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Picking a fight with Iran and other thoughtful ideas

So apparently, 'officials in the Pentagon' have been looking at the Very Sinister Islamic Republic with blood on the mind. There is talk that Al-Qaeda is working out of Iran. Things are getting a tad frightening.

The US embargoed all imports from a large Chinese corporation because it sent, missile parts to Iran. Then we get this fascinating Washington Post report which suggests the Administration is Considering Embracing a Thoughtful Strategy to Destabilize the Islamic Republic, which surely would either reduce escalating terrorism, or, what, incite a massive religious war right underneath US troopsin Iraq? Hm?

The Bush administration, alarmed by intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda operatives in Iran had a role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, has suspended once-promising contacts with Iran and appears ready to embrace an aggressive policy of trying to destabilize the Iranian government, administration officials said.
Senior Bush administration officials will meet Tuesday at the White House to discuss the evolving strategy toward the Islamic republic, with Pentagon officials pressing hard for public and private actions that they believe could lead to the toppling of the government through a popular uprising, officials said.

So some Pentagon hawks want to attempt to destabilize Iran. What a great idea. What weapon were they going to use? Of course, of course, a proxy force!

At one of the meetings, in early January, the United States signaled that it would target the Iraq-based camps of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), or People's Mujaheddin, a major group opposing the Iranian government.
The MEK soon became caught up in the policy struggle between the State Department and the Pentagon.
After the camps were bombed, the U.S. military arranged a cease-fire with the group, infuriating the Iranians. Some Pentagon officials, impressed by the military discipline and equipment of the thousands of MEK troops, began to envision them as a potential military force for use against Tehran, much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
But the MEK is also listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Under pressure from State, the White House earlier this month ordered the Pentagon to disarm the MEK troops -- a decision that was secretly conveyed by U.S. officials to Iranian representatives at a meeting in Geneva on May 3.
Nine days later, the suicide bombers struck in Saudi Arabia.

There's been a lot of speculation that the Iranian government is assisting, or at least complicit, with al-Qaeda activities in Iran. Will this turn out to be true?

The general lack of WMD yet found in Iraq has outraged a few people here and there, notably some people from the CIA who believe that Bush was straight-up lied to, as were the American people:

"I've never heard this level of alarm before," said Larry Johnson, who used to work in the C.I.A. and State Department. "It is a misuse and abuse of intelligence. The president was being misled. He was ill served by the folks who are supposed to protect him on this. Whether this was witting or unwitting, I don't know, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt."
Some say that top Pentagon officials cast about for the most sensational nuggets about Iraq and used them to bludgeon Colin Powell and seduce President Bush. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, has been generally liked and respected within the agency ranks, but in the last year, particularly in the intelligence directorate, people say that he has kowtowed to Donald Rumsfeld and compromised the integrity of his own organization.

There's a lot of goodies in the New York Times today, such as a major feature detailing what a horrible job Bush has done rebuilding Afghanistan:

But the rebuilding of Afghanistan -- among the world's poorest countries even before it suffered 23 years of war -- has so far been a sputtering, disappointing enterprise, short of results, short of strategy, short, most would say, of money. As for the emir, rather than a lead character in the restoration, he is actually a foremost symbol of its affliction.

In more positive news Israel and the Palestinians are perched at the entrance to a new peace process, but who knows if it will succeed? Such neocon deuces as Charles Krauthammer are angry about Palestinian 'incitement,' such as the practice of referring to Israeli cities as 'occupied,' delegitimizing the State of Israel. Some Palestinian media says horrible things, it's true. But what about the hard right wing of Israel's troubled society? Frightening talk of ethnic cleansing is here too. This is from Arutz Sheva, one of Israel's settler media networks. Radio talkshow host Arlene Peck says:

Enough! Enough of bombing houses and going into the meetings with the enemy like a reluctant dog going into the vet. The infrastructure of this terrorism culture has got to be dismantled and destroyed. Transfer is not the forbidden word that it used to be. When there is a cancer in a body, it has to be removed. Neither negotiated with nor appeased. It has to be cut out. The same must be done with the enemy. If the world has its way, they would force Israel to show restraint and ?make nice?. Israel has to do what?s good for itself. It?s not a question of making peace. It?s now to the point of survival.... The Islamic fundamentalists are out to destroy anyone who is different from them. They are the founders of terrorism. I?m sick and tired of the political correctness of if all. We know who the enemy is and have the means to destroy them. So does Israel. Let them do what?s necessary.

