nearly as dire as those of nuclear weapons.”
Tancredo Exploring Run for Prez
Jingo-In-Chief: Colorado Republican Rep. Tom “Miami Is a Third World Country” Tancredo thinks he has what it takes to be president of these United States. Of course, that might have something to do with the low bar the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has set. Tancredo has announced the formation of an exploratory committee to assess the nation’s need for a jingoistic, mono-issue conservative from the suburbs of Denver.
‘They believe that there is a void in this race that none of the other candidates are willing or able to fill.’
Tancredo’s single issue is immigration reform, by which he means close the borders and kick out the illegals. Following a weekend meeting with Repugs in Iowa, Tancredo was convinced that the increasingly crowded GOP field of runners needs one more. Indeed, he explained to the Associated Press Tuesday what the Iowa GOP brain trust told him: “They believe that there is a void in this race that none of the other candidates are willing or able to fill.â€
He’s probably right, you know. What sensible presidential candidate would hitch his wagon to the lone horse of immigration reform, an issue which reared its ugly head before the midterm elections but had absolutely no effect on any key races. Indeed, while the 109th Congress was well-known for its ability to get nothing accomplished, one got the sense that few on Capitol Hill had any real stomach for taking on the immigration issue, so no one did. Well, except for enacting a law that calls on the federal government to build a 700-mile-long Great Wall of America on the Mexico border — without appropriateing the $49 million to $70 million it will likely take to build it.
So Tancredo sees himself as the Void Filler of the GOP in the race for president in 2008. Good luck with that, Tom. He’ll likely garner some support from the true conservatives out there, but he’s such a polarizing and monomaniacal figure that I can’t imagine him becoming a viable candidate for president. But then, I thought the same thing about George W. Bush.
Quote du Jour
The increase in armaments that is intended in each nation to produce consciousness of strength, and a sense of security, does not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts.
— Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933), British statesman
Obama Fever – Not Feeling It
In the unlikely event that Sen. Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, I will vote for him in the general election that November. However, I will be very surprised if there is any chance he will win.
It is a harsh indictment, I know, but while Americans will vote a functionally retarded white guy into the Oval Office twice, there is no chance in hell the country is ready to vote for a black person or, for that matter, a white woman.
I agree that he has all the attributes ascribed to him by the Gang of 500 — he’s smart, well-spoken and telegenic, and all of those qualities would be a refreshing change after eight years of Bush. Unfortunately, none of those qualities will have an impact, finally, on his ability to win.
His lack of experience is a factor, but the main reason he’ll lose, I’m sorry to say, is his father’s race.
It appeals to our higher selves to believe that America is ready to elect an African-American president. Unfortunately, recent electoral history indicates otherwise:
- Harold Ford Jr.’s loss of the Tennessee senate seat to the revolting Bob Corker last year.
- Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt’s two close losses to the even more revolting Sen. Jesse Helms in North Carolina a decade ago.
- Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s two losses to the odious Gov. George Deukmejian in California in the 1980s.
In each of these cases, white independent voters just couldn’t vote for a black candidate, even though in each instance the black candidate was equally or more intelligent, articulate and experienced than the white candidate.
There were other factors, of course. Both Gantt and Bradley were mayors of the biggest cities in their states, and thus stigmatized in the eyes of rural voters. Both Gantt and Ford were targeted with racist advertising. Sen. Helms ran an ad showing a white man receiving a rejection letter for a job purportedly because a black man had been given “his” job because of affirmative action. Ford was the target of the infamous “Harold, call me” ad that implied he dated white women, heaven forfend.
In the cases of both Bradley and Gantt, polling throughout the election showed close races, but on election day, the white candidates won decided victories. So white people were telling pollsters they would vote for a black candidate but couldn’t actually do it when the time came.
Of course, Deval Patrick was elected last year as Massachusetts’ first black governor, and as a presidential candidate, it wouldn’t surprise me if Obama were to win Massachusetts. He might even win all the states John Kerry won in 2004, but as we saw then, that was not enough.
Every election is momentous but the stakes are as high as they can be in 2008. The future of the United States depends on a Democratic victory. It is a harsh indictment, I know, but while Americans will vote a functionally retarded white guy into the Oval Office twice, there is no chance in hell the country is ready to elect a black person or, for that matter, a white woman.
Like all good liberals, I yearn for the day when race, gender and, what the heck, sexual orientation, are not a factor in who we elect to be president. And while I wish Sen. Obama well in the coming campaign, unfortunately, America is not there yet.
