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Posts Tagged ‘Iran’

RSS Roundup 5-13-08

Good morning everyone, this issue of our RSS Roundup is going to be really short as I have a project that is taking up all my time. As you all know this is an open thread so please feel free to comment on anything that is currently in the news. I’m also playing with a new format so let me know if its more readable.

No NASA Has Not Found Aliens

Everyone has been excited about a cryptic announcement made by NASA about “the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years”. NASA was waiting until the Hubble was modified but PZ Meyers had to ruin the fun. Creationists discovered Russell’s Teapot and are planning on putting into space.

The Rest of the News

Daily Video

Today’s video is from Brave New Films and it exposes once again the Republican Yacht Party’s true interests. In California Republicans are fighting to keep open a tax loophole that lets them buy yachts tax free. If closed this would bring in around 26 million to a state that is being forced to lay off teachers. Read More about this issue here.

Thanks for reading,
William ~ WWJV4.com

Iran Ended Nuke Program in 2003

Categorized: Politics

According to American intelligence agencies Iran ended its Nuke program in 2003. This reality, as reality seems to do often, flies in the face of statements made by both the President and Vice President who are both threatening WWIII if Iran doesn’t stop their nuke program immediately. Now it is quite possible that their statements are simply a ploy to get scared Americans to vote Republican again, we will have to wait and see.

This development should be the kind of thing that has a wide reaching impact on our foreign relations and should immediately quiet the drums of war. However that would be in a sane world where our Government payed attention to things like reality or facts when making decisions on who to invade. Since we happen to live in Republican bizzarro world most likely the talking heads will start calling to go to war sooner. You know, preemptively, before they can start developing the bomb.

Now I don’t mean to imply that all is well, in fact Iran is continuing to enrich uranium and if they wanted to could develop a weapon within 2 to 5 years.   This news is still a far cry from the looming threat that our Administration has been trying to paint for the past year.  I’m hoping that with a new Democratic President we will have someone who believes in diplomacy in office and any future wars can be avoided.

So what do you guys think.  Will this information make any difference to our Administration or will it just be ignored like all the proof that Iraq didn’t have WMD’s were.  I would be interested in hearing your opinions on this.

Redefining Iraq Part 1

So many of our citizens have heard so much about the war in Iraq that they have become even more apathetic than normal. How do you know which side to believe? After all this may be the single most redefined issue ever in the history of American politics. So I am going to explore the continuous redefining of all aspects of this “war on terror”. Today let’s look at the justification for the war.

The justification for the use of force against Iraq has changed so much so over time that even those who support the war aren’t sure which argument to use. In the beginning we were told that Saddam had WMD, that there was credible intelligence he was connected to Al Qaeda, and was an imminent threat to America. These sounded like great reasons to at least address the situation with Saddam but Bush went several steps further and invaded a sovereign nation without UN support.

On December 14, 2003 Saddam was captured and the administration now told us that our liberation of the Iraqi people was complete and weren’t we good democracy spreaders? WTF? But by and large the American public bought into this, after all Saddam was a pretty evil guy. For some that change in rhetoric was a little to hard to swallow and the anti-war movement picked up speed.

Soon it was shown that the original reasons for invasion were, well, lies. The administration then stated that Iraq was a pivotal point for the global war on terror as Islamic terrorists from surrounding nations were gathering there to attack our forces. We had to fight them in Iraq to keep them from following us home. (Apparently the terrorists are really bad with directions.)

It was true that there were some foreign fighters coming to Iraq to attack American soldiers but the overwhelming bulk of the insurgency were pissed off Iraqis who didn’t like an American occupation. When faced with this truth Bush again began touting the Al Qaeda connection in Iraq, a connection that had never been substantiated and remains largely guess work today.

He began talking almost obsessively about a group called “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” Now, in America that sounds like a local Iraqi chapter of the supposed 9/11 masterminds. In truth that is probably not even close to what the group actually is.

The group’s real name is Tanzim Qaidat Al Jihad fi Bilad Al Rafidin: Organization of Qaidat Al Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers. It is important to know that the word “al qaeda” means base so really this is a different group with no proven connections to the other Al Qaeda we hear so much about. They had a horribly long name and shortened it to basically “base of operations in Iraq.”

Not only do they most probably not have any real connection to Al Qaeda, they also account for only 5-10 % of the Sunni insurgency. The rest are again, angry Iraqis who don’t appreciate being occupied by arrogant American infidels. (( About.com: Al Qaeda in Iraq ))

None of these facts kept the Bushies from spouting off about the danger of Al Qaeda taking over Iraq and then forcing America to somehow submit to Islam. (I have never understood this argument but hear it all the time.) But faced with an angry left wing blogosphere, discontented Congresspeople, more people calling for truth in the media, and the nose dive of Bush’s approval ratings it was soon time for another reason to stay in Iraq, Iran.

I noticed that right after a press conference in which Bush cited Iran’s assistance with the insurgency (which coincidentally followed the adoption of the Kyl/Lieberman amendment) our media began reporting as fact Iran’s contributions of weaponry and manpower to the Sunni insurgency.

