Shooting Blanks in the Next World Order

You're a superpower that's already beaten up the rest of the world. What do you do, go to Disney Land or continue to beat up on the rest of the world?

Rome and Napoleonic France are but two historic examples of empires that failed to realize the military power that created them was insufficient, in itself, to sustain them.

If there's something good to come from the Iraq war, it's that perhaps the United States will have learned a lesson about wielding great power in time to avoid becoming a footnote in some other culture's history book.

With an arms budget equal to the military expenditures of the rest of the world combined, the United States represents the most lopsided balance of military might seen in the industrial age. The problem with that kind of dominance is that there are very few instances where armed conflict is altogether necessary, and even fewer where an armed conflict will turn out well.

The Clausewitzean theory of absolute war became all but obsolete with the advent of a bipolar world in which the two superpowers possessed arsenals that could have ended human life on the planet. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory rested on another of Clausewitz's dictums, that war is political in nature, and that no desired political aim of either side could be achieved through global thermo-nuclear war.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, absolute war became even more moot. The United States could, if it wished, quite literally blow every other nation off the map. But what would be the political purpose in that? (And as songwriter Randy Newman might ask, where would we go on vacation?)

Barring truly extraordinary provocation, America is limited to use of its conventional forces in armed conflict, but even in conventional wars, the power ratio between the U.S. and any opponent is ridiculous. There is no conventional military force in existence that we can't make fairly quick work of (which is one reason no one is seriously trying to build a conventional force that could take ours on). Hence the kind of asymmetric, insurgent style conflict we currently witness in Iraq.

Let's set one thing straight about counterinsurgency operations. There are better and worse ways to conduct them, but there is no good way to conduct them. And you can't design a military that specializes in counterinsurgency because then it wouldn't be good at doing what it's supposed to do, which is fight and defeat other military forces.

Counterinsurgencies get out of hand when the occupying force, frustrated at being unable quell the revolt, starts lining large sections of the population up in front of firing squads. Once you start doing that kind of thing, you wind up killing a whole lot of people--enough that it might have been better to just drop a bunch of nukes on them.

And what's that going to get you politically if you're a sole superpower that insists other nations respect human rights?

(Sidebar: an AP report from late Tuesday says:

Iraq’s new prime minister promised “no mercy” for terrorists Tuesday as President Bush paid a surprise visit to Baghdad on the eve of a security crackdown involving 75,000 troops, road closures and a curfew.

Stand by for this to turn uglier than Frankenstein's baby.)

Being Careful How You Use It

One of the dangers of a sole super power maintaining a standing, all-volunteer military of overwhelming combat force is that it's tempting to overuse, especially when you have an administration in power--like the one we have now--that's predisposed to overuse it.

Back in my active duty days, I wrote to a friend, "Every time our political leaders commit us to major armed conflict, they expose our failure to achieve our main purpose in the post-modern, post-Soviet world, which is to deter armed conflicts."

Under the neoconservative regime, we not only gave up on the idea of deterring armed conflicts, we purposely set out to create them. And, lamentably, we shined our heinies in Iraq by showing the entire world that we're very good at starting "preemptive" wars that by their very natures are not "winnable."

In the Next World Order, America needs to come up with a new calculus of power. The old equations simply don't work any more.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

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Jeff's Next World Order Series

Spinning Wars versus Winning Wars

Regarding the recent suicides at Guantanamo, camp commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris said, "I believe this was not an act of desperation, rather an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us."

Hey, maybe Admiral Harris has hit on the ultimate strategy to win the war on terror: convince them all that the best way to defeat America is to commit suicide. It's brilliant! Sun Tzu would approve wholeheartedly.

And what the heck, the suicide strategy makes a whole lot more sense than this "stand up, stand down" drivel we've been fed lately.

The suicide strategy would give the administration and Pentagon spin doctors something they could really sink their teeth into. Forget trying to sell the war to Americans, or blaming every failure in the war on Democrats and the media. Launch a massive, multi-pronged psychological operations campaign aimed at convincing the bad guys to do themselves in.

Such a campaign should follow, at the very least, three distinct lines of operation:

Incentive: "Double Virgin Days" would offer twice the virgins in afterlife to young Jihadists for reporting to U.S. controlled "martyrdom centers." At the centers, prospective martyrs would be offered a wide variety of suicide options, everything from self-immolation to "Allah's little helper" pills.

"Don't delay! This is a limited time offer."

Shame: "Suicide now and avoid the draft."

