Immediately after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, President Bush sat down to play poker with the biggest stack of chips at the table, the odds-on favorite to win one of the highest-stakes games ever played. This huge initial chip advantage was built from a unified and supportive citizenry at home, a mainstream media that rarely questioned his judgment or intentions, an international community prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and a military machine bigger than the next couple dozen countries combined. But since those early heady days, Bush and his close advisers and neocon allies have made one horrendous decision after another. The great tragedy, of course, is that the president has not been playing with his own chips. Rather, in this game his poor play has cost the lives of our courageous soldiers and many Iraqi civilians, our country's stature in the world, and our national resources much needed for other purposes, domestic and international.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Peace Tree, the Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.

Foreign Affairs published a sobering article by Bruce Riedel in their May/June issue entitled, "al Qaeda Strikes Back." Riedel, a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution retired last year after 29 years with the CIA.

The G8 Press conference we didn't see...

President Bush walks up to the podium, stumbling only slightly as he climbs the platform stairs. "Good morning ladies and gentlemen," he smirks. "Beautiful day today, so go easy, won'tcha."

The press clamors for attention. President Bush points his finger, "Helen."

"Mr. Bush, "How do you feel about the latest news that global warming is speeding up ocean waves? "

"Sounds like good surfin to me." Bush snickers, press follows.

Podhoretz is a Punk

That's something a (rather knowledgeable) child might say of the crackpot neocon who was afforded a full page op-ed calling for 'preemptive strikes' on Iran in one of America's (formerly) most respected papers -- and quite appropriately considering Norman's thought processes seem to mirror a child's impulsive actions, reflexive bullying, and irrational logic.

But is he wrong?

Of course he is, and yet, not so long ago, nearly half of all Americans agreed that a preemptive strike on Iran would be desirable.

In April 2006, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that "despite Iraq, Americans don't reject strikes against a nuclear Iran. By 48%-42%, the public says U.S. should join coalition to attack Iran's nuclear capability if Tehran approaches development of a weapon."

Are there that many punks in our great nation?

Now this is a year later and the 06 elections as well as more recent polls regarding our occupation of Iraq have certainly indicated that Americans are fed up with this crap.

But what would it take to swing them back the other way? How much effort would it take for the administration and it's minions to convince the public that "Tehran [is approaching] development of a [nuclear] weapon"?

Will the Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief never tire of hiding behind our troops? Follow the pretzel logic if you will. We must attack Iran in order to "protect our troops."

At Rice's Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. "Obviously, the President isn't going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq," Rice said, adding, "I do think that everyone will understand that--the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces."

That's right. We must set Iran on fire, while our troops are sitting ducks in Iraq, in order to protect them. We must exhaust what's left of our military supplies and hardware in order to protect them.  I fail to see how destroying our military readiness protects the troops or the country, for that matter.

One of the BIGGEST mistakes made during the invasion of Iraq was to go in without enough troops to secure the borders. With the White House touting new evidence that the deadliest weapons killing our troops are coming from Iran, why are we continuing this stupidity - and why haven't the Democrats made this a central theme in their arguments against Bush's surge?

As U.S. troops drove across Iraq during the invasion, commanders on the ground fretted that they were leaving abandoned Iraqi military compounds unguarded, with the potential of massive looting putting arms in the hands of future insurgents.

Donald Rumsfeld ordered the generals to keep moving, and leave the bases to be looted.

Others complained that by dismantling the entire Iraqi army, we were leaving Iraq's borders unguarded, allowing insurgents and arms to flow freely across Iraq's borders.

Paul Bremer didn't listen.

A few weeks ago, I almost fell out of my chair when I heard Hilary Clinton tell Keith Olbermann that she had opposed preemptive war with Iraq at the time. Not only did she say it with a straight face, she breezed through the comment it with the same light, dismissive tone she always uses when she's talking about the debacle she co-created.

Via TPM's "Election Central," a story that gives a little more context to Hillary's apparent lie. In her interview with New Hampshire Union Leader, Hilary explains:

"I have taken responsibility for that vote. It was based on the best assessment that I could make at the time, and it was clearly intended to demonstrate support for going to the United Nations to put inspectors into Iraq.

"When I set forth my reasons for giving the President that authority, I said that it was not a vote for pre-emptive war," the former first lady said.

A Clinton campaign spokesman later noted that on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002, Clinton stated that her vote for the resolution "is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose - all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people the throughout the world."

She said the Bush administration forced an end to the final round of weapons inspections and invaded prematurely. The administration is responsible for the status of the war, she said, and for being "grossly misinformed" or for having "twisted the intelligence to satisfy a pre-conceived version of the facts. [emphases mine]

crossposted from MacDubya: A Modern Tragedy

ACT I.

Scene I:  Baghdad, 1991.

