A U.S. decision to bend policy and sit down with Iran at nuclear talks fizzled Saturday, with Iran stonewalling Washington and five other world powers on their call to freeze uranium enrichment.
See?
A decision to bend policy, eh?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
U.S. exports to Iran […] grew more than tenfold during President George W. Bush's years in office even as he accused Iran of nuclear ambitions and helping terrorists.
Ever since I was a kid and the anti-communist rhertoric was in high dudgeon, when we were still selling wheat to Russia, I've always thought it was a little counter-message to sell supplies to people you call your enemy.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
When I joined the army and when I reenlisted five times, I did something that every member of Congress does. I took an oath to defend the Constitution as the core commitment of my service. Then the army sent me to eight different conflict areas to attack, or assist others in attacking, people who were not even remotely the enemies of the Constitution. Oddly enough, that oath said I was obliged to “defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.I’m retired now; and since I got out of the army I’ve had more opportunities to oppose the domestic enemies of the Constitution, because they are mostly those who were or worked for my former Commanders-in-Chief.
[...]
[U]ntil now there has been no attack on Iran because it makes no sense to do so. Such an attack will cost the US a broad tactical defeat in Iraq and the consolidation of nascent counter-US blocs around the globe… but if the numbers come in by September-October that show McCain to be the dangerous dolt that he is — the “hero” whose heroic act was being shot down while he rained bombs on Vietnamese — that McCain doesn’t have a snowball’s chance, then the absurd fantasy that the Bush administration will attack Iran — with all its profound consequences for the US’s malignant but profitable position and influence on the world stage — then… the administration could commit the last spiteful act. They could broaden their little, lost war to include Iran, and leave the new Democratic administration and freshly minted, bloody-handed, instrumental, oath-breaking, Democrat-controlled Congress with a swarming hornets nest of unpredictable and inextricable relations.
And some of us will say, you had opportunity after opportunity to stop this; but you enabled George W. Bush. You protected him and his coterie, because your elections were more important to you than either your oaths or the lives of countless human beings.
Shame on you all.
Indeed. Unfortunately, 1) they have no shame, and 2) it will provide us – and the rest of the world - little comfort to be able to lay blame on them.
U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.
"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."
[...]
Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.
[...]
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.
[...]
But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing current and former officials.
[...]
Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.
[...]
None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.
Recipe for disaster. Let’s use it again.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to "put a shine on recent events” in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week.“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.
She especially doesn’t want them to leave out the part about Iran’s influence in brokering a ceasefire agreement between al-Sadr and the Iraqi government. Something tells me they might be forced to acknowledge it, but they’ll still be polishing that shine.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
President Bush is saying that Iran is, in the words of the Times, "arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces." Perhaps that's true. But it's hard not to note that the Badr Organization (formerly the Badr Corps), which Maliki has allied himself with, is the outfit that was actually created in Iran under the tutelage and financing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Iran, Iraq. Sadr, Badr. It’s just too much to keep straight for the Little Prince who’s just looking forward to getting to the end of his term so he can go back to the party.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Fallon is said to have called General (soon, presumably, Saint) David Petraeus, who reports to him, an ass-kissing little chickenshit. Evidence available to the public since the revelation of this remark suggests the characterization was not entirely without merit; but it was certainly unwelcome in the White House, and even more unwelcome in the Undisclosed Location. No doubt similar reactions followed the reports of Adm. Fallon responding to a question about a US war against Iran with “…not on my watch.’
"The article credits Fallon with 'brazenly challenging his commander in chief' over a possible war with Iran, which Fallon called an 'ill-advised action,' and implies Fallon would resign rather than go to war against Iran.
And then there were none.
This first graph depicts how well satisfied we are with our own country's image. We were steadily becoming dissatisfied after the 9/11 attacks, but we got happy when we invaded Iraq in March of 2003. Of course, when it turned out we really didn't kick Iraqi ass so much, we began to become dissatisfied again.
