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… … It appears our long national journey towards
complete idiocy is over. We've arrived.Idiots, of course, don't need a reason to be idiots.
But to the extent there is a rational excuse for treating a nuclear strike
on Iran as the journalistic equivalent of a seasonal story about people washing
their cars, it must be the cynical conviction that the Cheneyites aren’t
serious – they're just doing their little Gen. Jack Ripper impression
to let the Iranians know they really mean business.This may seem plausible – that is, if you were
in a catatonic stupor throughout 2002 and the early months of 2003 (which
is just another way of saying: if you were a member in good standing of the
corporate media elite.) But the rest of us have learned that when Dick Cheney
starts muttering about precious bodily fluids, you'd better pay attention.
He really does mean business, and when Dick Cheney means business, bombs are
likely to start falling sooner rather than later.Maybe the idea of the United States would launch a
nuclear first strike – albeit a “surgical” one – is
too hard for most Americans, including most American journalists, to process.
(I'm talking about normal people here, not the genocide junkies over at Little
Green Footballs) It's even harder to square with our national self-image than
the invasion of Iraq. We're the global sheriff, after all – Gary Cooper
in a big white hat. And while Gary Cooper might shoot an outlaw down in a
fair fight at High Noon, he wouldn't sneak into their camp in the middle of
the night and incinerate them with nuclear weapons. That's not how the Code
of the West is supposed to work. … … BILLMON
Via
Swopa, who's done a great FDL guest blog on Iran, he pointed me to a post
that simply cannot be missed, “Concept
Cars: The Iran Nuclear debacle.”
Unrelated, but important because it deals with Deadeye Dick, is the little
fact that Cheney
leaked the still classified CIA report to Libby, after Bush selectively
leaked instantly declassified information to him, all in an effort to smear
Wilson's credibility. The reason I bring this up is to illustrate once again
the lengths our
leaders will go to in order to sell a war.
When I read Josh
Marshall's post about Ahmadinejad, so much of it rang true. After all, it's
not like the president is a mullah. He doesn't have near the power of Ali Khamenei,
who is at the head of the line in the Guardian Council, which basically tells
everyone if the sun is coming up. Even if you see it that doesn't mean it's
there until the mullahs tell you so.
There's just one little potential wrinkle in all this, which Seymour Hersh
points out.
Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded
their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January,
they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One
former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran,
depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous implications
for the West. “Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others
are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too late. These
guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution.”
He said that, particularly in consideration of China’s emergence as
a superpower, Iran’s attitude was “To hell with the West. You
can do as much as you like.”Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,
is considered by many experts to be in a stronger position than Ahmadinejad.
“Ahmadinejad is not in control,” one European diplomat told me.
“Power is diffuse in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are among the key
backers of the nuclear program, but, ultimately, I don’t think they
are in charge of it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear
program, and the Guards will not take action without his approval.”
(source)
For me, there's just nothing worse than a maniacal man like President Ahmadinejad
who knows he's weak and is going to do everything he can to cement his power
structure, while spreading out his loyalists throughout the government to make
sure he has all his bases covered. Of course, that still leaves The Supreme
Leader, but that's only a fundamentalist wall away from bombs away. It also
shows that Ahmadinejad knows his own weaknesses. He's not dumb. After all, everyone's
eyes are trained on him.
But we know Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5% purity, which is hell and gone
away from the 90% needed to make anything go boom, which means we're 5-10 years
away, as everyone has written by now.
Unfortunately, there's one thing on Bush's mind, which isn't far from Deadeye's
mind either. They've got to do whatever they can to ratchet up their Republican
base on Iran because they've got no other card to play. It's about 2006 and
what lies ahead. There's more jeopardy in the Libby case, now that he's going
to call Rove and others. There's also a world of hurt waiting for Bush when
he loses his advantage in the House after the 2006 elections. The Democratic
Party House members will be so far up Bush's presidential paper trail he'll
need yoga to extract them. Meanwhile, the rest of us are held hostage, while
Ahmadinejad gets elevated to big bad despot status, compliments of Deadeye.
But in reality he's a pipsqueak with a mouth. But he's managed to use the Bush
administration like a ten dollar whore.
The Iran mess even caught Bush quite off step today, which Keith Olbermann
and Tom DeFrank talked about on “Countdown.” It was something I've been thinking about
all day. Why did President Bush come out, right before Easter weekend, to give
Rummy the old great job, guy line? Honestly, why Bush sided with Rumsfeld
against the generals is beyond me. It brings the point home that this isn't
just Deadeye and Rummy's war, but Dubya's all the way, too. Any distance Bush
from the bad planning and policies is gone, though few on our side (minus Lieberman)
ever bought into it. But after today, it's Bush and Rummy versus the military
generals, on Iraq. Not a pretty picture for a commander in chief and the Secretary of Defense.
If Ahmadinejad weren't in the picture and all was right with the White House,
this isn't a mistake Karl Rove would ever have let his man make.
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