This week’s top fear flavor: Iran. Fear that Iran will attack us if Barack Obama is elected. And fear that if Iran doesn’t attack us, Israel will attack Iran after Obama is elected but before he is inagurated. (Okay, the second one is really not tied to Obama being elected, just saying that between election day and Inaugural Day Iran will attack, but somehow John McCain is strong enough to deal with it. HUH?) And if Iran doesn’t attack us and Israel doesn’t attack Iran, then we’re screwed anyway because…oh NO!…European officials are afraid that if Obama engages Iran via direct diplomacy, he will somehow undercut progress with Iran.

Yes, it’s the newest flavor of FUD, custom designed to make voters be afraid…very afraid. Everyone get your worry beads out and start using them, religiously. Tonight is Uncle John and Mr. Bill’s story hour. Scoot up and let me tell you what they’re talkin’ about.

Uncle John Bolton thinks Israel will attack Iran after November 4th and before January 20th. Uncle John thinks that Big Daddy McCain is stronger than the Bush administration about handling the Iranian nuclear program.

Big Daddy Bill Kristol says that Bush might bomb Iran if he ‘thinks Senator Obama’s Going to win‘.

Waaaaait a minute. You mean Bush THINKS? I thought he just cowered in the corner while Big Dick (Cheney) hands him his latest talking points along with a stiff…something.

Comedy aside, let’s take a walk down memory lane and see what happened in 2002, before we sent our young men and women into Iraq to invade and occupy a country which, it turns out, hadn’t given us reason. Turn the time machine on, folks…moving back in time now…

August 16, 2002, George W. Bush in Crawford, TX

First of all, I am aware that some very intelligent people are expressing their opinions about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. I listen carefully to what they have to say.

There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind this man is thumbing his nose at the world, that he has gassed his own people, that he is trouble in his neighborhood, that he desires weapons of mass destruction. I will use all the latest intelligence to make informed decisions about how best to keep the world at peace, how best to defend freedom for the long run.

We’ll continue to consult. Listen, it’s a healthy debate for people to express their opinion. People should be allowed to express their opinion. But America needs to know, I’ll be making up my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country plus our friends and allies.

October 7, 2002: George Bush, speaking at the Cincinnati Museum Center –

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions — its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror.

September 14, 2002 (coincidentally timed around the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks):

Today this regime likely maintains stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, and is improving and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical and biological weapons. Today Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.

And so it goes, on and on. Does any of it SOUND FAMILIAR? It’s a broken record, same song, different verse, substitute a different country this year but the timing and the message is the same.

Only, this time it’s a blatant effort on the part of the neocons to reframe the 2008 election inside everyone’s fear buttons.

If it weren’t so desperate, it might be funny. The sending of three separate surrogates out to writhe and moan over Iran’s clear intent to go on the attack is ridiculous. It doesn’t even pass the smell test.

It also defies logic. To believe what these neo-yoyos are saying, you have to believe that diplomacy is a threat to world peace.

Tragically, it seems that free and fair elections in Zimbabwe are pure fantasy. But reading the insane remarks of the “neo-fights” today makes me wonder whether we can reasonably count on the Bush/Cheney regime to: a) allow free and fair elections in our own country; and b) surrender power peacefully to the rightfully elected President on January 20, 2009. It’s clear to me from reviewing the recycled warmongering with respect to Iran and our election cycle that if the Bush regime could force an outcome to their liking, or manipulate voters into believing the reconstituted bullshit they’re serving, they would gladly do it no matter what price our democracy paid.

Someone really needs to tell Congress to get a grip. That someone needs to be us. This is absolutely NOT the time to be saber-rattling in a serious way with Iran, and CERTAINLY not the time to be authorizing any resolution for military action.

Over the last three weeks 77 House Democrats and 92 Republicans have agreed to cosponsor a new resolution against Iran that demands that President Bush “initiate an international effort” to impose a land, sea, and air blockade on Iran to prevent it from importing gasoline and to inspect all cargo entering or leaving Iran.

Some facts:

1. Play the memory game. This is how the Iraq disaster started. By shaking our fists at a country that did not attack us, did not in any way play a role in 9/11 and wasn’t responsible for whatever problems we had.
2. Iranian people, for the most part, do not agree with aggressive moves toward other countries. Remember, armies need to have troops. Successful armies need to have troops with a cause.
3. Believe it or not, Israel has the means and motivation to defend themselves.
4. Afghanistan is going to hell in a handbasket.
5. The motives for such a resolution are about oil, not security. Stop kidding yourself.