This second graph shows how we think the rest of the world perceives us. We think they looked upon us favorably before 9/11, and that thereafter we began to lose favor. However, there was a moment shortly after we "took" Baghdad that we figured they liked us again. And then we began to think everybody else lost their sense of awe - for the same reason we became dissatisfied with ourselves no doubt.
We get off on war obviuosly. Is it any wonder the chickenhawks in Washington are thinking some action in Iran is just what they need?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
American military forces in Iraq were authorized to pursue former members of Saddam Hussein’s government and terrorists across Iraq’s borders into Iran and Syria, according to a classified 2005 document that has been made public by an independent Web site.
Something tells me they weren’t authorized by Syria or Iran.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
An official in the U.S. Navy Office of Information in Washington, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that decision was made in the office of the secretary of defence.[...]
That decision in Washington was followed by a news release by the commander of the 5th Fleet on the incident at about 4:00 a.m. Washington time Jan. 7. It was the first time the 5th Fleet had ever issued a news release on an incident with small Iranian boats.
[...]
The decision came just as President George W. Bush was about to leave on a Middle East trip aimed in part at rallying Arab states to join the United States in an anti-Iran coalition.
The Navy apparently decided it was best to distance itself from the report, knowing full well the truth would become all too obvious all too quickly.
The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Capt. David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon's story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, "I saw them float by. They didn't look threatening to me."The naval commanders seemed most determined, however, to scotch the idea that they had been close to firing on the Iranians. Vice-Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the 5th Fleet, denied the story in a press briefing on Jan. 7. A week later, Comdr. Jeffery James, commander of the destroyer Hopper, told reporters that the Iranians had moved away "before we got to the point where we needed to open fire".
The original press release didn’t say anything about any audio threat or boxes dropped in the water. But when the news media did not pick up on the release, a new and improved one was put out . Aren’t you surprised?
The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”[...]
While the threat — “I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes” — was picked up during the incident, further jacking up the tension, there’s no proof yet of its origin. And several Navy officials have said it’s difficult to figure out who’s talking.
[...]
“Based on my experience operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern [who is speaking on the radio channel] is very hard to do,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told Navy Times during a brief telephone interview today.
[...]
So with Navy officials unsure and the Iranians accusing the U.S. of fabrications, whose voice was it? In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets.
Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment.
[...]
Several Navy ship drivers interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the Monkey, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video.
[...]
Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called “Tanker Wars” of the late 1980s.
[...]
Furthermore, Hoffman said radio signals have a way of traveling long distances in that area. “Under certain weather conditions I could hear Bahrain from the Strait of Hormuz.”
[...]
Another former cruiser skipper said he thought the Monkey might be behind the audio threats when he first heard them earlier this week.
“It wouldn’t have surprised me at all,” he said. “There’s all kinds of chatter on Channel 16. Anybody with a receiver and transmitter can hear something’s going on. It was entirely plausible and consistent with the radio environment to interject themselves and make a threatening comment and think they’re being funny.”
This former skipper also noted how quiet and clean the radio “threat” was, especially when radio calls from small boats in the chop are noisy and cluttered.
“It’s a tough environment, you’re bouncing around, moving fast, lots of wind, noise. It’s not a serene environment,” he said. “That sounded like somebody on the beach or a large ship going by.”
[...]
The former skipper noted that he warned his crew about hecklers when preparing to transit Hormuz. “I tell them they’ll hear things on there that will be insulting,” he said. “You tell your people that you’ll hear things that are strange, insulting, aggravating, but you need to maintain a professional posture.”
Los Angeles Times
November 12, 1987
MESSAGES FROM ROGUE RADIO OPERATOR COULD PROVOKE ATTACK;
FILIPINO MONKEY: ON BACKS OF MANY IN TENSE GULF---
A cargo ship was sailing through the Strait of Hormuz recently when it was challenged by an Iranian warship demanding to know what it carried.
Iranian gunboats in these waters frequently attack vessels they suspect of carrying war materials to Iraq, and for the crew of the cargo ship, it was a tense moment.
"What is your cargo? What is your cargo?" the voice of an Iranian officer crackled over the radio.