The truth of the matter is that once again there is no clear cut connection between Iran and the “terrorism” in Iraq. However, since Iran is now designated a state sponsor of terror, it lends new credence to the lie that Iraq is a hot spot for international terrorism.

Scott Ritter, an UN weapons inspector, is very vocal about the lies and deception regarding the case against Iran and you can find excerpts of an article he wrote outlining how Bush is once again using rhetoric and not facts to advance his own agenda here on MyDD.

I’ve laid out how the argument supporting the Iraq war has changed from preventing Saddam from being an imminent threat to America, to liberating the Iraqi people, to fighting foreign terrorists, to fighting Al Qaeda, to fighting Iranian terrorists and how each of these arguments are exaggerations or flat out lies.

This is just one aspect of the constantly changing rhetoric regarding the “war on terror”. Tomorrow we will discuss the many faces of “success” in Iraq. Stay tuned and feel free to comment.

Obama Introduces Resolution Denying Bush

As the conservative talk “news” beats the drums for war with Iran and Bush ratchets up the war propaganda Senator Barack Obama is prepared to stand in their way. Late yesterday Obama introduced a resolution that denies Bush the authorization needed to use military force on Iran. Obama has been very clear in his stand against using military force on Iran and against the Iraq war from the beginning and this resolution only strengthens his position.

It will be interesting to see how this resolution impacts his poll numbers against Hillary Clinton. Clinton, and Chris Dodd, were among 28 other Senators who recently signed a letter to President Bush advising him that he had no authority to use force on Iran (which Obama declined to sign). Despite this small measure Clinton has recently drawn fire from progressives for supporting the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which many feel is enough to grant Bush the authority to bomb Iran.

Personally I think that this is a good move by Obama. Not only for the political capital it will gain him, but also for national security. After being stuck in Iraq the United States Military is broken. By all accounts we simply do not have the troops necessary to continue our operations in Iraq past the Spring of 2008. In addition to Iraq we also have troops in Afghanistan who have been seeing increased fighting. The last thing we need right now is to try to take on another country, we can’t handle the two we have now.

We are finally starting to see some signs of success in Iraq, much like we were having fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan before our President got bored and decided to do something else for a while. Well, now like a spoiled child who never finishes anything Bush is starting to get bored with Iraq, maybe not enough explosions to keep him interested, and he’s starting to look for something new to play with. We need to wrap up what we started before we even think about getting entrenched in another long protracted war of choice.

What our President needs to do instead of stomping around throwing temper tantrums about what Congress is doing is take care of his job. Namely that is to act like a big boy and start engaging these countries and groups in some diplomacy. I applaud Senator Obama for taking this step to reign in this administration, I only wish that Bush had not shown so many times that he is more than willing to ignore the law and the Constitution when it suits him. Maybe then I would have more hope that this resolution could have an impact.

~ William ~

Feeling Betrayed

Early on in the race for 2008, I had decided that among all of the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton was mine. She is an eloquent speaker, she has amazing composure, her stances on the issues that matter to me are right on target, she devoted a large portion of her life to helping children and families, and she is well versed in the political arena.

I did question her sincerity on ending the war in Iraq a few times and wondered why she just wouldn’t admit that authorizing force there was a mistake to begin with. I did not agree with her that we are now safer than we were but overall we went together very well.

I live in a red state where the Hillary Hating abounds so I was in a minority but found, to my surprise, that there were many others that supported her locally. I followed her debates, kept up on her web site, and spread her messages wherever I could.

Then I was betrayed. Somehow, what I had thought was a crazy little amendment that would never go anywhere, was passed by the Senate. I’m talking about the call to war with Iran that is the Lieberman/Kyl Amendment. There must have been a mistake somewhere, surely our Congresspeople could not seriously think that this was a good idea? I anxiously read the roll call and was stunned. Not only did it pass by an overwhelming majority but Hillary Clinton voted for it and Barack Obama didn’t even bother to vote either way!

Now MSM has not really covered this very well at all. Even in the blogosphere it seems, to me, to be an underrated story. Perhaps because two sections were removed that made it more palatable for Dems to support. It is still a scary piece of legislation that details the “sense of the Senate” regarding Iran. It places Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on our list of “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” which is basically an authorization to attack them. While the toned down version specifically states that we should do what we need to IN IRAQ and is not as aggressive as the first version, putting the Revolutionary Guard on this list would make them official targets in the war on terror. Theoretically, this could allow for attacks against them in Iran, which we are already hearing will be happening.

The worst part about this is the lack of evidence to support these statements and possible invasion of yet another country that was on Bush’s to do list. Iraq and Iran have a lot of interests with each other and that doesn’t necessarily translate into bomb making business. I would have hoped that our legislatures, many of whom now wish that they would have voted differently in 2002, would have taken a closer look at this disastrous amendment and really did the research and demanded more information.

I would encourage you to read Seymour Hersh’s column here for more information regarding Iran.