Naturally settlers in the West Bank are reacting negatively to the Road Map proposals. One settler leader said that Ariel Sharon was a national traitor. Yitzak Rabin was also labelled as such in 1995, just before getting shot by a young Jewish settler from the West Bank.

Veteran settlement movement figure and former [member of the Knesset]MK Elyakim Haetzni, responding to an opinion poll showing a majority of Israelis in favor of the road map peace plan, Monday compared supporters of the peace plan with the Holocaust-era Jews that he said "willingly boarded those trains [to concentration camps], believing everything that the Germans told them."
Haetzni, a Hebron resident, blasted as an act of "national treason" and a "national catastrophe" the Sunday decision of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet to conditionally approve the road map, a U.S.-UN-E.U.-Russian- endorsed peace outline.
It was a historic day "in the same sense that the Destruction of the Temple was historic," Haetzni said.
Asked about the results of a Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper poll published Monday, which showed that 56 percent of Israelis supported the road map, Haetzni said:
"Yes, of course. And the Jews also willingly boarded those trains, believing everything that the Germans told them. The Jews are a people which is very dangerous to itself. It is a people that has brought Holocausts down on itself throughout the course of its history," he told Israel Radio.
"It is a people that has extraordinary powers of construction, and extraordinary powers of destruction. It builds and destroys, and this is an intrinsic part of Sharon's personality - Sharon is the greatest builder that we have had, and the greatest destroyer. Today he is in a destruction phase."
Haetzni said that the road map would inevitably set Israel on a collision course with the United States, its closest ally and supplier of billions of dollars in foreign aid. "The state of Israel arose at the end of the British Mandate," he said, referring to the British caretaker rule in pre-state Palestine. "Our sovereignty ends with the beginning of the American Mandate. What they [the Americans] are doing in Afghanistan and Baghdad they will do now in Jerusalem. Of necessity, their interests will collide with ours, and this is a disaster for Israel."
Haetzni did not relate directly reports that militant settlers had begun characterizing Sharon as a "traitor," an epithet that recalled the tempestuous period in which Yitzhak Rabin was widely cursed by rightists as treasonous prior to his 1995 assassination by a far-right Israeli.
"When the Oslo process began, we [the settlers' Yesha Council] sat and said that we would not tag [people] with the label of traitor. We would use the term "national treason" when the conditions applied."
Asked if the latter term now applied, Haetzni said that it did.

I'm very hopeful that Sharon is actually going to do something good, given that he just made a groundbreaking statement that he actually wanted "the occupation" to end, something no Israeli prime minister has ever said before. But I'm fearful of what the Israeli right wing might do, and of course Al-Qaeda and Hamas have their horrors planned. Who knows?

Error 404: Weapons of Mass Destruction not found

Mid-May and life is nice on Grand Avenue. My stuff is still a mess, but I'm all moved into my new apartment now. It's been a fun time, cooking burgers in the front yard, friends crashing here, chillin on the front porch. What more could you want? The Internet access is finally working, fortunately.

Now things are getting strange. A multi-suicide bombing/gun attack on western targets in Riyadh, followed up by massive multiple suicide bombings (partly against Jewish targets) in Casablanca, of all places. This along with another bombing in Hebron, killing a settler couple, and massive bombings against the Russians in Chechnya. These things tend to happen when there is a push for diplomacy, and in this case Colin Powell is visiting the Middle East right now.

Apparently they just can't seem to find real weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Americans sent to find the stuff have given up and gone home. What? The great casus belli, the threat of Saddam's WMD has vanished? So what made this war so righteous?

The Israeli-Palestinian quest for peace may get dragged forward by the "Road Map" but it looks sketchy, as Israel refuses to accept many basic points of the program, including an end to all "natural growth" in existing settlement blocs. The lead Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has resigned, supposedly resenting these limitations. Palestinians are angry with Israel for refusing to compromise and tangling with US internal politics, in their view:

Even though the Americans have sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region, Israel has dodged real engagement with him and is dealing instead with US official Elliot Abrams in secret meetings before Powell?s arrival, and conferring with White House officials after Colin Powell leaves. All the while, Israel is influencing US policies in the region by lobbying the US Congress to pressure the Bush administration by signing petitions that will discourage it from moving forward with the roadmap.