Before the ship's captain could respond, a third voice came on the air: "I am carrying machine guns and hand grenades to Iraq . . . and the atom bomb."
The Filipino Monkey had struck again.
[...]
"He's dangerous," one gulf-based shipping source said. "He gets on the radio when ships are being challenged, and some of the things he tells the Iranians could provoke an attack."
Most of what he tells the Iranians is unprintable.
'Doesn't Like Iranians'
"Whoever he is, he doesn't seem to like Iranians very much," the shipping source said. "He tells them what he thinks of them in graphic terms."
Memories vary, but most shipping sources who have listened to the Monkey say they first heard him about three years ago.
"He started out by playing music and then by taunting other seamen, usually Filipinos, with curses in the middle of the night," one official recalled.
[...]
Also, there may be more than one Monkey. Because he has been broadcasting for far longer than any normal tour of duty for seamen or oil workers in the gulf, officials think the Filipino Monkey has spawned imitators and that there may now be more than one radio operator using the same moniker.
[...]
Early last month, for instance, he broke into the middle of a tense radio exchange between a U.S. ship and an Iranian warship.
The Iranian ship had locked its weapons radar onto the U.S. warship, which was warning it in no uncertain terms to stand down. The warning was repeated three times until the Filipino Monkey added his own.
"Iranian warship, Iranian warship," he said. "You gonna get it now."
Okay, the Navy has known about this ‘Filipino Monkey’ for two decades. You heard the strange sounding voice yourself. Why the decision at this particular time to make fools of themselves by issuing accusatory and inflammatory statements, with such flimsy ‘proofs’ about an Iranian ‘aggression’ that barely escaped retaliation? I think we know.
And also, in the original telling, of the Navy ships being within a hair’s breadth of firing on the Iranian boats, fortunately the Iranians turned and went in another direction seconds before they would have been blasted. In that situation, had it been real, and in any other that is subject to interference on radios, which is apparently common, where’s the safeguard against an explosive incident? What if the Navy had blasted the Iranian boats and the threat had not come from them? Also, whatever became of the “white boxes” tossed into the water in the original report? Surely they didn’t just go uninvestigated, left to float on the sea?
New WBW contributor The Rittenhouse Review discovers a delightful column by John Podhoretz urging Dubya to make an “October Surprise” from an early Iraq invasion."There's a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP's standing in November.
"If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you've gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.
"Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true - the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.
"But that won't matter. It won't matter to the American people, and it won't matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world."
This is all George Bush is focused on, as revealed in his regular quips about his confidence in history being the judge of his administration.
Podhoretz may be a warmongering neocon (In a widely quoted and much maligned article for the New York Post, [2006] Podhoretz asked whether "liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?" […] Thus, he surmised regarding the Iraq War: "What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them ...? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?" – Rightweb)– for all I know, he could be ‘Filipino Monkey’, but he was certainly on the money in his assessment of our American public.
Update 1/17/08: Final word
Iran has released a video of the “encounter” between small Iranian boats and the US Navy. No threats are heard or seen. The US Navy is saying that the video has been edited to cut out that part. Possibly. But this is the pot calling the kettle black, because the US release was reported as coming from two different tracks, one video and one audio. How simple is it to offer two mismatched tracks? Even simpler than dubbing an audio over a video. At any rate, watch this CNN clip and listen to the audio track offered by the US Navy.
Whaddya think? Bogus?
The US has been embarrassed or goaded into lodging a formal complaint now, so we can turn this into an explosive incident.
You know, we have to do something so that George can leave office with something to show history for his years as a "war president". I was just thinking about that a little earlier today, wondering if maybe before he leaves we would see the capture of Bin Laden. I can't believe he'll leave without something definitive to laud in the anals of war history. The Iraq fiasco isn't going to cut it.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Update:
Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.
Uh huh. But we filed that formal complaint anyway.
The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Uh huh. As was intended by the Navy.
We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."
Oh what a tangled web….
Absolutely par for the Bush 'Bogus' Administration course. Make up something and see if anybody calls us on it. If they do, just make up something else.