Don't embarrass your family and friends by being one of those losers who had to be ordered to take your own life. Do the manly thing and volunteer.

Radio Free Islam would run constant spots of Ann Coulter saying "There are two kinds of radical Islamists: suicides and cowards."

Depression: "You're a rag head, your life sucks anyway."

Run spots on Arab television of Rush Limbaugh playing golf, lighting $50 cigars with $100 bills and saying, "The only way you'll ever live like me is by being dead."

If this suicide strategy sounds ludicrous to you, you haven’t been paying attention to everything else that's been going on since we launched our woebegone war on terror.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Winners and Losers in the Next World Order

Like it or not, our present Iraq War is representative of what American armed conflicts will be like in the Next World Order: costly, indecisive, difficult to terminate, and politically counterproductive.

We will never get a straight answer from the Bush administration regarding what the real political objectives of the Iraq invasion were, but they certainly weren't situation we have now. The best-trained, best-equipped, best-financed military in the history of mankind is stuck in a quagmire for which an increasing number of experts agree there is no military solution.

Our military's difficulty in achieving our political objectives is not for lack of investment in them. The U.S. now spends as much money on the Department of Defense as the military budgets of the rest of the world combined. In 2005, according to the CIA World Factbook, U.S. military expenditures exceeded $518 billion. By contrast, the emerging "peer competitor" China spent a paltry $81.5 billion. America's arms expenditures represented 4.19 percent of its purchasing power parity gross domestic product ($12.36 trillion). By comparison, China's military budget accounted for less than one percent of its GDP ($8.859 trillion).

Keep that in mind the next time you hear Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making scare noise, as he has recently, about China's "increased military spending." Also keep in mind that unlike the U.S., China is making its first real effort to modernize its conventional arsenal since the Korean War.

The Decline of Military Power

As instruments of power go, economy has trumped military might among the states in the upper world order tier nations. And economically, America has embarked on a headlong downward slide.

As of 2005, we were still first among the major political entities in GDP, but not by much. The European Union, at $ 12.18 trillion, trailed us by a mere 1.46 percent. China was behind by 28.33 percent. But those numbers only tell part of the economic competition trend.

The Bush administration has made much of America's economic growth rate, pegged at 3.5 percent for 2005. Wow. That's on par with the growth rates of Arubia, Nambia, Benin, and the Bahamas. The good news is that we're ahead of Denmark, which only posted a growth rate of 3.4 percent. And we're comfortably outpacing losers like Antigua, Mexico, Tuvalu, Mauritius, Guernsey, and Cosmoros, whose economies only grew at a measly 3.0 percent.

Granted, those economies are pretty small, and not all that influential on the overall global order.

But what about China, the number three economy in the world? (And the number two economy among single nations.) Their 2005 growth rate was 9.9 per cent.

Does that get your attention?

Then get a load of this. America's national debt is 64.7 percent of its GDP. China's is 28.8.

And China isn't pouring a half trillion plus dollars a year into the fan on its military like the United States is.

Who is America's number two creditor? China ($ 129 billion). Number one is Japan ($158 billion). We owe our number three creditor, Germany, $120 billion, and $89.3 billion to our number four creditor, Russia.

All of these nations have much to gain by siding with Iran on its nuclear energy position and blowing off Condi Rice and John Bolton.

Are you starting to get the picture? China, Russia, and the European Union sure are. Iran's political leaders sure are.

America's political leaders sure aren't.

Or at least, they're pretending not to.

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Jeff Huber's Next Word Order Series

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Cheney Flies Under the Radar

Talk about convenient timing for the Bush administration.

Jammed off the radarscope this week by Ann Coulter's mouth and the demise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the squaring off between Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and Dick Cheney (unofficial master of the universe) over the NSA domestic spying investigation.

CNN and other news outlets reported Thursday that Specter "sent a stinging letter to Vice President Dick Cheney after learning Cheney had lobbied other Republicans on his committee without his knowledge."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Specter is galled that Cheney's been breaking the legs of other Republican Judiciary Committee members to block subpoenas of phone company executives regarding the NSA domestic surveillance program.

It's difficult to determine whether Specter is actually upset that Cheney has been kneecapping fellow Republicans on Specter's committee, or if he's just upset that Cheney did the kneecapping without telling Specter about it.

Specter's three page letter said, "This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday, and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table."

Is Specter more concerned about buffet table protocol or about whether the Bush Administration is tossing Americans' constitutional rights in the trashcan in the name of "plenary" executive powers?