That website, Bitter Lemons, features two Israeli and two Palestinian writers each week. Its quite excellent.

A report in Haaretz describes how settlers dominate the West Bank now:

The worse things have become for the Palestinian residents of the territories, the better things have become for the settlers. Though settlers are targets for unceasing Palestinian attacks, and settlers have left some places, the overall framework of Jewish settlement in the West Bank continues to develop apace.
The civilian and security infrastructures for the settlements have been greatly strengthened. There is nearly complete Israeli control on the roads in Judea and Samaria. The electricity and water systems, as well as various other services used by the settlers have become nearly completely independent of the Palestinian infrastructure. All the planning bodies in the territory are under settler control.

And you can't get a complete image of what's going on without the latest Chomsky interview, of course. But is there any substance to this Iran stuff?

For years Israel has been pressing the United States to take on Iran. Iran is too big for Israel to attack, so they want the big boys to do it.
And it?s quite likely that the war may already be under way. A year ago, over 10 percent of the Israeli air force was reported to be permanently based in eastern Turkey, that is, in these huge U.S. military bases in eastern Turkey. And they are reported to be flying reconnaissance over the Iranian border. In addition, there are credible reports, that there are efforts, that the U.S. and Turkey and Israel are attempting to stir up Azeri nationalist forces in northern Iran to move towards a kind of a linkage of parts of Iran with Azerbaijan. There is a kind of an axis of U.S.-Turkish-Israeli power in the region opposed to Iran that may ultimately, perhaps, lead to the split-up of Iran and maybe military attack. Although there will be a military attack only if it?s taken for granted that Iran would be basically defenseless.

Intriguing, or merely lies? Has the world gone mad? By the end of this summer, if we're still alive, I'll declare victory!

Moving to new digs

Final exam time is wrapping up here at Macalester, and people are either stressed to their limits or finished. It's been a hell of a semester and no one has yet sized up what really happened. That could take a while...

I'm living in a sweet apartment this summer and next year, on Grand Ave. I'm going to move in over this weekend of the 10th-12th, and we are getting cable modem service installed the 13th hopefully. So the site might be off for a couple days, but it wil return. Hopefully there should be some video goodies online next week. I've had zero time to keep up with it, but that will change. Now to get through this last work...

I will be cut off from my phone number on Monday, so the only way to reach me will be by A) email B) stopping by 1834 Grand Ave., adjacent to the Grandview movie theater by Grand & Fairview Aves. I'm probably getting a cell phone this weekend, but who knows what's going to happen...

Bush whorin' for baccy, dangerous Canadians and the new iBling

The Washington Post is righteously angry over the Bush Administration's efforts to redraw an international treaty on tobacco, to make it easier for tobacco companies to push around small nations, and prey upon teenagers. (link from Nick) Real compassionate conservatism:

Although domestic sales of cigarettes are shrinking, Philip Morris International announced that it expects its earnings to grow 10 percent this year, continuing the trend of this decade. In many of its growing markets, such as Russia, Cambodia and Poland, there are fewer obstacles to practices such as distributing free cigarettes in clubs teenagers are known to frequent. For these countries, the treaty is the best defense against the lobbying of big tobacco companies. Like any international treaty, this one would lose clout if the United States failed to sign. But it would lose all its meaning if the Bush administration won this last concession.

A dangerous Canadian writes that "U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties," in the Ottowa Citizen. It's all in response to a report from the US State Dept. about terrorism trends and lazy unsecured Canucks. This has much to do with Canadian privacy rights, and even Canadian policy on marijuana.

The same report took issue with Canada's move to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketing offence rather than a criminal one. "This will not only harm Canadian society, but have consequences for the United States as well," the report said. Justice Minister Martin Cauchon reiterated yesterday that legislation to decriminalize marijuana will be tabled soon.

Don't the maple leaf people understand moral certainty?!(slashdot link) I wonder what the consequences of that legal reform would be for a border state like us. Hmmmmmmmm...

On a very positive digital note, Apple Computer's new iTunes Music Store sold more than a million songs in its first week. Apple released iTunes 4, which has sweet new features such as streaming your whole music library over networks. The mighty Steve Jobs happily declared, "In less than one week we?ve broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world. Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age?you can purchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods." The man has a touch of hubris, but he's right. Apple wins! I am pleased as punch to be an Apple shareholder today. Hells yeah!