If Iranians Don’t Cooperate, I’ll Shoot Myself In the Other Foot
Does this seem like just too large a helping of deja-vu, or is it just me?
Here we are in the midst of an un-winnable as well as un-leaveable war with Iraq over WMD that never showed up and George is threatening to attack Iran because of WMD that isn’t proven. The president apparently “views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends.”
I have a remedy for that. Pre-empt another foolish Middle Eastern venture by ending his presidency now.
Right in the middle of The Masters, with Tiger five strokes behind and a rain delay, my country is about to actually contemplate another adventure in the desert. Talk about a sand-trap.
Opening my Sunday Washington Post, 2nd cup of coffee in hand, U.S. Is Studying Military Strike Options on Iran greets my eye. I blink. This one took three staffers, Peter Baker, Dafna Linzer and Thomas Ricks to lay it on the line. I scan the paper for news of riots in the streets, effigies of Rumsfeld and Cheney, but there are none. All is quiet.
China has had the bomb for decades and yet, there is Taiwan, serene and untouched in the China Sea. France has the bomb and has, as yet, declined to use it against their student radicals. Pakistan, with a very fragile dictatorship and a frothing Muslim fundamentalist population, has the bomb and yet is GWB's good buddy.
What is it about George and certain (but only certain) Middle Eastern countries?
The Washington Post opening paragraph:
The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts.
The narrow strategy of coercive diplomacy was such an utter failure in Iraq that GB plans to broaden it to pressure Iran. Good show! Stiff upper and all that! The Brits, who have an embassy there, as well as extensive corporate holdings and thousands of citizens are probably comparing notes with the French, Russians, Germans and Chinese, to see how they all stand aside to prepare for George Bush to shoot himself in the other foot.
Is anybody home in Washington?
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the obvious incompetence of a Democratic party that can’t figure out how to offer an alternative to the current administration. America is so split, subdivided and narrowed into special interests, that there are actually only three people left in the nation (according to polls) who are undecided. We don’t yet know what they are undecided about, the polls haven’t told us that. But this year’s crop of aspirants to public office, as well as those two years down the road, are whispering so gently into those three set of ears, one can hardly hear them. The voter-whisperer.
John McCain, in panic over the possibility of actually being elected, is currently genuflecting to the religious right and dropping his pants for the wealthy and privileged. As a man of conscience, he was poised to steamroll his way to the presidency but he lost his poise, just couldn’t quite be sure and kept hearing these whisperings. So, now he’s just another guy with no credibility, but at least we’ve seen the limits of his character. What a shame and all for three sets of ears.
The ultra-conservatives won’t quite trust him and now, neither will the rest of the country. Which makes him the perfect candidate. The Dems don’t yet have a perfect candidate. Split between screamers and muddlers, they've really become irrelevant.
So, Congress is off for two weeks, doing whatever Congress does when it is off, but at least it is gone and that’s no doubt why the White House chose the third round of The Masters to fire a missile in the direction of Iran. The president’s ratings are so low, Rummy and Dick probably talked him into that old don’t change horses in the middle of battle theme again.
Conveniently forgetting that one war stalemated doesn’t sell a second one all that well.
But the CIA has been exploring possible targets. That’s reassuring. This is the same CIA that bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade because it couldn’t read the street address. And Rummy’s Pentagon is ‘weighing alternatives ranging from a limited airstrike aimed at key nuclear sites, to a more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets.’
Key nuclear sites? The same kind of targeting they did so well in Iraq? Nailed that WMD there, they just forgot to leave a soldier or two at the gates to a few dozen armories, thus announcing a blue-light-special for any insurgents needing to top-up their weaponry.
The White House, in its new and improved, high-carb, low-cal National Security Strategy, just last month labeled Iran the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country. Any country. Just last month, when you and I thought George was all tired out from giving India the nuclear keys to the city. Don’t bother with the U.N. or any coalition this time George, just fire when ready.
No one in the Congress or the Supreme Court knows how to stop you.
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