This dark, grim tragedy begins with Three Witches dancing in the streets of Baghdad.

Missiles, explosions, and screams paint a gloomy picture, setting the tone of this play.  As the "fireworks" fade, the witches agree to meet again at the turn of the century.  They straddle cruise missiles that look decidedly phallic and fly off.

The TV set at the edge of the stage sputters to life. We hear Bernard Shaw reporting from Baghdad on the night of the first attack marking the opening of Operation Desert Storm. This is followed by a series of screen shots and video clips with occasional sound bites that rapidly advance us through the Clinton Years. A minute later, nine years have passed... ...

The topic below was originally posted in my blog the
Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Democratic Party strategists must be salivating. An ABC News-Washington Post survey reports 8 out of 10 Americans favor changing the U.S. mission in Iraq from direct combat to training Iraqi troops and significant majorities prefer withdrawing nearly all troops by 2008. The ABC/WAPO Survey also indicates increased support for diplomatic initiatives with Iran and Syria.

Since the Bush Administration has opted to essentially reject the Iraq Study Group's bipartisan recommendations, Democrats have received an early Christmas present: they can embrace the report to appear responsible and allow Iraq to continue dragging down the Republican Party heading into 2008.

[Alternate Title: Bush Weakness Empowers North Korea, Iran, and Russia to Action]

International leaders have begun to notice a widening crevice between the Bush Administration's persistent gunboat diplomacy and their realistic ability to follow through.

They see that President Bush has wedged the U.S. Military -- and thus U.S. national security -- between Iraq and a hard place.

As long as we're strapped to Iraq, they know that Bush's actions have impaled both the quality and quantity of America's diplomatic and military options.

And now they're taking advantage of that weakness.

Eliminating U.S. Options

When the Bush Administration first invaded Iraq, they believed the incursion would largely fit the template for which our current military was designed -- based on the belief that extended combat operations were an anachronism. More precisely they expected:

 Analyzing the real reason behind Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's just completed MidEast trip, the BBC News asks, Why did Condoleezza Rice come to Israel and the West Bank earlier this week?

And concludes:

. . .military action against Iran is now being very seriously considered in Washington.

[This article originally appeared in it's essential form as a diary at DailyKos .]

The Foley pedo scandal ate up so much bandwidth most people don't even know Baghdad is under a daytime curfew.  Therefore, it's no surprise this shocking exchange on FOX News fell completely off the table.  It's so tasty, I just had to pick it up, transcribe it, and share it around.  This is a dog bites man kind of story.

Shep Smith is a popular FOX News anchorman, yet even this avid supporter of the war, Bush, and all things conservative finally got so enraged, he stomped Bill Kristol like a grape.  Talk about making Kristol whine.   Shep started off calling this administration's policies horrifying and repulsive and it went downhill from there.  By the end of the segment, Shep was holding Bush responsible for any deaths that occur in Iraq between now and the mid-term elections!  In so many words!  On FOX NEWS!  This is Must See TV.  Transcripts and links to this "come to Jesus" talk are below the fold.  

There was a time when iron-spined neocons refused to negotiate with rogue states -- the incredulous sponsors of terror -- offering only a one-finger salute as consolation.

As Dick Cheney once put it, "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

Cross-haired in this diplomatic stiff-arm was the regime of Iran, a country that shared the dubious distinction of being labeled by the Bush administration as a member of the super-villainously named 'Axis of Evil'.

And for good reason it seemed. According to U.N. ambassador John Bolton as reported on ABC News' Nightline:

"Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. It funds groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad. Imagine what would happen, if the Iranians obtained a nuclear weapon and gave it to Hezbollah. You don't want to contemplate the consequences."

One may wonder why Iran won't completely concede to the olive branch Condi Rice extended (one may also ask why the Bush Administration did a 180 on their "don't talk to Iran" policy as well).

But if I was any official of importance or rank in Iran, I would look no further than to news of the Haditha killings. That would be reason enough for me.

My Golly, where to begin?

Let's start with a Secretary of Defense who uses the expression "my golly," or "gee willikers." I did a Yahoo search for this term and Donald Rumsfeld's name was in the first ten results. Jumpin' Jehosephat who is writing this script, Lewis Carroll?

What rabbit hole have we entered, what twisted hall of mirrors are we trapped in and how do we come down from this psychedelic trip that we seem to be on.

My golly, the buzz I'm hearing and reading is that we're going to war. Yes, I know, we already have two wars going, but they are so unfulfilling aren't they, bogged down as we are, three years after we accomplished our mission in Afghanistan and made Kabul nearly safe for the foreign press and killed or captured most of a deck of cards in Iraq and hired Halliburton to build us a house of cards which is falling down around us.

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
The queen of hearts is always your best bet.