It helps that the neocons in both the United States and Israel made emphatically clear how much they wanted Ahmedinejad re-elected. If they had kept their mouths shut -- and pretended that they preferred the moderate Moussavi -- they would have a bit more credibility now as they shout that Ahmadinejad's election justifies an end to diplomacy.

But they didn't prefer Moussavi; they preferred the thug and said so. The internal contradiction in their argument can be seen in these words from Israel's very neocon deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon today.

"We had no illusions about these elections in Israel," said Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, "because on the nuclear issue there was no fundamental difference between the candidates." Nevertheless, he added, Ahmadinejad's election removes "any glimmer of hope for change in Iran."

Got that? Even though there was no difference between the candidates, Ahmadinejad's "victory" removes "any glimmer of hope...."

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Mike Murphy, the Republican campaign strategist delivers the bad news to the GOP.

Despairing Republican friends have been asking me what I think we should do to rebuild the GOP and begin our certain and inevitable comeback. My answer disappoints them: "Build an ark."I say this because I've made a career out of counting votes, and the numbers tell a clear story; the demographics of America are changing in a way that is deadly for the Republican Party as it exists today. A GOP ice age is on the way.

I make it a habit when I'm driving in the morning to tune into Rush Limbaugh for a few minutes. He is getting increasingly spleenful, as if he just woke up to realize he is in a permanent minority and it bugs the hell out of him.

How are we here after two landslide elections of Ronald Reagan? How are we here after the Republican takeover of the House in 1994? "How in the world," we ask ourselves, "can the voters forget?" And the answer is, our side stopped teaching. Our side got wobbly. Our side wanted to make nice with the other guys. Our side thinks that the future is getting the gay marriage vote and the Hispanic vote.

Well actually Rush, what Mike Murphy is saying is that you are totally wrong. Demography is destiny.

Stealing the Iranian Election - Juan Cole

If the reports coming out of Tehran about an electoral coup are sustained, then Iran has entered an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history. One characteristic that has always distinguished Iran from the crude dictators in much of the rest of the Middle East was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear.

In 1997, Iran's hard line leadership was stunned by the landslide election of Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who promised to bring rule of law and a more human face to the harsh visage of the Iranian revolution. It took the authorities almost a year to recover their composure and to reassert their control through naked force and cynical manipulation of the constitution and legal system. The authorities did not, however, falsify the election results and even permitted a resounding reelection four years later. Instead, they preferred to prevent the president from implementing his reform program.

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While agonizing over the Iranian election, the explosion in rightwing extremism, and Israel's West Bank policies, I needed a break.

This video gave it to me.

And you don't have to live in Arlington to love it. Actually, I live in Chevy Chase.

They call me Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Do you realize how bloody much fun I had
When the Ayatollah Khamenei
Decided I'd get to stay
You thought that I was some kind of fad?

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is going to respond to President Barack Obama's Cairo address on Sunday with an address of his own at a conservative Orthodox university, Bar Ilan.

Leaders of parliamentary democracies almost always deliver major policy pronouncements in parliament. But Netanyahu seems to be obsessed with Obama and if Obama speaks at a university, so will Bibi. One Israeli told me, "Bibi has delusions of grandeur. In his own mind, he's as significant a figure as Obama and Israel is as significant as America.."

One can only hope that the content of the speech justifies the atmospherics. If Netanyahu accepts the two-state solution, the settlement freeze, and the demolition of the illegal outposts, his speech will indeed merit the hype. Anything less, and it won't.

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By Max Blumenthal

On June 5, when several hundred Israelis marched from Tel Aviv's Yitzhak Rabin Square to the Israeli Defense Ministry to protest the anniversary of the Six Day War, I was able to meet some of the country's most vociferous cheerleaders of Barack Obama. In complete contrast to the characters who appeared in my video report, "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem," those I interviewed at the demonstration (organized by the Israeli left-wing party Hadash) were invigorated by Obama's speech in Cairo, and excited by the prospect of an American president who would pressure Israel into making meaningful concessions towards peace. As one demonstrator remarked to me, "[Obama] must save us from ourselves."

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The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution today which calls for U.N. member states to inspect all ships entering or leaving North Korea if there is a reasonable suspicion that the cargo contains banned nuclear or missile technology. Now, this mission will fall on a little know body, the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative). The PSI, an activity launched in 2003, meets all the criteria progressive people have been promoting for a new international approach to the exercise of power--yet they are curiously mum about the merits of putting the PSI to work.

The PSI works mainly by sharing intelligence among the participating states, who patrol the seas and interdict ships that are suspected of carrying WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials

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Moderate Democrats, perhaps cowed by Limbaugh's "socialized medicine" trope seem to be backing away from the public plan option. Their substitute is a non profit insurance cooperative.

