Get Out

Americans want their country to get out of Iraq, and soon, no matter what. That's what a new poll concludes. 56% now say they want a deadline to pull out. That's not 56% who are against the botched war - that number is up at 65%. No, this 56% want a deadline - you know, "cut and run." That's a lot of people for the Junta to label (or libel) as cowards. You know, because, like, if 56% of America is cowardly, that means that most of America is a big wuss.

But, as always, the smear tactics are done by the actual cowards. Real cowardice is not having the wherewithal to admit any mistake, or to act in any real way to fix a bad situation. It's Georgie and his loyal gang of effete ruffians ("stop pushing me or I'll have my army lay waste to your village!") whose catastrophic wrongheadedness created the mess in Iraq. And now it's going to be everybody else's job to fix it.

As I've said before, the US is politically divided into thirds. One third are hard core wingnuts who will follow the orders of their right wing masters no matter what. This is proven time and again by the complete lack of ideology evinced by this group of loyalists. Georgie and the Junta have run a completely anti-conservative regime, and yet self-professed "conservatives" follow them blindly and completely.

Yes, 'small government conservatives' love their big government Junta. Libertarians love their spying and controlling Junta. Law and order conservatives love their lawless lying Junta. Nothing means anything to them but their affection for the authority of the leader.

Another third is just the opposite. This 'left' is really the center - it stands for reason and social justice. It - we - are dedicated to a better and more progressive world. That's why we're so mortified all the time.

And then there's the other third. The soft third. These are people who have few thoughts of their own and only very little willpower. They will believe most of what they're told by media figures and talking authority heads. They are a big problem, because the lies that fuel the rightist third also work on them.

It's taken years of blatantly obvious outright anti-American authoritarian neo-fascism for them to turn against this Junta, but they've just about arrived. They've repudiated Georgie, whose only support comes from his dead-enders. And they know he's lied - but the same polling margins - and that the Iraq war was not worth it.

But now they're getting to the point where they just want out of it. No more war, no more pointless needless death and destruction, no more unaccounted billions of dollars wasted, no more neocon fantasies of a realigned Middle East.

The problem is that the national media also resides in the gullible third, and they haven't gotten the memo. They're still re-typing Georgie's talking points and calling it 'journalism.' They help keep the gullible third on-side with the far right. People haven't found the truth because of the media - they've found it in spite of the media.

Now, if only we can cast these rightists out of the political world for good. They've been given the run of the place for six years, and look at the mess. They deserve all the political banishment we can muster.

Wanna-Junta

A quick post today on the wannabe Junta running the Canadian ship of state these days. Stephen Harper and his Conservative party are extreme rightists in the Maple Leaf tradition of narrowness, sloth, and intolerance. And, like their good buddies to the South, they dress it up (to the extent that it's possible) in a sort of mainstream drag costume.

Exhibit A is on the front page of today's Globe and Mail: Climate draft allows spike in oil-sands emissions. The Conservatives are playing their standard bait-and-switch, seeming to push a popular environmental policy while actually rolling back regulations on polluters.

And that means, in particular, Alberta oil sands production. Only a few years in existence, the oil sands have made Canada the largest source of foreign oil for the US. Yes, America imports more oil from Canada than from Saudi Arabia.

But the price is high for Canadians; turning oil sands into crude is a messy business. Vast swathes of Alberta are turning into a moonscape. And the worst part is the water - it takes tons and tons of water to process the sands into oil. That water becomes toxic as hell. What do you do with it? Originally, they just dumped it back into the rivers. Now they're making dirty ponds, with flamethrowers (yes, flamethrowers) at the edges to keep birds from landing in it.

And, of course, oil pigs like Darth Cheney want more of the stuff. The US reportedly has asked Canada to increase production fivefold. Quintuple it.

In order to do that, the hippy environmentalist Gore-lovers will have to be shut up. If Alberta looks like the vacation spot on Pluto right now, imagine what it will be like after a few years of quintupled production.