I’m not interested in fighting anyone else over oil. I’d just as soon quit using it. The political aim of introducing a resolution into Congress to encourage aggression against Iran is simply to force a choice between offshore drilling or aggressive action against a sovereign nation who has not threatened or attacked us.

It isn’t the job of our military or the citizens of this country to ensure that the Bush and Cheney families leave a fat oil inheritance to their families and cronies. Don’t be fooled by the absurdity of the proposal of these ‘elected officials’. Dethrone them instead.

And in the meantime, call your Representative and tell them NO WAR WITH IRAN. In fact, tell them NO MORE WAR FOR OIL.

Update The full text of the resolution is here. In the first paragraph, they mention the IAEA to bolster the claim that there is a threat. In fact, on 6/18/08, the IAEA published a communication from Iran in PDF format that indicates Iran’s willingness to address the issues around their nuclear program. The IAEA note at the end says it should be evaluated in six months. Of course, six months means Bush couldn’t shove us into war with them before the end of his presidency.

The people in this video are just like the Iranian people I know who live here in California. Hard-working, successful, achieving peaceful people. People who were given an opportunity to succeed here, people who play by the rules set forth here in the US, people who are peace-loving assets in our society.

Now they are raising their voices for peace, rising against the Bush/Rove call to attack their native country. Even though they have adopted this one, their hearts and in some cases, their families, are still in Iran. Listen to what they say, and then call the number at the end of the video or express your support for an end to our aggressive stance on Iran here.

I originally wrote and published this in February, shortly after Sen. McCain won the GOP nomination. Given that the debate is heating up now on these issues, it seems like a good time to bring it back to the top for more discussion.

McCain and the GOP are already tossing around the “L” word with regularity, claiming that if Obama is elected, he will push through the biggest l-b—l tax increase on record.

Here’s a really simple picture of our economy and our options and a reality check for anyone deluding themselves:

1. We are engaged in a war of our choosing which has cost over one TRILLION dollars and increased the national debt to record levels.
2. Our social investments in schools, health initiatives, and infrastructure have been nil, because of the focus and obsession with the war in Iraq.
3. When the war ends, we will be faced with returning veterans returning to the work force, some with incredibly complex mental and physical health issues. Some of those issues, like PTSD, are not even acknowledged by the VA or the Bush Administration at this time but threaten to become major problems as the war ends and troops return. We have already seen untreated PTSD at its worst — see examples here (free, login required), and here. The PTSD Timeline Project has been tracking reported incidents of suicide and homicide amongst returning veterans, and a startling report in October shows that veterans seeking treatment for PTSD has jumped by 70% in one year.
4. Social programs notwithstanding, the war debt alone will require a tax increase. As all of us know, you don’t borrow money without paying it back.

Every time I hear John McCain or a Republican say that only the Democrats will raise taxes, it makes me laugh. When George Bush stole took office, he walked into a fiscally sound country with a budget surplus, not a deficit. Today, we’re deeper in debt than we’ve ever been, not just as a country but on an individual basis, too. The subprime mortgage crisis is a clear indicator of the inevitable consequences of predatory lending gone mad.

Higher taxes are inevitable. It’s really a question of who will bear the brunt of those taxes. Will it be the middle class folks and small employers, or will it be more fairly apportioned? What about the large corporations that have profited much from their war contracts (a la Halliburton) while moving their operations out of the country so that Americans don’t even benefit from employment opportunities by those companies?

Or put another way, would you rather have a President Obama ask us to dig deep for a finite period of time to pay off this ridiculous debt, or have President McCain sneak those increased taxes on you by way of “user fees” and “revenue neutral” legislation? Note: “Revenue neutrality” is nothing more than giving to the rich by robbing the poor and middle class. Things like cutting programs for the poor, or cutting back what you can put into your 401(k) or your IRA, which typically benefit the middle class the most, while leaving the tax cuts for the rich in place.

If my President asked me to sacrifice $600 extra dollars for two years to make a dent in the war debt, I’d do it right now, especially if it meant that veterans would get some decent health care and we could put our resources back into our country. But what I’ve gotten with the Republicans is an ‘economic stimulus’ tax refund which they expected me to spend but which I didn’t spend because as a self-employed individual, my tax burden has increased while my income stream has decreased over the past seven years. That first refund went back to the IRS as a deposit on the following year’s tax bill, as will the one they give me this year.