"I am inclined, and I think the committee is inclined, toward a co-op," Mr. Baucus said. "It's not going to be public, we won't call it public, but it will be tough enough to keep insurance companies' feet to the fire."

This is a really dumb idea. You are going to start from scratch a whole new bureaucracy to handle potentially millions of customers, instead of letting the government which already has the systems in place (thanks to Medicare) service these customers? A start up coop is doomed to fail, which is probably the point.

A friend writes, "While watching CNN (to learn more about the Holocaust shooting), I saw a commercial from a hard-line group called United Against a Nuclear Iran pushing for sanctions against Iran. I looked up the site on-line to find its leadership. Dennis Ross is among them. (So are Les Gelb and Walter Russell Mead.) How can the top State Dept official in charge of dealing with Iran be part of a private group calling for sanctions against Iran?" Note that Ross is pictured at the site as one of its "original co-founders and former co-chairman." The other co-founder is Richard Holbrooke, who is Obama's guy on Afghanistan/Pakistan.

**
Read more at Mondoweiss.

Washington Post: Iran's human rights test

Most of the attention - in Iran and here - has understandably been on the domestic politics of the Iranian election and its potential effect on international relations. But the outcome will also have fundamental implications for human rights in Iran.

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, described the current human rights situation in Iran in the above link. Although it is difficult to know where to begin with Iran's recent human rights record, she focused on the treatment of women - in particular the young women who launched the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grass-roots movement to reform the legal system and educate the public about discrimination against women.

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John Kelly of Columbia, Harvard, and Morningside Analytics has been mapping the Farsi-speaking blogosphere, and if you check out his diagram of technicolor results--visually the gaudiest in cyberspace, but that's another story--you'll see his findings are auspicious on the brink of the election. Turns out that Iranian blogs that link to Ahmadinejad (emtedadmehr.com) are concentrated in a cluster that's normally devoted to Conservative Politics, while the blogs that link to Moussavi (mirhussein.com) "come from all over the map, not just the reformist politics group." In other words, Ahmadinejad's support in the cybersphere is self-limiting.

It must immediately be added that, of course, you would expect proportionately fewer of Ahmadinejad's rural poor to be online than Moussavi's urbanites. Still, if you don't mind having your expectations raised today, this is nice news.

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"The truth is I'll never leave you."

Sorry, I just watched the Tony awards on Sunday and couldn't resist. (Shout out to Neil Patrick Harris. You were amazing).

Anyway, in today's New York Times, Abrams is the latest of the neocons to publicly weep over the possible defeat of Ahmadinejad. Abrams says that election of a moderate President might deter war. He is worried.

The twists and turns of the neocons are almost beyond belief. Maybe it's not Israel they "care" about at all. Maybe even a theoretical Iranian bomb is just a pretext. Maybe all these schoolboys want is another real cool war against Muslims.

In any case, the pro-Ahmadinejad tilt of Bolton, Pipes, Abrams and the rest of the crowd that gave us the Iraq war is a demonstration of perversity unlike any I've ever seen in American politics.

And to think, they had the ear (and not just the ear) of the 43rd President for eight years.

Postscript: Many Israelis feel the same way. From today's Jerusalem Post. From today's Ma'ariv: "When it comes to the Iranian presidential elections, Jerusalem is convinced that it is in fact Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is the best candidate to serve Israel's interests. 'We're better off with him getting elected,' said a senior political source. 'The prevailing opinion here is that Ahmadinejad just speaks his mind. How are the others any different? They're just nicer, but they think exactly like him.'"

My hero, Max Blumenthal, has a new video.

And this time, instead of racist American Jewish yahoos, he talks to real Israelis in Tel Aviv.

Check it out. I am not saying that these wonderful folks are representative of all Israelis. But they are (1) Israelis (2) not Americans who have just been indoctrinated in hate by their youth group or yeshiva (3) intelligent and (4) not drunk.

Imagine what life is like for these people as their country gallops off toward the crazy xenophobic religious right. We should empathize. After all, we know the feeling well.

On the other hand, here is that vicious racist screed against Obama by a mainstream reform rabbi in New York. Utter filth.

Beyond the questions of internal dissent and eventual resignation, there is the question of whistle-blowing. It is one thing to argue against a war (or other policy) within the councils of government, and another thing entirely to reveal publicly information that would explain one's opposition to the government's policy. This is what Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers, and what still unknown officials in the Bush administration did with respect to the NSA Surveillance Program and the Torture Memos. At this point the issue goes beyond salving one's conscience by severing one's ties with the government and raises serious questions of both loyalty and public responsibility. I wonder whether Richard Haass faced any of these dilemmas after leaving the government and, if so, how he resolved them.

Yesterday the American Medical Association came out against a public option for health care. And yesterday the President reaffirmed his support for it. The next weeks will show what Obama is made of -- whether he's willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so far on an issue that will define his presidency.