So, how does a Conservative play ball with his reptilian buddies in Washington, and still maintain a minority government and not seem like what he really is - a dump-and-burn development wingnut? Easy.

Lie.

Maybe that's just too easy, but "too easy" turns into "really really hard" when translated into the international language of conservatives. They just don't do anything the right way if there''s any work in it at all.

For example, it would be hard to find a way to do oil sands more cleanly. A leader with a conscience might insist that the process get five times cleaner before it gets five times bigger. But that would be hard, and might involve science. Or math.

Easier, then, is to publish a worthless and toothless environmental policy that hands Alberta a shovel and a purchase order. Just keep on diggin' fellas.

The two things that give power to conservatives are lies and money. The more they tell lies, the more they can get political power. The more they get political power, the more they can help their rich friends despoil the world - and give conservatives more power.

And these Conservatives are working this with a minority government. Just wait until they get a majority and we hear their big, Class A lies. The Inuit have WMD? Really?

DJ

I must be getting older, because the obits are becoming more relevant to me. People I've watched (athletes) and admired are passing away, some after "a good long innings" (Red Auerbach) and some far too soon. In the latter category is Dennis "DJ" Johnson.

DJ was spacial to me, because he was a part of the greatest basketball team of all-time, the 1986 Boston Celtics. More than that, he proved the value of hustle and grit, and was the man who kept the team together through difficult times. On Celtics teams with the likes of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, even Bill Walton, he was never the best player on the floor -but he always made the greats greater.

They didn't need DJ to be Michael Jordan. They had more than enough star power on the floor. What they needed was a guy who would never quit, a guy unafraid to take big shots or to defend the great players of the day. A guy who had the respect of the great players.

A true team player.

And that was DJ. Sure, he was a star at the under appreciated art of individual and team defense. But there aren't a lot of numbers to show how he denied the ball to the shooters, how he kept them out of the favorite spot on the floor. He made life hard on players who normally have it pretty easy. And, of course, guys like Dominique "Human Highlight Film" Wilkins would go for 20 on him - but not 25 and never 30.

And to get their 20 they'd have to work harder on offense, meaning their defense would slack off.

I remember DJ playing like Carl Yastrzemski (when I was a kid - after his superstar days in the 60's) - effective, respected, calm.

But DJ might have been a guy who was slightly ahead of his time. As a veteran player retiring in 1990, the NBA was not a league of former player head coaches. Make that black former player head coaches.

Today, we look around the league and see Sam Mitchell, Doc Rivers, Nate MacMillan, Avery Johnson (06 Coach of the Year), Mike Woodson, Mo Cheeks, Eddie Jordan, and Byron Scott.

But that didn't exist in 1990. So DJ worked as an assistant coach for many years, getting one shot as interim coach of a woaful Clippers team that Red himself couldn't have won with.

So as a great player and a guy who helped push black coaches ahead by never giving up on his dream of being a full time NBA head coach, he will be missed.

Honor?

Dick Cheney, visiting Japan, talked about Iraq. Now, if you wanted to send a goodwill ambassador or envoy of goodwill, you got the wrong guy. In fact, he's not even meeting with the Japanese Defense Minister. How warmongering do you have to be to not meet with a Defense Minister because he thinks you're too warlike?

But Dick went to talk more to our 50,000 or so troops still there. And his message was as clear as it was chilling: "peace with honor."

TOKYO (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday the United States wants to finish its mission in Iraq and "return with honor", despite the war's growing unpopularity at home and doubts among U.S. allies.

So that's really what we're waiting for - some sort of arrangement where we can get out and retain some modicum of "honor." No worries about throwing away the lives of Americans and Iraqis, no thought to the vast tons of treasure - tax dollars - being burned, or the ruinous effect of the war on America;'s standing in the world.

Now, where have I heard that before? Hmmm?

How about here:

Good evening. I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.