I’d much rather accept a tax increase for a finite period of time which would pay the war debt down and give us a way to bolster much-needed social and educational services, wouldn’t you?

Whatever your opinion, accept as fact that you will have to pay higher taxes to take care of Bush’s folly in Iraq. That’s just how it works.

Technorati Tags: taxes, Iraq, war, veterans, VA, mental health, services, education, social services Sphere: Related Content

]]> http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/06/read-my-lips-there-will-be-taxes/feed/ 3 http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/ http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 09:03:00 +0000 Karoli http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/

That’s the fundamental choice we all have in the general election. If anyone still believes that John McCain’s inner hawk isn’t dangerous, his statements today should remove all doubt.

I. George W. Bush equates diplomacy and appeasement in a cheap effort to smear Barack Obama abroad.

Of course, diplomacy is not the same as appeasement at all, no matter how hard the gaseous and despicable George W. Bush may twist it. Literacy matters. Bush must have been the child left behind. Here are some definitions, for clarity’s sake:

diplomacy: n.The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements.

appeasement: n.The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace.

The distinction in that last definition is worth highlighting. In order for there to be appeasement, there must first be peace. Appeasement is the act of offering concessions to maintain peace.

Diplomacy, on the other hand, has no such restriction. Diplomacy is the art of intercession and negotiation. It can be a trade agreement or a peace agreement. It is not conditioned upon military victory, economic performance, or anything other than two parties coming together to negotiate a mutually satisfactory agreement.

Joe Lieberman, George W. Bush, and John McCain forgot to check their dictionaries before going off half-cocked today. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Bush is illiterate, but it’s a pity that it has infected Senators McCain and Lieberman with an infection as rapid as the rise of the SARS virus.

II. What they said:

George W. Bush

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

McCain takes it one step further:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,’’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.’

(Note to John McCain: The hostage release was not anything that Reagan did or didn’t do. The hostages were released about an hour after Reagan’s inauguration, and was timed to humilate Carter, mostly because Carter would not engage in any form of discussion with them, choosing instead to launch a failed rescue operation and then ignore them.)

Finally, the pile-on by Joe “hawk-boy” Lieberman:

President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that — if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers — they would cease to threaten us.

Because somehow, words become terrorism and war and diplomacy is appeasement.

III. John McCain was for diplomacy before he was against it.

Two years ago, when interviewed by James P Rubin, Senator McCain said this:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re [Hamas] the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

During a follow-up conference call with bloggers, he added the following embellishment:

In a reference to Obama’s declared willingness to meet with the leader of Iran, McCain said:

“I think [it] is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation’s security.”

Yet, I could find no references to McCain’s objection to Iran President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US last year, nor any objection to Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University during that same visit. Not one press release. Not one public speech. Nothing. Was that visit not “talking”? Why isn’t Columbia held to the same standard?

Those are rhetorical questions, of course. The fact is that there was no political capital to be gained by giving attention to it. President Bush and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain are for democracy until they’re against it. In other words, they’re for democracy as long as the elected party is one they agree with. The Palestinians elected their government, which includes Hamas. It’s democratic, like it or not. The Iranians elected Ahmadinejad in a democratic election, like it or not. John McCain and George Bush do not get to pick and choose the democracies they like. Well, maybe they do, but it exposes the sock puppet argument about the conflict in Iraq being about making Iraq into a democracy. They’ll be for Iraq as long as they agree with the leadership, just like they were for Pakistan until the recent elections put people they don’t like into power.

The fundamental conflict here is not about appeasement. It is about how Republicans pervert ideas like diplomacy into appeasement. It’s about how they make democratic processes into wars.

Refresh your palate with a bit of Joe Biden, straight out of a Senate session and outraged at Bush’s illiteracy:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

and this:

Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.

“If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”

As a final thought point, consider John McCain’s surrogate Joe Lieberman’s statement yesterday with regard to his feelings on bombing Iran:

BENNETT: Listen, I give her credit. She has found her…three things. She’s found her voice. He is very much in the background now, it’s not this, you know, ventriloquial thing, it’s definitely her voice.

LIEBERMAN: That’s true.

BENNETT: And Joe, you know, this is my style. This is a girl who puts on her pearls, goes down, throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran, you know. This is…lookout Mrs. Bennett, this is my kind of girl.