And make no mistake: A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal health care. It's the only way to make health care affordable. It's the only way to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets. An ersatz public option -- whether Kent Conrad's non-profit cooperatives, Olympia Snowe's "trigger," or regulated state-run plans -- won't do squat.

The last president to successfully take on the giant health care lobbies was LBJ. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted because he weighed into the details, twisted congressional arms, threatened and cajoled, drew lines in the sand, and went to war against the AMA and the other giant lobbyists standing in the way. The question now is how much LBJ is in Barack Obama.

The big guns are out and they're firing. All major lobbying firms in Washington -- many of them brimming with ex-members of Congress -- are now crawling all over the Hill. Lots of money is on the table. AMA's political action committee has contributed $9.8 million to congressional candidates since 2000, and its lobbying arm is one of the most formidable on the Hill. Meanwhile, Big Insurance and Big Pharma are increasing their firepower. The five largest private insurers and their trade group America's Health Insurance Plans spent a total of $6.4 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year, up more than $1 million from the first quarter last year, and are spending even more now. United Health Group spent $1.5 million in the first quarter, up 34 percent from the $1.1 million it spent in the first quarter last year. Aetna spent $809,793 between January and the end of March, up 41 percent from last year. Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, spent more than $6.1 million on lobbying between January and March, more than double what it spent last year. It also spent nearly $3.3 million lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2008. Every one of them is upping their spending.

Some congressional Democrats are willing and able to stand up to this barrage. Many are not. They need cover from the White House.

The President can't do this alone. You must weigh in and get everyone you know to weigh in, too. Bombard your senators and representatives. Organize and mobilize others. And let the White House know how strongly you feel. This is one of those battles that define a presidency. But more importantly, it's one of those battles that define the state of American democracy.

Basically before it ever started, the fight over the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor is done. She is going to be confirmed by a relatively wide margin and without a substantial, mainstream assault on her credentials or suitability for the bench.

To be clear at the outset, this is a descriptive point, not a normative one. I'm explaining the political reality, not how the process should go forward. I actually think that nominees should be subject to a substantial, sustained inquiry into their judicial philosophy and intellect.

But that isn't the world in which we live, or in which this particular nomination will proceed. The phase of defining a nominee in the public's eye now lasts around forty-eight hours. In that time Harriet Miers was pretty much done - finished. By this point, there has been a huge amount of press coverage and opponents have had the opportunity to make their case. It's a shockingly short period (unfortunately so), but it reflects (a) the ready availability of research materials, and (b) the rapid turn-over of news cycles.

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Yesterday, as the fatal shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. unfolded, I couldn't help recalling that my daughter, Jeni Mitchell, just out of college, worked at the museum during its start-up, in 1992, through its 1993 opening, and two years after that. I also remembered that she had told me, long ago, about some of the scary threats she and others received just for working there, and the extraordinary security measures (little publicized) that they had to take. Of course, I forgot most of the details.

Fortunately, moved and "upset" by the tragic attack by a racist, anti-Semite, she wrote me from London -- where she's getting her Ph.D. -- last night, reflecting on her experience at the museum back in the 1990s. Here's some of what she sent along:

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All right, maybe "fun" is an exaggeration. But the first report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan -- created as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators James Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) -- contains far more than just the usual bureaucratic verbiage that too often characterizes documents of this sort. It includes information that is critical to determining whether it is possible to curb contractor fraud and abuse in theaters of conflict.

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I want to offer my response to the Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address video. Phil was in Gaza when the video came in and I was editing Mondoweiss by myself. I'll admit the first time I watched it I felt shock, revulsion and then panic. I didn't want to post it. I found the language and attitude so disturbing that I hesitated before putting it out in the world (although admittedly it was already up on youtube). I paused and thought, why post it? Is it newsworthy? I then decided to post it after realizing one thing - the anxiety I felt was in part out of recognition. I knew those people in the video, I grew up with them. And like them I was steeped in the pervasive nationalism, entitlement, and chauvinism of the Jewish community. I realized this video stood as an exposed Jewish id, displaying it for the world.

For my response I feel a need to separate out the video itself, and the response it has received. Like Phil, I agree that the video "reveals an essential component of Israeli and Zionist society that has largely been covered up," but I'd like to take it farther. There has been much debate as to whether the people in the video were Israeli or American, and to my thinking this misses the point - they were Jewish. I don't say that to say that they shouldn't have been saying those things as Jews, but to say that the incredible fear, entitlement, rage and aggression on display in the video is a large part of what it means to be Jewish today in the shadow of Israel and Zionism. The uproar over the video shows that there is currently a struggle within the community over whether this is still acceptable.