Whatever the case, the result is the same. The White House's claims to "unreviewable," absolute powers will go unchecked as long as the GOP owns the Senate and the House.

Springtime for Dubya

As I discussed last December in Smoke, Mirrors, and War Powers, the administration has consistently based its claims of supreme executive authority on the Constitution and the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in September 2001 days after the 9/11 attacks.

But the Constitution grants no such wartime authorities to any President. Article II makes him commander in chief--of the military, not the country. And that's it. The Constitution makes no mention of special powers in times of war, declared or undeclared.

Article I gives most of the actual war making powers to Congress.

The AUMF, often referred to as the "blank check," and claimed by the administration to have given young Mister Bush unlimited authority to do darn near anything he wants to the Constitution in the conduct of his war on terror, states that " Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution."

The War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973, says "Nothing in this joint resolution…is intended to alter the constitutional authority of the Congress or of the President, or the provision of existing treaties…"

And there's nothing in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to allow Presidents to exceed their constitutional authority.

We know that we can't trust the administration to check its own powers. And since the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes the law of the land is now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Supreme Court has become, for all practical purposes, irrelevant.

And as long as Dick Cheney controls Congress, there's really no discernable difference between the United States in 2006 and, well, name your favorite historical tyranny.

Like Thomas Jefferson, I'd rather not get into heaven than have to go there as a member of a political party. And as I recall, I've only voted for one Democrat--John Kerry--in my entire life.

But I've more than gotten over my aversion to "Hollywood Democrats." For the foreseeable future, any time I have a choice between voting for a Republican or Porky Pig, I'm taking the pig.

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This just in:

Glen Greenwald reports on a bill Specter introduced yesterday that, according to WaPo, "…would grant blanket amnesty to anyone who authorized warrantless surveillance under presidential authority, a provision that seems to ensure that no one would be held criminally liable if the current program is found illegal under present law."

Specter's bill would also "…give President Bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the National Security Agency."

So Mister Bush gets an option as to whether he wants to obey the Constitution or not.

Yeah, Senator Specter. Go get 'em, tiger.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Blowing America's Place in the Next World Order

In his speech last Sunday, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "That a country has no right to achieve proficiency in nuclear technology means it has to beg a few Western and European countries for energy in the next 20 years. Which honest leader is ready to accept this?"

Easy answer. No honest leader would accept it. And no honest leader of any other nation would ask Iran to accept it.

But then, few people these days will accuse George W. Bush of being honest, so he has an excuse, right?

Clinging to a Failure

Khamenei also said, "In Iraq, you [America] failed. You say you have spent $300bn to bring a government into office that obeys you. But it did not happen. In Palestine, you made every attempt to prevent Hamas from coming to power and again you failed."

True statement, and a darn sight truer than anything young Mister Bush has ever said about U.S. adventures in Iraq and Palestine.

Khamenei on Europe: "Our government has healthy and good relations with European countries. These relations with Europe will be even better in the future, when gas plays a more important role as a source of energy. They need our gas."

Nothing like being up front about things like, uh, realities.

Condi Rice has been telling us that the EU3 is all on board with backing the U.S. policy toward Iran. She's been saying that since early 2005.

According to Khamenei, the "international community" cooperation with the U.S. isn't all Condi cracks it up to be.

Some 116 non-aligned countries supported Iran in its bold move to acquire nuclear technology. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has voiced support for Iran. Independent governments all support Iran. All those people who have acted as middlemen to repeat America's words to us, under American pressure and out of courtesy, have told us in secret that they have been asked by the Americans to say so and that they do not think the same way.

What Khamenei had the good grace not to say is that one of the countries that support Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear technology is Iraq.

Condi and the rest of the Bush inner circle (and their media echo chamberlains) continue to insist that Iran seeks the ability to produce its own nuclear weapons.

Khamenei denied this on Sunday, as he has consistently, that Iran has any such ambitions.

We have no problem with the world. We are no threat whatsoever to the world and the world knows it...
The other suggestion is that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb. This is an irrelevant and wrong statement, it is a sheer lie. We do not need a nuclear bomb. We do not have any objectives or aspirations for which we will need to use a nuclear bomb. We consider using nuclear weapons against Islamic rules...
We think imposing the costs of building and maintaining nuclear weapons on our nation is unnecessary. Building and maintaining such weapons is costly. In no way do we deem it correct to impose these costs on the people.

