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

Are 48% of the American people smoking crack? Seriously.

Wake up and read this post, "Bush's Five-Point Plan to Invade IRAN - Copyright 2003"

In the meantime, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "We want nuclear technology for peace and progress of nations, and if some believe that they can prevent us with psychological warfare and resolutions, they are mistaken."

But things look bleak as Iran yesterday "vowed...to defy any United Nations Security Council resolution on its nuclear activities on the eve of a major report by atomic inspectors on the status of its nuclear program." Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations said, "Iran would consider illegitimate any Council resolution calling on Iran to stop uranium enrichment that invoked the so-called Chapter 7 clause, which could open the door to penalties and possibly to military action."

48%? Are people really that afraid? Are there that many cowards crossing our daily paths?

The Iraqis finally settle down and select new leaders and as America's Secretaries of State and Defense lounge comfortably in the Green Zone, the new vice president of Iraq's sister and her one bodyguard are mowed down on a Baghdad street by a shower of bullets. This only a few weeks after his brother was slain.

Young men and women attending Baghdad University, who remember a time when students could hang out together at the cinema or a café, now must look over their shoulders in fear of self-appointed and armed "Morality Police" who will imprison, beat, and maybe even kill them for fraternizing in public.

Is this what freedom looks like?

"That Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld is defiant. He says he is not backing down and says he will stick around and let people criticize his handling of the Iranian invasion."

-- David Letterman

"On CNN today, a retired Air Force colonel said that US military operations are already under way in Iran. You know what that means. Time to break out the old 'Mission Accomplished' banner."

-- Jay Leno

Over the course of recent years, multiple lots of evidence have surfaced that unambiguously point to an administration bent on invading the nation of Saddam and there establishing an intimidating U.S. presence with or without the aid of a publicly acceptable and legitimate rationale.

So it was written over a decade ago by then future administration officials, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. They explained clearly what was needed in order to Invade Iraq, and when they got it on September 11, 2001, there was no turning back.

That's right. Years ago the struggle was all about the resources of black gold now it's about getting it around and about to use and sell it. Many have wondered why Bush Junior was obsessive about Iraq and what the real American interest has been behind toppling Hussein.

The answer can simply be put in two words: Check Mate! The current Middle East Crisis is a text book example of traditional power play.

Anyone who believes Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran is about democracy, terrorism or nuclear energy is a dreamer or lacks the ability to look further than media mainstream news. The chess game that is played in the Middle East can be easily understood by looking at a map and reading up developments of oil fields and pipelines. Something that has not been brought to the public attention is the fact, that Iran is the ONLY country in the region that has access to the biggest two oil resources on the planet.

Generals who have chosen to speak out against Donald Rumsfeld have mentioned two of the biggest strategic mistakes made in the Iraq war (beyond going to war based on bull in the first place). The mistakes? Not going in with a large enough force to maintain the peace once the regime fell, and disbanding the Iraqi army.

I have one simple question that I have not heard a single reporter ask yet. Who made the decision to disband the Iraqi army?

When Medea Benjamin (founder of Global Exchange and Occupation Watch) returned from a trip to U.S. occupied Iraq soon after Baghdad fell, one of the key things she mentioned in her talks about the situation was the mistake the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority whom she referred to as the failed Texas businessmen running the apltly-named "Repbulican Palace") made in disbanding the Iraqi army. Military psy-ops had dropped leaflets across the country before the war started, telling Iraqi soldiers that if they took off their uniforms and stayed home when the bombing started, and didn't fight U.S. troops as they entered the country, the Iraqi troops could be partners in rebuilding a new, free Iraq.

When those troops did exactly as the leaflets asked, and didn't fight back, U.S. troops easily took the entire country. That's why George Bush was able to, mistakenly as it turns out, declare "Mission Accomplished" so quickly.

Only in America

The coming years, like those of the present and the past, will see the continued spewing of fictionalized propaganda designed to manipulate the fears, hatreds, xenophobia and nationalistic tendencies of the population. The level of control over the masses and power over the nation in the years after 9/11 by corporatists intent on hijacking the country became, to them, a rousing success, thanks to the intense levels of fear and hatred engendered by the horrific events of that day. In the span of a few infamous days the corporatists had unleashed massive psychological warfare upon us, its effects still lingering in the minds of millions. Suddenly, those in power had become the puppeteers of the citizenry, free to manage us as they saw fit, our fragile and damaged psychologies traumatized, our thinking, human minds replaced by our more primitive, mammalian instincts and behaviors. An entire nation had succumbed, thanks to television, to images and emotions no people had ever witnessed, repeated over and over and over again. The making of America’s new enemy had begun.