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Tons of people have commented on Max Blumenthal's video from Jerusalem. It's about time that Adam Horowitz and I, who run Mondoweiss, offer our views of the matter. My response is bound to be positive, because it created more traffic for our site than anything in our history (certainly anything I've posted!). That said, here is why his video is important journalism: because it reveals an essential component of Israeli and Zionist society that has largely been covered up.

You can argue about Blumenthal's method all night long. I won't be there for that argument. Is the video somewhat sensational? Of course. But the views expressed are shocking, and, while they are obviously cherrypicked, they are representative of a real current in Israeli society; and a journalist who is on to something important should have the freedom to highlight shocking stuff. That's how journalism works. You don't show readers your out-takes.

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Here's the latest contortion from Senate Dems trying to win over a few Republicans to a "public option:" Let nonprofits create health-care cooperatives, and call them the public option. Kent Conrad came up with this bamboozle. Finance chair Baucus is impressed, and some Republicans -- even Grassley -- seem interested. Watch your wallets.

Nonprofit health-care cooperatives won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That's why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle, just as Olympia Snowe's "trigger" (whereby no public option until some time down the pike, and only if Pharma and Insurance don't bring down and extend coverage a tad) is also gaining traction.

The truth is that there's only one "public option" that will truly bring down costs and premiums -- one that's national in scale and combines its bargaining power with Medicare, and is allowed to negotiate lower drug prices and lower doctor and hospital fees. And that's precisely what Pharma and Insurance detest, for exactly the same reason.

Whatever it's called -- public option or chopped liver -- it has to be able to squeeze Pharma, Insurance, and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. And the more likely it is to squeeze them, the more they'll fight it. And the greater the opposition from Republicans, and from Dems who either believe any bill has to have some Republican support or who have sold themselves out to the medical biggies.

As long as single payer is off the table, then we need a real public option. Don't be fooled by labels. Demand the real thing.

Thanks to everyone for your posts so far on the themes raised in my book. I would like to pick up on some of the comments and questions.

First, I draw the distinction between wars of necessity and wars of choice based on the nature and scale of the interests at stake and the presence or absence of promising alternative policies that could protect these interests. As a literal matter, yes, countries and leaders always have a choice. Colonists could have chosen to continue living under what they considered British tyranny rather than declare independence. The United States could have allowed Japan to dominate the Pacific and Nazi Germany to rule Europe. But American leaders in those situations believed - correctly - that going to war was the only way to protect the country's vital interests. There was no real choice. By this standard, entering World War II was a necessary step, as were the decisions to resist North Korean aggression in 1950 and Iraqi aggression in 1990. I write in the book that "The distinction between wars of necessity and wars of choice is obviously heavily subjective, inevitably reflecting an individual's analysis and politics." So I am certainly prepared for disagreements over whether a given war is one of necessity or choice. But I believe that the difference exists and that the process of thinking through the distinction is highly useful for policy makers and citizens alike.

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It’s the kind of thing I expect to hear from deficit hawks and chicken littles -- from the self-described "fiscally responsible" right, from the scolds Ross Perot and Pete Peterson, from my former cabinet colleague Bob Rubin. But yesterday I was shown slides developed by the putatively liberal Center for American Progress intended to make the point. And today’s front page story in the New York Times, by the eminent David Leonhardt, entitled "Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From A Puddle," puts the issue right before our progressive noses, so to speak.

The Great Debt Scare is back.

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Foreign Policy's Laura Rozen has a great piece on what might be happening in Iran. The madman could lose.

It seems like almost too much to hope for. But, as I noted earlier, there is some evidence that the neocons are worried. They want Ahmadinejad in there because without him the Iran nuclear threat could fade and they would lose their justification for bombing Iran. In Yedioth Achronoth today (that is Israel's #1 circulation newspaper) Soli Shahvar director of the Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa)writes that "Mousavi is bad for Israel" and that Israelis need to hope that Ahmadinejad wins. His reasoning: Mousavi's moderation will weaken western resolve to confront Iran.

The New Republic's proprietor, Martin Peretz, is already writing that Ahmadinejad doesn't matter anyway. He's obviously scared that the crazed Holocaust denier will disappear.

Daniel Pipes, on the far right edge of neocondom, flatout says "I would vote for Ahmadinejad," so reports Daniel Luban in Inter Press Service (IPS).

At this point no one knows what will happen on Friday. But one thing that becomes clear as the neocons pray for an Ahmadinejad victory: there is no limit to what these people will support or endorse in order to achieve their goal of a civilizational war with Muslims, absolutely nothing. Don't think they are motivated by love of Israel (which is obviously better off with Ahmadinejad gone). They are motivated solely by hatred of Muslims. (See this hate piece by fringe neocon columnist Debbie Schlussel who says that even though the Holocaust museum killer is a white supremacist, the attack was the fault of the Muslims).