I'm not entirely willing to take him at his word, but I know this: between him and Condi Rice, there's no question as to which one has told the world the most lies.

Big Bang Diplomacy

Over at firedoglake, Pachacutec has a superb analysis of the Iran situation as it stands right now. (BTW, thanks for the plug, Pach.)

Perhaps his most salient point is the extent to which the Bush administration and its GOP yes men in Congress have weakened America.

Aside from the thirty-something percent of the U.S. population that still supports Bush, the entire world sees that our stance on Iran looks and sounds almost identical to the run up to our invasion of Iraq. The only real difference is that this time, we're not even pretending to have any proof to support our allegations about the "bad guy's" WMD program.

Everybody knows the administration is off on another snipe hunt. Everybody knows that when it comes to war and peace track records, the western world makes Iran look like a bunch of hippy dippy peaceniks. (Iran has fought one war in the last 100 years, and that was initiated when Iraq invaded it.)

They know that Iran has every right in the world to develop its own nuclear energy program, a vital component of which must be the ability to refine its own uranium.

They've watched us prove in Iraq that our "best trained, best equipped" military is incapable of creating the kind of world order that the neoconservatives envisioned.

They know that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. are a bunch of megalomaniacal jerks.

And they're perfectly willing to sit back and watch us pull the trigger again and shoot off the last of our toes.

Next World Order Foreign Policy

The neoconservative vision of creating a world order favorable to America at the point of a gun is a proven failure. Never in the history of humanity has so much power been vested in people who were so incapable of exercising it wisely.

In my Next World Order series, I've outlined a political model in which America, if it is to continue to thrive, must find a way to transition from a "failed hegemon" to a "first among nations."

We're not going to be able to achieve the "first among nations" status if we continue to pursue the delusional policies and strategies of the Bush administration. One of the best ways we can reverse course, right here, right now, is to drop our kindergarten position on Iran and encourage its efforts to develop a self-sustaining nuclear energy.

The surest way to create a stable Middle East is for the region to wean itself into the 21st century, and if Iran can emerge as the nation that will lead the Muslim world to modernity, wouldn't that be a good thing?

The Next World Order Series

Part I: America's 21st Century Military

Part II: Network-centric Warfare

Part III: America's Military Industrial Complex

Part IV: The Revolt of the Retired Generals

Part V: What Good is War?

Part VI: Body Count

Part VII: Order in the Next World Order

Part VII: The Cost of War and Peace

Part VIII: Balance of Power

Dead Skunks, Open Sores, and Ann Coulter

I normally avoid any discussion of Ann Coulter for fear of inadvertently granting any legitimacy to her "contributions" to the national debate.

But her latest attack on the 9/11 widows defies ignoring.

I've said before that Ann Coulter is a perfect example of how far a gal can travel on an Ivy League education, a fourth grade sense of humor, and a broomstick. This darling of the rabid right is so self-absorbed she could suck the sunlight out of summertime.

For her to berate the widows of 9/11 victims of having a political agenda and call attention to themselves is such a jaw stretching pot and kettle act its difficult to imagine how even she could have so little sense of shame.

But then again, she's a hardcore supporter of the Bush administration, and makes a good buck being one.

So she probably figures being shameless is just the price of doing business.

RIP Billy Preston

I just heard on NPR that he died today.

Nothin' from nothin'...

Played with the Beatles and the Stones.

Was 59 years old.

Worst Secretary of State Ever

From Sunday's New York Times (filed by AP):

Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Sunday that oil shipments from the Gulf region would be disrupted if the United States attacked his nation, but his threat was dismissed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice…

…Rice told ''Fox News Sunday'' that ''we shouldn't place too much emphasis on a threat of this kind'' because Iran also has an interest in protecting its major source of revenues.

''What we should place emphasis on is Iran's opportunity to find a way out of this impasse,'' Rice said.

If Condi Rice spent half the time and effort conducting honest to God diplomacy as she spends spinning Bush administration poppycock on Sunday talk shows, we might actually be seeing progress in the Iran negotiations. As it is, she's only creating impasses and making other countries responsible for finding their ways out of them.

Iran's leaders have stated time and time and time again that they will not give up their "inalienable right" under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop nuclear energy technologies. So what does Condi offer Iran as the "carrot" for engaging in direct negotiations? That they give up their inalienable right to develop nuclear energy technologies.

If there's a surer way to guarantee that a diplomatic effort fails, I have yet to read or hear about it.

It appears to me that Rice's phony overture is a ruse to push the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, where the U.S. will insist on levying sanctions against Iran.

