The Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History - Exhibit {Insert number of days since the Mission Was Accomplished} 

Two items today, tell you all you need to know about the unholy hell that Bush has brought the US to in the Middle East, and why the US is not only utterly powerless to stop whatever nuclear bomb development plans IraN may have but, even now with its feckless bluster, is likely encouraging such development.

IraQ and IraN: Separated by one letter and that's a fact that our Regime seems to have totally forgotten

Iraqis Cheer Crash of British Helicopter (AP)  

Iraq's Shiites Now Chafe at American Presence - LAT

Any call to violent jihad, or holy war, Shiites say, would come only from the senior level of the clergy, the marjaiyah, as it did in the 1920s, when Shiites here rose up against Iraq's British occupiers. For now, the clergy is watching and waiting, perhaps convinced that it will get what it wants without having to sacrifice more Iraqi blood.

"The marjaiyah is calculating things and counting things according to the benefit of the Iraqi street," said Najafi, a mid-ranking cleric. "It wants independence with a minimum of losses and a maximum of profit. The marjaiyah has not ruled out the option of calling for jihad, and the Americans and their allies best not forget that."

Know anyone who could use a little absinthe?

Persian's a beautiful language. Don't you think?

Bill Scher: The Importance of Cole v. Hitchens
And, a Suggestion
Bill Scher nails it.
He also points out the MEMRI's translation is close to my own.
So, I have a suggestion for my readers. Every time you see a newspaper article that alleges that Ahmadinejad said that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, please write the editor. Say that this idiom does not exist in Persian, and that what Ahmadinejad actually said was, "This occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." And you can cite me.
If enough people do this often enough, the press will get tired of the propaganda line they are carrying, which is intended to whip up a manufactured war, and drop it. And that would be the most fitting response to Hitchens and his Neocon puppeteers.  posted by Juan @ 5/04/2006 01:22:00 PM 0 comments   

I think it has been apparent for at least six weeks, maybe more, that the British and American general staffs are petrified that Bush the Sherriff will attack Iran. The Usual Suspects are in the Lobby lining up.

But the Revolt of the Generals is no longer limited to retired brass. You wouldn't know this from reading major US papers. For the truth of the matter, we must go the Daily WarMongerer (aka Telegraph UK) which ran a lengthy piece based on an interview with Lt. Gen Renuart, Director of Planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff....

I when I mean no US Coverage - I mean ZERO!!! (Yahoo News Search today)

US General Says Iran Strikes Too Riskey

Military action against Iran would be fraught with risk and would have repercussions across the region, a leading American general conceded.

"Any action militarily is very complicated," Lt Gen Victor Renuart, the director of planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Daily Telegraph.



"And any action by any country will have second-order effects, and that is a strong case to continue the diplomatic process and make it work."

His comments are a rare public statement from the US military on what is the most contentious international issue of the day.

The warning was seen as recognition of the threat Teheran poses to shipping in the Gulf and also to America and its allies in Iraq in the event of an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities

The Iraq debate has now resolved itself into whether to break up the nation by agreement or allow a natural death by letting the civil war metastasize.  I am glad the AAbroaders are now studying the problem - REALLY!

 Better late than never.

Go to Original 

    Cut and Run? You Bet.
    By Lt. Gen. William E. Odom
    Foreign Policy    May/June 2006 Issue

Why America must get out of Iraq now.

    Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of "red state" citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.

    The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let's consider his administration's most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.

'Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.

    In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them. 

    None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the "big sandy" of Iraq. America must withdraw now.

Security analysts, other experts and Joe Biden are suddenly all a-chattering and nattering over the questions: "Do we partition Iraq?" or "Do we sit shiva at a natural death via civil war?"

 Such thinking is to be encouraged if for no other reason than we have been though-less in staying our  course to hell for three years following the Accomplished Mssion.

 Juan Cole evaluates the latest round of strategizing in

Settling Iraq before it Blows Up

 

Sadly - as I  see it at any rate - the debate hasn't come too early but way, way too late

Families flee Iranian shelling on Kurdish rebels in Iraq (AFP)  - 

But wargaming sure is fun.

A terrifying glimpse at Iran's low-budget options, a Wal-Mart War if you will, against the USA

Iran Doesn't Do "Take-Out"
[Brian Downing]



Military actions were once taken only after careful war-gaming, which sought to elucidate likely and even not-so-likely responses from the other side. Today, as the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities looms, it seems the moral certainty that defines the administration has obviated that part of the foreign policy process. What's right is right – regardless of consequences. Nor is the American public showing much circumspection, even though our project in Iraq has proven somewhat more nettlesome than promised. The talismanic phrase "take them out" all but promises a swift, easy, and uncomplicated venture. War isn't like that. Iran has several possible responses at its disposal, most of which are relatively uncostly to it, very costly to us, and would both widen and deepen the conflict in the Gulf region.

What Bush sows, we all reap

 Merits of Partitioning Iraq or Allowing Civil War Weighed  at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Apr 30

Anyone want to roll into another of his Security Traps?

 

Hosea 8:7

For they sow the wind,
   and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads,
   it shall yield no meal;
if it were to yield,
   foreigners would devour it.