See this by Iranian American scholar, Trita Parsi. His piece is called "Ahmadinejad's Little Helpers" and he's referring to some of the Congressional Iran hawks (Likud lovers) who would like to help Ahmadinejad with an October surprise -- an Iran-bashing amendment this week (or next, if there is a runoff).

I was against this war, believing that it would be much more difficult than its advocates predicted and that it would take a large toll on U.S. foreign policy at a moment in history when the United States had a tremendous opportunity to shape the international order. (R. Haass, TPM, June 9)

Beyond the "toll on U.S. foreign policy": When the pursuit of national security produces urban insecurity.

Yes, I agree the Iraq war took "a large toll on US foreign policy." But at no point in your post do you mention the toll of the Iraq war on civilian populations once the 6 week aerial bombing was completed. Asymmetric war (conventional army against armed insurgents) puts the national security paradigm on its head: pursuing national security now becomes the making of urban insecurity. We already knew this from the Vietnam war. Did this at all enter into the picture when evaluating the Iraq invasion, or for that matter the current escalation in Afghanistan-Pakistan? After Vietnam and a few other wars since then, did the US military forces really think that aerial bombing would do the job and no major civilian losses would ensue from asymmetric warfare in the cities of Iraq?

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Senator Mitch McConnell on why Democrats should delay the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

"There is no point in this," Mr. McConnell said. "It serves no purpose other than to run the risk of destroying the kind of comity and cooperation that we expect of each other here in the Senate."

Who said that irony was dead?

Two questions for Richard (and for this group, of which I'm grateful to be a part), building off of Geof and Todd's posts.

First, I'm interested to read how you portray the 1991 Gulf War as a "war of necessity" in a meaningful way. (I'm still reading your book, so my apologies in advance for going over ground you may be covering.) The argument advanced in your post for why the 2003 Iraq invasion was a war of choice -- "the United States had options besides force to deal with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein" -- could be fairly applied to the 1991 conflict as well. In that earlier war, the calculations of interest, the cost to the U.S. and the ultimate outcome make it appear a justified choice, but it's hardly the case that the U.S. had no option in 1991 but to oust Saddam from Kuwait. What's more, I see from skipping around (mea culpa) that you conclude the book by contending the U.S. shouldn't "rule out all wars of choice." If not, then isn't your argument really about the relationship between wars and the national interest, not about choice or necessity?

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The right-wing of the "pro-Israel" (in quotes because they are anything but) commentariat is worried. It is beginning to look like President Ahmadinejad might lost Friday's election.

In Congress, there have been several attempts this week to push through anti-Iran measures as Iranians start heading to the polls.A bill imposing new sanctions was scheduled for House floor action on Tuesday until the White House got it pulled.

Today the House will be voting on an amendment to the House Foreign Relations Act which asserts "that Israel has the right to defend itself from an imminent nuclear or military threat from Iran and other countries and organizations." The (Democratic) House Foreign Affairs Committee is recommending a "yes" vote.

Note: the amendment does not say Israel has a right to respond to an Iranian attack (it obviously does) but that Israel has the right to respond to an "imminent nuclear or military threat from Iran" which some Israelis (and some here) believe is the case right now. In other words, it is threatening Iran with an attack from Israel in the guise of defending Israel. Did Ahmadinejad write this amendment because he sure will love it! It helps undo the damage done to his cause by the President's Cairo speech.

Why vote on this today? This piece by Iranian-American scholar helps explain it. And then there is this by Likud's Boston spokesman, Marty Peretz, on why it doesn't matter if Ahmadinejad loses.

I'll be ecstatic if Ahmadinejad loses on Friday. The forces in Israel and the United States that are eager to bomb Iran will be in sack cloth and ashes.

Here is the official list of amendments to be voted on today.

UPDATE: Word was circulating in Washington and New York Tuesday night that the Chrysler deal could be wrapped up as early as Wednesday morning, with the electronic transfer of funds to pay Chrysler for most of its existing assets.

---------

Ending more than three days of intense, round-the-clock and high-stakes legal maneuvering in the Supreme Court, the Justices on Tuesday evening without dissent removed a legal obstacle to sale of the troubled auto industry giant, Chrysler.

Insisting that it was denying a postponement "in this case alone," the two-page order said the challengers had not met their burden of showing that a delay was justified. The reference to this case alone perhaps was a signal that the Court did not want its order to appear to give advance clearance for any other government rescue plan -- such as that to save another auto company, General Motors.

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I was present at a conference in Maryland sponsored by the NewsHour in November 2002 when Mr. Haass, then head of policy planning at the State Department, issued a ringing defense of the impending war, which evidently he now maintains that he already opposed as a war of choice, not necessity. At the time, he stirred together, in Cheneyesque fashion, claims about Saddam and al-Qaeda, about Iraqi WMD, and the rest. I arose to argue with him and called his presentation "demagogic," but my protest did not attract his interest or sympathy. I'm curious to know if Mr. Haass believed what he was saying to this audience of foreign policy influentials at the time; if his presentation was a presentation of necessity or of choice; if he agrees that he was demagogic; and if he has any regrets.