Sound familiar? That was another Tricky Dick - Nixon. In 1973, announcing the end to US involvement in Vietnam. He and the once and future American Machiavelli, Hank Kissinger, accepted the peace that they knew was inevitable years before. We now know that they were sure South Vietnam would collapse, and only wanted a "decent interval" between our withdrawal and the end of the misbegotten US puppet regime in Saigon.

So we're now into the phase where we wait until we can declare victory and get out as fast as humanly possible. The choppers are warming up in the Green Zone to get the VIP's gone before the rabble rushes the roof.

Tony Blair is way ahead of us, announcing British troop withdrawals starting, like, now. A day late and a pound short, but still way ahead of the neocon warmongers on this side of the pond.

Cheney had more to say:

"We know that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength, they are invited by the perception of weakness," Cheney said in a speech aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier at Yokosuka Navy Base near Tokyo.

As I've said before, real strength is based on smarts as much as muscle. Cheney and his ilk, like he and his ilk in 1973, only see that they're killing a lot of people. To them, that's strength. To the rest of the world, it's a clear sign of weakness. We are too dumb to bring about the political reconciliation that will result in real peace. We try to answer political questions with more bullets and bombs.

And that's just dumb.

Like in Vietnam, we're creating new insurgents (read: Vietcong) every day by our ham handed and oppressive policies. And just like in Vietnam, we just can't kill that many people. When we blow up an insurgent, we make lethal enemies of his whole family, village, and coreligionists. And they won't give up, ever.

The neocons have "emboldened" the real terrorists more than they could ever have hoped for. They've proven the ever-living Osama bin Laden right about everything.

Cheney's crew thought that we lost Vietnam because we weren't committed to enough bloodshed over a long enough time. They believe that there was some amount of time, lives, and money that could have been added to our effort that would have beaten the North Vietnamese and created a peaceful and stable South Vietnam. And they are applying those lessons to Iraq.

They were wrong then and they're wrong now. Look: they got back into power in 2000 by running as "Compassionate Conservatives." Nobody wanted Nixon II. They used 9-11 politically to an extent that I didn't know Americans were capable of. Could they really be that cynical? That questions was settled a long time ago.

Still, even in 2004 - once again a Nixonian moment where the fear was cranked up and the rightists challenged people to 'not change horses in mid-stream' - nobody voted for Vietnam II. They lied to start the war, and they've lied to perpetuate it.

So how about, for a change, we stop doing all the wrong things? Peace with honor?

Let's just start by, for once, acting honorably.

Surging!

The AP reports that support for the Boy King's surge is up! That's UP, baby! Stick that in your Pelosi San Francisco bong, Commie!

Oooh - those stupid Democrats! They never saw it coming - they thought they could grow their hair long and "drop out" and try to tell the Decider what to do. Hah! That's what his Daddy tried and it ain't worked yet! And he had a switch (actually a radio antenna from a late-model Cadillac El Dorado, but whatever).

The president has nudged support for the troop increase to 35 percent from 26 percent in early January. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed still oppose the increase.

See? Support isn't stuck at a quarter - it's all the way up to a THIRD. Over a third. And opposition is less than a full 66% two thirds at 63%. Yes, LESS THAN TWO THIRDS OPPOSE.

For the brash royal youth, that's practically a landslide. That's more than his own approval ratings - yes, for the first time in a long time, his war is more popular than he is.

So, what do these excess nine-percenters want? How was this historic shift from 26% to 35% achieved? There are many theories, but the one I favour is the fatigue theory. Those nine-percent are the people who are just too tired of the whole thing to keep arguing.

Yeah, the surge is stupid and pointless. It will never work and is bound to get a lot more people killed. But the Decider seems to have his heart set on it, and he says it will work. So why fight it? Let him try. It will make so little difference to the outcome of the conflict that it's not worth arguing about.

But what about the rest of us in the 63% rational pool? Can we get our own Decider?