LIEBERMAN: Hehehe, it does have an appeal to it.

Diplomacy = Progress toward peace. Why doesn’t John McCain want peace?

Food for thought.

Technorati Tags: diplomacy, appeasement, democracy, iran, iraq, israel, bush, illiteracy, lunacy, mccain=hawk

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” she said when she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. “In the next 10 years, -during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she added.

- Hillary Clinton, April 22, 2008
This is what “obliterate them” looks like. When I looked at this newly released collection of photos, I was stunned. The imagination cannot fill in the gaps where reality is. An entire city leveled. People living one moment, dead the next. Just like that. Mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, fathers, grandchildren.

Gone.

This is what Hillary Clinton has tossed around like a cowboy at a rodeo, swaggering with her imaginary holster full of death.

My reaction when I saw these photos was this: How on earth could ANYONE contemplate doing such a thing, much less actually say the words?

What’s yours?

(Credit: Robert L. Capp | Full Collection: Sean Malloy)

Technorati Tags: nuclear weapons, hiroshima, destruction, evil

Be afraid. Then be angry, and start pushing back. Joe Lauria writes:

Iran is next. Lieberman set up Petraeus to testify last week that Iranian-backed groups are murdering hundreds of American servicemen in Iraq. On Friday Gates called Iran’s influence in Iraq “malign” and Bush said if Iran keeps meddling in Iraq “then we’ll deal with them.” They are building their case for war with resolutions in the Senate and at the UN. It’s only western Iran, from the Iraq border to 150 miles inside the country that the U.S. will have to occupy. That’s where Iran’s oil is. But the U.S. will have a nasty battle on their hands in Iran even if they restore a Shah-like puppet in Tehran 30 years after the revolution.

Watch the news. Forget about ‘bitter’ and Rev. Wright, and all the smoky stuff that doesn’t matter. Get the smoke out of your eyes and listen to what’s being said:

What is certain is that these wars are not about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran’s nuclear weapons project. It’s about the oil, stupid.

Technorati Tags: oil, oil futures

Just in case you had doubts, please note the following, slipped into today’s news between bitter leaves:

35 Firms OK’d to Bid on Iraq Oil Deals

The office listed 35 companies that it said were qualified. They include, among others, BP PLC, Chevron Corp²., Exxon Mobil Corp¹., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Lukoil Holdings, China National Petroleum Corp., Edison International SpA and Eni SpA.

Of the international companies listed, there are extensive US interests in Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Edison International.

It should go without saying that these fields would not be up for bid in this way without an invasion and occupation of Iraq.

My question is this: What value is assigned to each of the 4,034 soldiers dead in Iraq, or the tens of thousands injured, and how much of it should be given to their families?

And will greed cause Bush to order Iran to go out on “carpets of gold or carpets of bombs“?

¹ Exxon Mobil: 2007 Profits: $39.5 Billion 2006 Profits: $36.1 Billion 2005 Profits $23 Billion 2004 Profits $25.9 Billion (source and 2007 source)
² Chevron: 2007 Profit: $18.7 Billion, 4th straight year of profits (source)

Technorati Tags: oil, profiteering, oil futures, iraq bids

Predictably, right in the middle of the posturing and positioning to make the case for aggression toward Iran, a press release from NCR-Iran claiming 6,000 new centrifuges installed at Natanz.

Political posturing intended to bolster Bush lunacy. That’s all. Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Technorati Tags: NCR Iran, Natanz, nuclear, posturing, propaganda

According to VetVoice, the cease-fire is over, and violence is on the rise.

Total Military Deaths in Iraq: 4,001 and counting.

Unfortunately, with the end of the cease-fire, this number is likely to rise rapidly, especially since Bush and Petraeus have left the troop withdrawal task to the next president.

A more pressing question: Did Dick Cheney trade peace for oil?

The gains for George and Dick are clear – weaken or distract those pesky nationalist forces, justify continued troop surge and presence, gain “approval” of US benchmarks (though not popular approval) and keep control of Iraqi oil in the hands of men like Hakim.

Dick visits Iraq and cuts a deal – and the people of Iraq once again pay the price.

How would he answer THAT question? “So?”

Then he’d go fishing with the Sultan of Oman for the next big deal.

Truth really is stranger than fiction. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Technorati Tags: al-Sadr, Mahdi, cease fire, violence, war