Haaretz tried something this morning that feels curiously right in unexpected ways. To celebrate "Hebrew Book Week," the paper asked a dozen or so of Israel's best selling writers, Yoram Kaniuk, David Grossman, Etgar Keret, to go out and cover something. The result feels both reassuringly retro and visionary at the same time.

Retro, because the radically secular implication of Hebrew culture is not so easily taken for granted these days. When Netanyahu says "Jewish state," and both Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef and Las Vegas spiritual leader Sheldon Adelson nod approvingly, I know I am in trouble. Actually, the very name of the week in question implicitly acknowledges a continuing (dare I say Zionist?) delight in the sheer novelty of a Jewish experience grounded in an inclusive national language. Which is why Israelis still celebrate "Hebrew Book Week," after all--something like the French ordering French fries. Adam Lebor captures this celebration in his lovely piece about Tel-Aviv in the current Condé Nast Traveler.

But there is another remarkable thing about the paper this morning. It reads like a bundle of fine blog posts. There is voice and creative engagement in these pieces, which does not mean a want of facts or rules of evidence. As Ram Oren put it on Israeli radio this morning, we have a hundred ways of getting (and Twittering) breaking news qua happenings: the Supreme Court issued this ruling, the earthquake was this number on the Richter scale. But getting at the truth is another matter, and a writer has to ask, as Oren asks (using a somewhat materialist phrase, but never mind), "what is the value-added?" Haaretz did not quite ask that question this morning. But I suspect that, if it will still be here 10 years from now, it has given us a peek at the way it will survive.

Everytime I hear the comment that we went into Iraq to introduce democracy to the Arab World or that Israel is the only democracy in the Mid East, I think of Lebanon. By Saturday I'm probably going to think about adding Iran to the list.

"Lebanon is a telling case," said Osama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies here. "It is no longer relevant for the extremists to use the anti-American card. It does look like the U.S. is moving on to something new."

In fact, some analysts said that it was possible that Lebanon's election could be a harbinger of Friday's presidential race in Iran, where a hard-line anti-American president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be losing ground to his main moderate challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

While President Ahmadinejad has grown unpopular for many reasons, including his troubled stewardship of the economy, political analysts said that President Obama had blunted the appeal of Mr. Ahmadinejad's confrontation with the West.

We all know the Ayatollahs still have the last say in Iran, but if Ahmadinejad loses on Friday in the Iranian Election, it will be 2 for 2 in Obama's Post Cairo speech election victories. That would be a very powerful message for both democracy and reform that even the Ayatollahs could not ignore.

In a flurry of new legal briefs, key players in the increasingly tense drama over the fate of troubled automaker Chrysler vied on Tuesday to shape the Supreme Court's understanding of a June 15 deadline. The key challengers to the sale of Chrysler started with a brief in the morning (see this post), and now, the Justice Department, Chrysler and the would-be business spouse of a "new" Chrysler -- Italian automaker Fiat -- have joined in the debate. (Their new briefs are here and here and here, respectively.)

Meanwhile, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is considering pleas for delay of the Chrysler sale from three applicants, including the Indiana benefit funds that are mounting the most sweeping challenge, has taken no action Tuesday, leaving undisturbed her Monday order putting a temporary hold on the Chrysler-Fiat corporate unification. There was no word from within the Court when something new might emerge, from Ginsburg or the full Court. But it seemed clear that Ginsburg -- and perhaps the full Court -- were awaiting the new round of briefing on what a widely disputed June 15 "deadline" means.

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Check it out. Since I posted what follows, J Street's appeal for Donna Edwards raised $15,000. Plus top Jewish legislators in the House and Senate told the anti-Edwards organizers to back off. It's a new day.

Last week I posted a piece from Politico about how some powerful people opposed to President Obama's Middle East policies have decided to target Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland. She is the African-American woman who stunned the political universe by knocking off long-time representative Al Wynn in a Democratic primary.

The rightwingers are particularly incensed by Rep. Edwards decision not to support a one-sided House resolution endorsing the Gaza war. She voted "present."

So now the Likudniks are threatening to run a primary against her, are organizing against her in the Jewish community both in Maryland and nationally and, all around, trouble-making against a strong, liberal new House Democrat.

In the old days, money might have poured in to defeat her. But this time, the other side has organized first. Led by J Street, progressive Democrats (and some Republicans too) are rushing to her support. This is something new because prior to J Street, those of us on the pro-peace side of things had no vehicle to direct money to candidates we liked. (My own organization, Israel Policy Forum, provides the informational resources to the Hill but we are legally prevented from providing money).