More on the flip.

Impeachable Offense!  We keep hearing it and finally the words are being said publicly on Capitol Hill. And not just by Democrats.

This time he has hit the Senate and Congress below the belt. He contemptuously ignored the outlets they gave him (FISA courts). His actions spoke loudly that he no longer considered the Legislative Branch an independent entity. Maybe that will wake even the Republicans up the precarious state of our Republic.

Will impeachment actually happen? Bush and gang have made our previous `Teflon' President (Reagan) look like a man in quicksand in comparison. The lies and diversions and manipulations practiced by this administration have been breathtaking in scope.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

So now we know: Next time the fire will come in Iran. The blow will be delivered by proxy, but that will not spare the true perpetrator from the firestorm of blowback and unintended consequences that will follow. Even now, the gruesome deaths of many innocent people in many lands are growing in futurity's womb.

The Rubicon of the new war was crossed on Oct. 27. Oddly enough for this renewal of the ancient enmity between the heirs of Athens and Persia, the decisive event occurred on the edge of the Arctic Circle, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch, scarcely noticed at the time, has accelerated the inevitable strike on Iran's nuclear facilities: Israel is now readying an attack for no later than the end of March, The Sunday Times reports.

The order, from embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, puts Israel's special forces at the "highest stage of readiness" for the strike. While Iran's plan to begin enriching uranium -- which will give it the capability of building a nuclear bomb -- is the precipitating factor, the budding Iranian space program is a "point of no return" for Sharon, and that is what is driving the actual timing of the strike. The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.

This and other articles on propaganda are available at Mind Your Noodle

George Bush gave a speech yesterday at the Park Hyatt in Pennsylvania, as part of his four part series designed to muster support for his failures in Iraq.  It was smart, well written (by someone clever) and far more subtle and persuasive than any of his previous attempts.  He gets two propaganda thumbs up for this masterpiece.

Now let us dissect some of it, in order to understand a few of the techniques he utilized to mold our minds into something that he can be proud to call his own...

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency... [Islamic insurgents]are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence...It's time to bring [our troops]home..." -- Rep. John Murtha, (D-Pa.)

Is it really? I certainly wish it was. I very much want it to be. But is it time for the troops to come home? After thoroughly ****ing up Iraq, injecting ourselves into a country which arguably (but most likely) wants nothing more than to be left free of Western influences and meddling, and then squatting down in their country for what appears to be "the long haul," is it time to leave?

Yesterday Harold Pinter (the 2005 Nobel Prize winner for Literature) gave an incredibly eloquent speech. He wove the history of American foreign policy since WWII into a comprehensive and frightening tapestry. Already the MSM is calling it an 'anti-American' lecture. It is really the opposite. It is a compelling indictment of U. S. actions versus U. S. words. I believe that deep down most of us want to live up to the ideals this country was founded upon. His description of our actions versus our words will hopefully help us rip away the smoke and mirrors and start to become the country we thought we already were.

Cindy Sheehan has brought to focus the human cost of war.  That cost can never be measured.
The death of a soldier is not one life taken, but the beginning of every life touched, some are touched on a level of immediacy, some on the level of personal, some on the level of friendship, and most on the level of never knowing even a name, but understanding there is pain.  

There is no way that can be measured.

So, I want to focus on the cost of the war in dollars, and try to bring it home to you, so to speak.
See below

by Chris Floyd

Behind the Phosphorus Clouds are War Crimes Within War Crimes (Guardian)

Although George Monbiot gives perhaps undeserved short shrift here to the Italian documentary that reignited the controversy over the American use of incendiary weapons in Fallujah, he has unearthed – along with blogger Gabriele Zamparini – smoking gun evidence of even more barbarity in the Bush-ordered destruction of the city: the use of thermobaric weapons, whose effects are even more horrendous and uncontrollable than white phosphorus.

I don't think the title of this post will come as a surprise to anyone, at least not to those who pay attention to the news. However, I would like to offer a different view of this subject.

Dispatches from the front (NYT):
GM to Cut 30,000 Jobs and Close 12 Plants
For a GM Family, the American Dream Vanishes

It's obvious now that we made a mistake here in coming up with our "War on the Poor" tag to describe the rapacious and ruinous policies of the Bush Regime, and the brutal corporate ethos it represents. For it's not just a war on the poor, of course. That war was won long ago; Bush and the boys grind the poor beneath their heels just for the hell of it these days, just for kicks, a sadistic thrill. No, it's also a war against working people, against the middle class, against the very idea that there is a common good beyond the raw bottom line, that individual human lives and human communities have any intrinsic value or meaning whatsoever, except as raw material to be squeezed for blood money and chump chang