Scooter

Apparently Scooter Libby will not appear as a witness in his trial - and that's okay. That's why we have laws, right? You don't have to testify in your own defense, and neither does your boss, the surly intemperate foul-mouthed Vice President.

But along the way the defense intimated to the judge that Libby would appear, and that made it okay for them to build a case on Libby being too busy to remember having revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent. I mean Libby's work leads to thousands of people having their lives and careers destroyed - how can he be expected to remember that one case?

So the judge is not pleased, and is making it known. That might be a bad move for him.

What if the Veep declares the judge and prosecutor to be 'unlawful combatants' and throw them into a blackout room in Gitmo forever? That's their right as, well, unlawful combatants. They hold the view that their actions are not affected by what we proletarians think of as the "law."

That goes double in the case of Cheney, who seems to think that the Office of the Vice President has powers beyond even those of the president himself. After all, the president can't break a tie in the Senate, and he's not usually sent to the funerals of world leaders, either.

But what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the judiciary decided that they were empowered to do whatever they liked because of the cool robes and hammer-like gavel armament? I mean, if the executive and self-proclaimed quasi-executive can have their own prison camps, why can't the other two branch have their own as well?

I guess the judiciary really does have their own prison system, known as the "prison system." They just decide how and when they bang people up in it. Sure, Congress passes the "law," but if Georgie doesn't have to go by it, why should the judges?

This "law" is really just a guideline, right? If a judge feels that a defendant might pose a threat in the future if he's allowed out, they should be able to use their Decider powers to just get rid of the person for good, right?

This is America after all. We can't have people suspected of things just flipping around free.

And Libby: what if he were to get out and enable Cheney to do even worse stuff (hard to image, but stay with me)? He was willing to trash the career of a CIA agent and harm the actual non-fictional defense of the actual non-fairytale United States. And he did it to further the political cause of real life warmongering killers.

What more evidence do you need? Get rid of the jury and put Libby in the butt-assault hard time prison where you put people who've only killed like, one person. The Iraq wars body count is beyond a reasonable tally, and Libby's one of the guys who made it happen.

So why should there be more justice for Libby than for a shoplifter or a bank robber?

Here's the because: because this really is America, a nation of laws. In real America (as opposed to Bush-Rove-Cheney fantasy America) there are laws intended to try people on the merits of the evidence, and not put them away for a minute based on rank suspicion, or on where they were standing when they got picked it.

Libby is wealthy and connected enough to be sure of a fair trial. The Iraqis and Gitmo detainees are not so lucky. There are innocent people dead, tortured, and incarcerated for life because of the kind of stuff that Libby has pushed.

Too bad none of them have a voice.

And then there's the media. They've been a big part of this story, as the recipients of Libby's (and others - Rove, Fleicher, Armitage) self-serving leaks. Irony about their own part in all this is lost entirely on them.

Here's a good example of what this looks like; the NYT has a story out today on those cute firedoglake bloggers who've been giving great coverage of the trial on the INTERNETS. The trial itself has been an indictment of the insider gamesmanship of the useless Washington media, who have served as the propaganda arm of the Junta instead of the watchdog of the people.

Tim Russert and Judith Miller were prominent media types drawn into testifying how they took in 'off the record' lies and pushed them out to the public. Could anything be more sinister than the big media pretending to be neutral while passing along innuendo and outright lies cooked up in the White House?

And yet, the story says:

Even as they exploit the newest technologies, the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds.

“They’re putting in a lot more opinion and a lot more color than the traditional reporters,” said Mr. Cox, adding that the bloggers were challenging “the theory of objective journalism.”

"Objective journalism" hasn't existed in Washington in years. The likes of Russert and the rest have pretended at objectivity, while playing megaphone to the extreme right.

The difference with these marginal lefty internets types is that they admit their point of view. While Fox News lies about being 'fair and balanced,' these guys tell you right out that they've got a perspective.