That is what J Street can do and is doing. J Street's appeal is here.

The very idea of a war of choice is intriguing. I would have thought that virtually every war is a war of choice. Surely, the American Revolution was a war of choice, on both sides. The Mexican War was a war of choice (we wanted territory) as was the Civil War. Indeed, many northerners vehemently opposed the use of force to compel the Southern states to remain in the Union. The Spanish-American War was certainly a war of choice, as was World War I.

Protecting our right to the "freedom of the seas," Wilson's justification for entering the war, was hardly a matter of necessity, and there was widespread opposition to Wilson's choice to enter the European conflict. World War II might seem like a war without choice, but of course that's false. After Pearl Harbor, FDR could readily have negotiated an agreement with the Japanese and just left well enough alone. In truth, FDR had been itching for a chance to enter the war. The Korean War was a war of choice, as was the Vietnam War. So, although one can, I suppose, hypothesize a situation in which war is not a choice -- perhaps Poland in 1939 -- such situations are in fact few and far between.

Arguably, in more than 200 years, the United States has never fought a war other than by choice. So, all things considered, I'm not at all sure this is a useful concept.

The White House went out of its way to report that the President and Prime Minister Netanyahu had a friendly 20 minute phone conversation yesterday. The press office even sent out a photo of Obama on the phone with Bibi.

Ma'ariv's Ben Caspit writes today that "The US has become convinced that the overt annoyance on the Israeli side in wake of the crisis will not help to make substantive progress on the issues and the Americans are now giving a chance to dialogue."

Not to worry. It is all tactical.

Obama is not backing down. However, the smart White House team understands that rightwing Israeli Prime Ministers exploit public confrontations with the White House to rally the descamisados. Better to keep up the pressure but quietly. And that is what has happening.

The less the Obama strategy is played out in the media, the less opportunity for the usual suspects to scream "enough already."

But this President is not backing down, nor will he remain bogged down on settlements. He'll win that battle and go on to the larger issues: defining borders and starting final status negotiations.

Plus: former AIPAC chief, Tom Dine, on why we have to bring Syria in from the cold.

In his speech at Cairo University last Thursday, President Obama described his views of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Referring to the invasion of Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, he said, "We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity." On Iraq, his view was different: "Unlike Afghanistan," he said, "Iraq was a war of choice."

I delve deeply into all this in my recent book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars. The book is a hybrid: part history, part foreign policy analysis, part personal account of my experiences with the policymaking behind the Gulf War of 1990-91 and the Iraq War launched in 2003. From 1989 to 1993 I served as senior Middle East adviser to President George H. W. Bush on the staff of the National Security Council. Then, from 2001 to 2003, I was director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department in the administration of George W. Bush. Based on these experiences, I argue in the book that the first Iraq war was a war of necessity while the second was a war of choice.

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This week at Book Club, Richard Haass joins us for discussion of his book War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars. Haass, the current President of the Council on Foreign Relations, worked with both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush for a time, making this a historical and personal account of the two wars in Iraq.

Joining the discussion are Michael Lind, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Policy Director of New America's Economic Growth Program; Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; Saskia Sassen, the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University; Charles Kupchan, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow for Europe Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Spencer Ackerman, National Security Correspondent for the Washington Independent, blogger, and former reporter for TPMmuckracker.

President Barack Obama showed sound judgment and profound respect for our nation's highest court by selecting an individual who has impeccable credentials and is committed to our constitutional values, rights, and liberties.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor brings not only a distinguished legal background to the Supreme Court, but a wealth of common sense understanding of how the law affects everyday life. Sotomayor has been called "a uniquely well-qualified Supreme Court nominee, someone with a sharp and independent mind, and a record of excellence and integrity" by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. (Click here to tell the Senate that you agree.)

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A few days ago, I left Gaza with Medea Benjamin (below, as we came through the Sinai) and four other members of her Code Pink delegations. I wasn’t really able to write about Gaza while I was there. We had so many wrenching meetings and encounters over nine days that it was all I could do to drag myself back into my room at 1 in the morning and then rise at 6 or 7 the next day to begin the cycle again.

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Max Blumenthal reporting for Mondoweiss from Jerusalem:

On Wednesday, June 3, I went to the Knesset to speak to two of the deliberative body's most ideologically opposed members. First, I spoke to Alex Miller, a backbencher in Avigdor Lieberman's incipient far-right Yisrael Beiteynu party, and at 28-years-old the youngest ever member of Knesset. At behest of his party's leadership, Miller introduced a now-notorious bill that would criminalize public observance of the Nakbah, and which succeeded in a committee vote. After meeting with Miller, I discussed the growing repression of Israel's Arab population with MK Ahmad Tibi, leader of the Raam-Tal party and one of the Knesset's most consistently demonized figures. For years, Lieberman and his far-right allies sought to ban Tibi from the Knesset, accusing him of treasonous rhetoric and crimes against the Jewish state. Their campaign against him and his constituents continues unabated.