And guess what's going to happen there. The EU3--England, Germany, and France--may go along with the proposal for the sake of appearances, but do you really think Russia and China will? One might reasonably guess that those two countries are already hacked off at America enough to veto any U.S. sanction proposal, but just wait.

As the issue moves to a Security Council vote, Dick Cheney will go on TV and insult the pants off of those two countries again. And just in case that doesn't do the trick, the Bush administration will insist on locking the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the UN in a room with John Bolton for twelve hours.

Then Condi will go back on TV to explain that diplomacy, once again, didn't work, just like it didn’t with Iraq, and blame the failure on the UN, the media, the democrats, etc…

Then we'll go boom boom on Iran, Iran will try to go boom boom back, and however that turns out, Condi tell Tim Russert that it was all Iran's fault. Tim, as he so often has, will smile, nod, and ask Condi if she's going to run against Jeb Bush for Commissioner of the National Football League or President of the United States.

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Condi's old job as National Security Adviser wasn't actually to advise young Mister Bush on foreign policy and security strategy. Young Mister Bush already had Uncle Dick and Uncle Don and the rest of the neoconservative brain trust around to do that for him.

Condi's job was to tutor Dubya in basic geography. Stand him in front of a map of the world and say things like "the blue parts are water, the green parts are land." Explain to him that no, Iceland isn't really that big, it just looks that way because of how things work out when you draw a sphere on a flat picture, but yeah, Alaska really is bigger than Texas anyway.

Dubya saying, "shoot."

Imagine the scene, Dubya consulting with his new Secretary of State in front of the world map after the Katrina incident.

"No, Mister President, that's Italy."

"That's right, I remember now. Italy's the boot that faces left."

"And Louisiana's the boot that faces right. Clear over on the other side of the map."

"Oh, yeah. The green part up above that blue part that's named after Mexico."

"That's right, sir. You're so smart. You're my best student ever."

Young Mister Bush furrows his brow.

"You know, I just thought me of something. How come that blue part is named after Mexico when so much of it is next to America? Seems like we ought to pass a constitutional amendment to have that name changed on all the maps."

"That's a wonderful idea, Mister President."

"Remind me to take that up with Karl and Uncle Dick next time I see them."

Imagine also, Condi in the oval office, trying to help Bush distinguish between Iran and Iraq.

"They're on opposite sides of that little blue part in the center of the Middle East," she says, "and their names end with a different letter."

Young Mister Bush shrugs, and smirks. "Sounds like nuance to me," he says.

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Condi Rice is rapidly consolidating America's all time political trifecta of shame: Worst President Ever, Worst Secretary of Defense Ever, Worst Secretary of State Ever.

She'd be completing a "quadrifecta" except that the Worst Vice President Ever crown is still up for grabs between Dick Cheney, Spiro Agnew, and Aaron Burr.

The Political Pedophile Priest of Faux News

I only recently discovered Father Jonathan Morris, a web commentator for Fox News. I have no way of knowing if Father Jonathan genuinely believes the things he writes and says, or if he's simply hiring out his clerical collar in an effort to bestow moral legitimacy on the standard menu of right wing talking points.

That Fox bills him as their "Papal contributor" strongly suggests the latter. Iconoclastic columnist James Wolcott seems to view Father Jonathan in that light as well. In a Vanity Fair column from last fall, Wolcott wrote, "Leave it to Fox News to find the first neocon pinup priest to sign up as an on-air analyst."

I thought the "neocon pinup priest" epithet might be a bit harsh. Until, that is, I read Father Jonathan's recent article on the Haditha incident titled "War is Messy." It's a set piece of Rovewellian propaganda from start to finish.

Blame the Media, Support the Troops

Father Jonathan's article opens with a familiar bit of neoconservative revisionist history on the Vietnam Conflict:

Not long ago our country, led by bad news, betrayed our soldiers. We lost political will and we lost the war. How quickly we forget.

Now, as then, according to this hogwash, if we "lose" the war in Iraq it will be because bad news in the media caused Americans to "betray the troops."

The likes of Father Jonathan never want to admit that now, as then, defeat will come as a result of the acts of bad men who started a bad war for bad reasons and ran it badly. That would be too much like, uh, confessing the truth.

On the subject of the Haditha affair, Father Jonathan tells us that the Pentagon is preparing the public for bad news, but the bad news isn't the "revelation of criminal battle rage of a group of men in uniform." No, the kind of bad news the Pentagon is preparing us for is "bad news reporting, the kind that leads public opinion to betray the very men and women who risk their lives for ours."