While Tim Russert hides behind the skirt of Lady Justice while working for the extremist executive branch, the bloggers tell you what they think up front.

Oh, and the weapon these "clowns" use against their political foe?

The truth.

The "establishment press" ought to try it some time. I hear it can set you free.

Startling

I found this story to be a bit of a shock. Like most people, I view Iran as a bad actor in the world. There is no love in my heart for a Mullahs who suppress their people, promise to exterminate my people, and are generally unscrupulous in their plays at becoming a regional power. They are the bank behind Hezbollah, an organization with gallons of Jewish blood on their hands and a craving for more. And, not satisfied to make the present a more miserable place to be, they attack the past by holding an all-haters party for Holocaust deniers. I was 15 when they took the US embassy in Teheran and I remember how it made me feel.

So, no friend am I of any Iranian policy - not to say any Iranian, as the 25,000-strong Jewish community, dating back to the 6th century, is the region's second largest. Of course, there were 80,000 before the revolution made the country unlivable for Jews.

Naturally, Iran's excuse that they only want to build nuclear reactors for domestic power needs sees ridiculous on its face. After all, they are on top of the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves. They are the world's fourth-largest petroleum exporter. And they need nuclear energy? That's absurd on its face. What would they do with the power? Open hockey rinks? I mean, how many blow-dryers do they need to run at the same time?

The Junta is eyeing Iran as their next great failure. They're satisfied that Iraq is settled into being the worst strategic disaster in American history. Katrina proved that they can make disasters happen domestically. What's next? The clock is ticking - less than two years left to completely ruin everything that America has ever stood for.

So Iran. Good. They're poking and prodding and insulting, doing their best to pick a fight that the Junta cannot possibly handle. I hear Dick Cheney personally slapped an Iranian cab driver in the back of the head (dear lawyers: no he didn't, and he didn't shoot him in the face, either). Clearly, the Iranian nuclear issue keeps them in the bulls-eye, no matter what else is said or done. Iran needs Three Mile Island like the Titanic needs more seawater.

But here's the thing: they actually do need nuclear energy. They are actually having a domestic energy crisis.

"Some analysts say that if this acute imbalance between stagnant production
and rising demand at home continues unchecked, Iran will have no oil left over
to export within a decade. Its oil exports, totaling $47 billion last year,
account for half the government’s revenue.

"They have a perfect storm of problems feeding into each other," said
Robert Murphy, an analyst at PFC Energy, a consulting firm in Washington. He
estimated that Iran might have no more oil to export by around 2015 if it did
not rein in runaway consumption and reverse the long-term decline in its oil
production.

"The domestic energy situation is as big as the international issue, and
feeds into it in a very significant way," he said."

Where does that leave us? Iran cannot be allowed to attain nuclear weapons. They are dangerous enough without them. They are bug-nut crazy enough to use them. But nuclear energy?

This is where grown-up diplomats from real State Departments can help. The situation is crying out for diplomacy. How about, f'rinstance, we help them out with their energy situation and they stop being such bad actors all over the place. Hmmm? No more RPG's for Hezbollah? No more Holiday Inn treatment for terrorists? And as a bonus, by working with them instead of against them, you get them to produce more oil - which is, like, your very favorite stuff in the whole world.

It's times like these that I really miss having smart reasonable people in charge. The dumb crazy ones just ruin everything.

Working with Iran will be bumpy. And Israel won't like it too much. But we shouldn't be trying to be, like, best friends forever with Iran. Just talk to them enough to not fight another deadly endless terror war against another intractable zealous foe. At least not until we're done with the one we're already fighting.

Bad Intel

Oversight.

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials undercut the intelligence community in the
run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq by insisting in briefings to the White House
that there was a clear relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the
Defense Department's inspector general said Friday.

Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that the office headed by former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J.
Feith took "inappropriate" actions in advancing conclusions on al-Qaida
connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies.