Despite Miller and Tibi's political differences, they agreed on one fundamental point: the Zionist project is in crisis. Miller and his party appear terrified that the Arab minority in Israel, a marginalized and oppressed element, could undo the Jewish state simply by exercising their right to commemorate their history. Thus they seek to ban any expression of sorrow regarding Israel's founding and, in the words of Tibi, "impose happiness" on already demoralized victims of Zionism. Tibi described the rise of Beiteynu and its stridently anti-Arab platform as a reflection of the weakness of the Zionist narrative and the shambolic state of Israeli democracy.

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by Max Blumenthal

On Wednesday, I walked around central Jerusalem with my friend, Joseph Dana, an Israel peace activist who has lived in the country for three years. We interviewed young people on camera about the speech President Barack Obama planned to deliver to the Muslim world the following day in Cairo. Though our questions were not provocative at all - we simply asked, "What do you think of Obama's speech" - the responses our interview subjects offered comprised some of the most shocking comments I have ever recorded on camera. They were racist, hateful, and incredibly ignorant, and were mostly couched within a Zionist context - "this is our land, Obama!" The following day, we edited an hour of interviews into a 3:30 minute video package and released it on Mondoweiss and on the Huffington Post.

Within a few hours, I received an email from a Huffington Post administrator informing me he had scrubbed my video from the site. "I don't see that it has any real news value," the administrator told me. "For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people." For the first time, the premier clearinghouse for online news and opinions had suppressed one of my posts.

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In an interesting piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai suggests that the White House has learned the main lesson of Bill Clinton's failed attempt at universal health care, which is not to deliver a finished product to Congress but instead give Congress a set of goals and let it decide how to reach them.

The question to my mind is whether the Obama White House has over-learned that lesson. Without strong White House leadership, individual members of Congress are particularly susceptible to the threats and promises of powerful lobbies. A statement of White House goals that leaves the details to Congress will likely result in legislation that superficially meets those goals but whose details undermine them. That's the biggest danger now with the inchoate healthcare legislation.

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Middle East envoy George Mitchell said today that President Obama "has told me to exert all efforts to create the circumstance when the parties can begin immediate discussions." According to Reuters, Mitchell said that the goal is "a comprehensive peace and normalization of relations" between Israel and its neighbors, which would also serve "the security interests of the United States."

This is big. Apparently, the administration is mindful of the danger that the settlement freeze issue could become a dead end, with the Israelis agreeing to it and then quibbling endlessly on the details.Also, it understands that the purpose of Prime Minister Netanyahu's major speech on Tuesday is to shift discussion from what Obama is demanding to what Israel is ready to bargain over. The United States will not let that happen. (Israeli prime ministers tend to magically produce plans designed to torpedo negotiations in the guise of a plan proposing negotiations. Netanyahu may be sincerely trying to come up with something real, but clearly Obama does not expect it),

Obama does not intend to ease up the pressure for the settlement freeze but he now seems to understand that neither the freeze nor any other issue related to the end of the occupation and establishment of a Palestinian state can be resolved until an agreement is reached on borders.

What next: hopefully an American plan for the two sides to negotiate over.

See this. Top Israeli admiral describes the coming clash.

This is the objection the health insurance industry is putting forward in opposition to Obama's plan to include a public plan option in the health care reform bill.

But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare's, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.

So let me get this straight. It's not fair to have a public option because they don't have to make obscene profits for their shareholders and they can use the leverage of the combined group of medicare and public option customers to negotiate better fees with doctors, hospitals and drug companies.

Isn't that the point?

I am a great admirer of Max Blumenthal. He is utterly fearless, taking his deadpan face, inflection, and video cam into the den of madmen. I wish he had been there for the Beer Hall putsch. He would have asked Rudolf Hess, "but this stuff about the Jews. You don't believe any of it do you? I mean, it's just an organizing tool, right. And what's with this leather thing you've got going on."

He's terrific.

But his latest video from Israel is problematic.

In it, he interviews a bunch of kids about the Obama Cairo speech. It's appalling stuff. Drunk, stupid, racists who sound like the toothless yokels in West Virginia who were filmed talking about Obama during the primaries. It's hard to watch. Pure hate. However, as someone who rejects the "chosen people" concept and the idea that Jews are intrinsically better than anyone else, the video is only painful not shocking. (See Ta-Nehisi Coates on this point)

But no more painful and shocking than the vitriolic hate campaign against Barack Obama in this country which emanates not just from drunks but from a former Vice President, his loathsome daughter, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, to name a few.

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