Update 1/17/08 Final word
"The US says it won't protest the incident, which means that they concur it wasn't an intentional provocation from Tehran."
But, you might read his analysis anyway, to see what he thinks it was.
What the US Navy squawking was was part of the intention to whip up the dying interest in more war here in this country.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Update 1/17/08 Final word
In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.[...]
Five small boats began charging the U.S. ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and forcing the U.S. ships to take evasive maneuvers, the Pentagon official said.
[...]
There were no injuries but the official said there could have been, because the Iranian boats turned away "literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire" in self defense.
Whew! Close one! John Woo would be proud.
I think this is another one of those incidences where actual details will trickle in, and who knows, it wouldn’t be unprecedented that things are a bit exaggerated.
The article (taken from an AP report) does say the State Department spokesman said he was unaware of any plans to lodge a complaint. How serious could it have been then? The "threatening to explode the American vessels" comment doesn’t receive any further explanation. "Dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships" is left unexplained. And I don’t see anything in the report about where exactly the U.S. ships were headed, other than they were “making a normal transit into the Gulf." Normal "show of force" transit, perhaps? The Yahoo offering identifies the US ships as a cruiser, a destroyer and a frigate. The UK Guardian says a Pentagon official said…get this…
…he didn't have the precise transcript of communications that passed between the two forces, but said the Iranians radioed something like "we're coming at you and you'll explode in a couple minutes."
Something like. And the State Department spokesman rattles his saber:
"Without specific reference to this incident in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States will confront Iranian behavior where it seeks to do harm either to us or to our friends and allies in the region," McCormack told reporters. "There is wide support for that within the region and certainly that's not going to change."
Our friends and allies in the region are about to be one in number: Israel. Wide support from Israel perhaps.
And perhaps we won’t specifically refer to this incident, because there’s nothing there. Or perhaps there’s something else there that we don’t want to have to admit. You'll have to forgive my skepticism, but there are precedents.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Update Trickle:
On Friday, the U.S. Navy announced the same team of naval ships had been searching in the Arabian Sea for a sailor missing for a day from the USS Hopper.[...]
Iran and the United States do not have diplomatic relations. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Tehran, while Pakistan represents Iranian interests in Washington.
Update: 1/08/08
Trickle Update 1/12/08: 'Filipino Monkey'
Update 1/17/08 Final word
The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear."[...]
In its place, CNN will this weekend air two Campbell Brown-hosted specials on the Iran situation and its history. Portions of "We Were Warned" correspondent Frank Sesno's original reporting will be incorporated into those hours, which air Saturday and Sunday.
God forbid they should air a program about fixing intelligence around policy, or the administration's misuse and abuse of it.
McClatchy reports that "Probably no country felt more blindsided than Israel," but a Ha'aretz article said that "Israel has known about the report for more than a month," and a former Clinton administration ambassador speculates that Bush kept a lid on the NIE before Annapolis to help attract participants by playing on the fear of Iran.
Oh, surely not. It would be so out of character for him to play on people’s fears. (The former ambassador is Wendy Sherman: here with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann’s assessment of it all is “unmitigated crap”.)
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
An administration that had cited Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as the rationale for an aggressive foreign policy — as an attempt to head off World War III, as President Bush himself put it only weeks ago — now has in its hands a classified document that undercuts much of the foundation for that approach.[...]
It will certainly weaken international support for tougher sanctions against Iran, as a senior administration official grudgingly acknowledged. And it will raise questions, again, about the integrity of America’s beleaguered intelligence agencies, including whether what are now acknowledged to have been overstatements about Iran’s intentions in a 2005 assessment reflected poor tradecraft or political pressure.
Or I guess we could just as well ask, were they right in 2005 and wrong now?
It all has shades of wagging the dog if you ask me. We get drug around by the nose in a political sense, and as a famously leaked document has said, intelligence is fixed around policy. It may also be fixed around influencing policy.
I could try to figure it out and try to act toward some resolution of our political situation. Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind. (Thank you, Donovan.)
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