That's what it looks like. Four years of stonewalling and outrageous lies, never a glimmer of truth. And a month into the new Congress, we get this. That's what oxygen smells like.

The word that was used when people talked about this back when it was, you know, happening, was "stovepiped." As in, Rummy's bloodthirsty warmongering chickenhawks "cherry-picked" (they used to say "cherrypicked" as well) intel that they liked and "stovepiped" it to Darth Cheney's office.

Slavering over a stinking fly-covered pile of fetid boar meat (i.e. "over lunch") Cheney would review the lies for bad elements of fact, which he would pluck out and then wrap in human entrails and throw to his Pit Bulls and Rottweilers.

The rest he would take to his Boy King, who would receive it with the gladness that he used to feel only after his tenth drink.

See, we pay millions of tax dollars to have professional spies and intelligence analysts look at stuff and decide what can be believed - and have policies formed around - and what is not to be believed. They are like the floors of a house. This house has a basement, where Doug Feith cooked up his bad intel, and a penthouse far above housing the Boy King in his playroom.

Between the dank basement and the penthouse are many floors with lots of smart people who know better than to let bad filth from the basement get to the Boy King. But Darth Cheney and his ole' pal Rummy put in a stiovepipe from the basement right to the Boy King's playroom, so the dark viscus fluid went straight to the top.

Make no mistake: everyone in the real intelligence community that look at Georgie's case for war knew it was bunk. The CIA, the NSA, hell the Girl Scouts of America knew better. But they've always been hawks, so they didn't question it either.

The person most responsible for the stovepiping and eventually the entire mess was Condo Rice. The National Security Director's job is explicitly to keep bad intelligence material from the president. It was up to Rice to support Powell's objections to the frame job on Saddam, and to make sure that the stovepiped crapola from Cheney and Rummy was kept far away from Georgie's tender and underutilized brain.

She failed. Cheney and Rummy and the Boy Kind got their war. and now there are over 600,000 Iraqis who are too dead to thank them for it.

Dancing

Iran is already talking about what they'd do if the US attacks - strike back, anywhere the US has interests. If this isn't a run-up to a war, what is it? Every time you turn around, it's the Junta making baseless and factless accusations about Iran's negative influence on their debacle in Iraq. And now this.

Look, the Ayatollahs in Iran aren't necessarily the most stable guys on the planet. Even though it;'s in their best interests to keep shut up and let Prince George make a bigger ass of himself, they're not going to do that. And when their nationals get arrested for no good reason in Iraq, they're just going to get more and more testy.

Which is great with Georgie, holed up in his bunker with Darth Cheney whispering vile nothings in his ear. The answer, in their twisted fantasy world, is always to escalate violence. Thus the Iraq surge - the Iraq war itself.

"There's a complicated intractable problem on the other side of the planet where they store our oil under their deserts."

"Bomb and invade!"

"We did that, and it seems to have made things worse."

"Use more force!"

"Force doesn't seem to be helping. In fact, it's killing us politically, ethically, and morally. We're becoming a pariah nation and nobody will ever ever trust us again because we've told more lies than OJ."

"MORE FORCE!"

"Okay, now Iran is..."

"Go nukuler!"

And so on.

I've been meaning to address the issue of "Emboldening" for a while now. Every time Junta mole Joe "Go Large" Lieberman accuses actual Americans of "emboldening" the enemy by dissenting from Prince Georgie, what the heck exactly does that mean?

Are they not now sufficiently bold? If they were bolder, what would they do? What would that look like?

I mean, maybe that would be a good thing. Like, say a bunch of Sunni insurgents were sitting around reading the Congressional Record (or the Boston Globe) and saw that:

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said he wants Congress to express support for recommendations by the independent, bipartisan Iraq Study Group. The group, initiated at Wolf's behest, suggested most U.S. combat troops be withdrawn from Iraq by early 2008, leaving only a small number of forces behind to train the Iraqi security forces and provide logistical support.