And thus we're back to the main theme. The sin wasn't the crime; the sin was reporting the crime, which constitutes a betrayal.

Not content with repetition of his false main premise, Father Jonathan goes on to launch a "double straw man" attack on the media by putting words in the mouth of a general who puts words in the mouth of the collective press.

"Don’t take the bait, mass media," says Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli in the apocryphal speech Father Jonathan writes for him. "The deplorable actions of a few men are not representative of our military. Our soldiers, in contrast to the enemy, know the difference between right and wrong. In fact, it’s part of their training."

I haven't seen a single accusation in any reputable media outlet that suggests "the deplorable actions of a few" are representative of the overall moral behavior of the military. But you can bet a month's worth of collection plate contributions that Father Jonathan's Fox News audience will take his word for it that the entire "liberal" media is accusing every United States soldier, seaman, airman and Marine of eating babies for breakfast.

And just to make sure he's got every block in the anti-media playbook checked, Father Jonathan gets in the obligatory dig about how media reports of bad news "threaten morale," as if the real threat to morale weren't the incompetence and dishonesty of the troops' Commander in Chief, their Secretary of Defense, and the liege-men generals who have made successful military careers out of saying "yes."

As far as I'm concerned, Jonathan Morris has every right to hire himself out as a chorister in Karl Rove's noise philharmonic, but if he's going to do that, he really ought to quit hiding behind his pulpit and passing himself off as a representative of the Pope. As Wolcott put it, "It is not the job of a priest to be a pretty buttboy for the Pentagon and the warmaking powers of the United States."

I won't presume to guess what God makes of the guy, but in my judgment, political whore clerics like Jonathan Morris make pedophile priests look downright "pastoral."

Persian Ploy, Part II

It didn't take long for young Mister Bush to execute step two of the Iran diplomacy stratagem.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a disingenuous offer to join in UN talks with Iran if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities. Iran has long insisted on its "inalienable right" to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and that it has no intention of attempting to develop nuclear weapons, despite claims to the contrary by Rice and other Bush administration luminaries.


As I and many others predicted, rejected the offer, describing it--justifiably--as the propaganda it was.

Thursday, as reported by the Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press:

President Bush said Thursday that the standoff over Iran's suspected nuclear program is headed for the U.N. Security Council if Tehran continues to refuse to halt uranium enrichment.

“We'll see whether or not that is the firm position of their government,” Bush said after a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. “If they continue their obstinance ... then the world will act in concert.”

This Bushism was eerily resonant of something published earlier in the day in a New York Times article: "And while the Europeans and the Japanese said they were elated by Mr. Bush's turnaround, some participants in the drawn-out nuclear drama questioned whether this was an offer intended to fail, devised to show the extent of Iran's intransigence."

The Bush administration continues to use fuzzy rhetoric to blur the distinction between Iran's desire to build a nuclear energy industry and its alleged ambition to develop nuclear weapons.

One of its leading echo chamberlains, David Brooks, repeated that mantra on Imus this morning, stating that having nuclear weapons was a "big deal" for Iran.

Imus said the Iran business is sounding like a replay of the Iraq situation.

You know it's obvious when Don sees it.

Brooks said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a "nut case." Expect to hear more and more of that epithet. Where did this propaganda vector start? Best I can tell, it came from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who last April called Ahmadinejad a "psychopath" and likened him to Hitler.

Remember back when Saddam Hussein was a Hitler-like psychopath?

And how about North Korea's Kim Jong Il? According to one blogger, Jong Il and Hitler actually share a fan club.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has also been compared to Hitler.

David Brooks himself has likened Iraqi Shia leader Moqatdr al Sadr to Hitler, calling him a "thug" and a "brown shirt."

How many Hitlers can you have in any given 70-year period?

Also on this morning's Imus, Brooks praised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her openness with the American people. "Openness," to Brooks, must mean a willingness to openly deceive, distort, dis-inform, and most importantly, frighten. I'm waiting for her to let "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" slip out again.

Some news sources are speculating that Condi's offer to Iran was made over the objections of Vice President Cheney, who theoretically wants to skip straight to the bombing phase of negotiations.

I'm not convinced that's the case at all. This phony "deal" she's offered Iran is one they almost have to refuse.

If anything, it looks to me like Condi's handing Cheney the excuse he needs to hammer Iran on a silver platter.