"We have seen that the current Iraq policy is not working," Wolf said.

Maybe, seeing that the Great Satan is having a political debate, they'd start dancing in the streets because they'd scored a great victory. "The Caliphate will soon be here!" Then our soldiers could mow them down with machine guns.

That could be our new strategy. We could get Defeat-ocrat leader Nancy Pelosi to announce that she disapproves of the war every 30 minutes or so, and just have our guys time the announcements and catch the insurgents celebrating and otherwise doing emboldened things. And kill them.

It seems obvious to say, but I'll say it anyway: what emboldens our enemies around the world is the spectacle of a gelded America thrashing about violently and stupidly in a country they occupied by choice and allowed to disintegrate into civil war while they stood around and watched. That, my friend, is emboldening.

It's like watching the neighborhood bully get his ass kicked. Not so tough now, eh Sam? Do you think Bad Bad Leroy Brown ever held the locals in fear after A Girl Name-A Doris's husband got through with him? If you recall, he was cut in 'bout a hundred places and he was shot in a couple a more.

Just like our standing in the world.

Iran

Question: will the US public be fooled into attacking Iran the way they were with Iraq? Even Buckets Goldenberg is wondering.

I think the public is aware - finally - that the Junta is composed of lies and that Bush/Rove/Cheney will literally say anything to get their way. And their way is always the way of war and torture and fraud. It's too bad, really, that more Senate seats weren't up in 06 because the Dems would have picked up a lot more of them. So no, I don't think people will fall into line over Iran.

But here's the problem: Georgie's a lame duck. He won't run again, and doesn't care a whit about what people think anymore. His interest is in keeping his friends out of jail (note the unprecedented firing of US attorneys) and pushing his radical neocon agenda. So, the American public isn't nearly as bamboozled as it once was - Georgie's down to 28% support in some polls - but he actually cares less.

Plus, the media is still on his side. They're really lagging behind the public in understanding that the Junta - from the White House to Congress (still) - lies about everything and will say anything to get their way. Watch any of the Sunday morning talk show - who do you see? George Will. David Brooks. Joe Lieberman. The extreme right has won a huge battle in taking over the entire media agenda. Even George Stephanopolous is singing from their song sheet. So when important lies are told about Iran (and they've already started), there will be nobody to go on air and say "the White House says this - but it's not true."

Why would the Junta want to attack Iran? Because it would be upping the ante in a big way from Iraq, and that's always been the formula. When the current policy fails, go bigger. It would make the neocons extremely happy. It would keep the military #1 in budget and manpower. Think about it: before Georgie, the military was becoming smaller and more professional. Now, it's going to get bigger and richer, and dumber - meaning more pliant and responsive to right-wing political hacks. The defense industry will get bigger and richer. The extremist Apocalyptic Christians will be delighted because they'll see the Second Coming as Coming Soon to a Holocaust Near You.

But the number one reason I think Bush/Rove/Cheney will do all they can to start a war with Iran is that they know that when they're gone, nobody else will do it. Whoever the next president is, he or she won't have the cojones or the congress to make the war happen. It's their last chance to have the war, and since they think they are infallibly right about everything (a function of their intellectual shortcomings and essential laziness), they think they must make things happen or very bad things will occur.

Of course, the worst really bad thing that could happen is their own policy.

It's amazing to think that everything this Junta has set out to do has produced the 180 degree opposite result. They are worse than the 'gang that can't shoot straight;' they are the gang that shoots directly backwards from the thing they're aiming at.

Smaller government? Biggest government ever. Financial responsibility? Biggest deficit ever. Democracy? Fixed elections. Freedom? Torture. Stop terror? Bring peace to the Middle East? Build giant terrorist recruitment and training tool ever. Turn Iraq into colossal failed state where terrorists rule. Destabalize the entire region and make Iran the most important player.

The list is as endless as it is sad.