Who Will Be the Republican Candidate in 2008? Part II Mitt Romney

Mormon
As he begins campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is facing a threshold issue: Will his religion — he is a Mormon — be a big obstacle to winning the White House?
The Mitt Split -- Conservatives Disagree on Romney
However, to other pro-family leaders, Romney's purported pro-life conversion is hard to reconcile with the fact that as recently as 2002, he was still giving voice to pro-abortion rhetoric. For example: According to The Boston Globe, Romney, while responding to a 2002 "National Abortion Rights Action League" candidate survey, pledged, "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's."
On his 2002 gubernatorial campaign Web site, Romney emphasized abortion in his campaign platform: "As Governor, Mitt Romney would protect the current pro-choice status quo in Massachusetts. No law would change. The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's."
Likewise, in 2002 Planned Parenthood posed the following question to candidate Romney in its campaign questionnaire: "Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?" Romney very simply and unequivocally replied, "Yes."
O.K. --you might say --that's fine. Romney was "pro-choice." This is America --people can change their opinion, right? Well, that may be true. Only one question --on the issues most important to conservative voters, why do Romney's opinions appear malleable, shifting in the wind as political expediency would seem to dictate?
In 2006, just four short years after he ran for governor and as his presidential ambitions were reaching a boiling point, Romney seemed to pull a 180.
Sounding as though he'd lost a bet to Rush Limbaugh on a Patriots/Steelers game, Romney completely changed his tune on abortion and Roe v. Wade saying, "Roe v. Wade does not serve the country well and is another example of judges making the law instead of interpreting the Constitution."
Was Governor Romney the "Father of 'gay' marriage?"
There's disagreement even within the pro-family legal community; however, there is a strong argument to be made that Romney, contrary to his pro-traditional marriage rhetoric, was chiefly responsible for unconstitutionally imposing "same-sex" marriage on Massachusetts and the rest of the country.
Let's lay out the roadmap.
In both his 1994 and 2002 political campaigns, Romney solicited and received the endorsement of the homosexual activist group "Log Cabin Republicans." In a 1994 letter to the Log Cabins, Romney promised that, "as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent." Of course, Romney's opponent at the time was again, Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal, pro-homosexual senators in U.S. history.

Surging Right Into Bin Laden's Hands

When two old cold warriors, Cheney and Rumsfeld took the reins with Bush in 2001, they weren't prepared for a new world. Political movements were no longer dependent on state support. Support could be garnered from all over the world via the internet. Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri understood this. The Bush Administration still does not.
So it's not surprising that the Bush Administration would play right into bin Ladin's hands.
The worst part is that Bush and his cronies seem unable to learn from experience. They have an understanding of the world and are surrounded by supporters, they made sure of that by firing anyone who disagreed. So, they have no chance to change course, to them, there is no other course.
AlterNet

Lost in the "surge" debate is the unfortunate reality that escalation in Iraq, just like the invasion itself, plays into al-Qaida's ultimate strategy to eliminate America. As revealed in a 2005 strategy document, al-Qaida hopes to repeat Osama bin Laden's victory over the Soviet empire in Afghanistan by eliminating the chief obstacle in the way of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East. The goal is not, as Bush administration and right-wing pundits proclaim, to conquer or directly destroy America. Osama bin Laden wants to provoke the United States into destroying itself.


The game plan owes at least part of its inspiration from Paul Kennedy's book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In his investigative report The Secret History of Al-Qaeda, Abdel Bari Atwan writes that top al-Qaida ideologist Ayman Al-Zawahiri is a reader and "great admirer" of Kennedy's book. The New York Times Book Review's Michael Howard summarized the book's insights in a manner that must have clicked with budding jihadists observing the Soviet Union's fall at the time: "Power can be maintained only by a prudent balance between the creation of wealth and military expenditure, and great powers in decline almost always hasten their demise by shifting expenditure from the former to the latter.


According to Atwan's analysis of al-Qaida's "20-year plan," the organization aimed to bring about the fall of the American empire by first provoking -- with the September 11 attacks -- Washington into irrationally invading Muslim lands in pursuit of revenge. Al-Qaida's grand strategists calculated that the invasion would propel the umma, the Muslim community, into joining the jihad. Following the fall of the secular socialist Hussein regime, Iraq has indeed become a training ground for limitless waves of foreign jihadis.


In this context, George W. Bush was a great boon to their efforts. Not only did he invade Iraq, which did not have a thing to do with 9/11, but he did almost everything possible to isolate America from its allies. This policy gave bin Laden ample room to target unpopular pro-American regimes from Madrid to Riyadh. Compared to the Southwest Asian battleground of Afghanistan, Iraq is a more congenial base for al-Qaida, since the language, culture, and terrain are more familiar to most Arabs. The jihadis' strategy is to get America to throw all of its resources into fighting a losing battle against Iraq's lethal patchwork of warring factions.


Bush's "surge" only throws more meat to the jackals, who gain strength and popularity with each web-broadcasted beheading or roadside bomb explosion. Like Afghanistan, Iraq gives would-be jihadis watching the conflict from their computer screens the hope of destroying the military might of the West. The jihadis also hope to expand the conflict to create what Atwan calls a "Triangle of Horror" connecting Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria.

February is Black History Month

AlterNet: Are We As Enlightened As We Think We Are About Race?
February is Black History Month in the U.S. It gives us an extra reason to ponder the journey of African-Americans from the early days of slavery, through Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, an on through the present day.

Saudi Arabia Steps Up

With civil war a reality in Iraq and looming in Palestine and Lebannon, Saudi Arabia has stepped into the power vacuum left by the US. The conflict in Lebannon and Palestine is directly the result of Iranian intervention. They sponsor but one of many factions in the conflict of Iran.
Since the US invasion of Iraq, Iran has been the primary benefactor, becoming the pre-eminent Middle East state countering Israel. Finally, Saudi Arabia has decided to do something. And fortunately for all of us, they will represent their own interests better than those pressed by the Bush Administration.
New York Times

With the prospect of three civil wars looming over the Middle East — and Iran poised to gain from them all — Saudi Arabia has abandoned its behind-the-scenes checkbook diplomacy and taken on a central, aggressive role in reshaping the region’s conflicts.


On Tuesday, the kingdom is playing host in Mecca to the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, the two feuding Palestinian factions, in what both sides say could lead to a national unity government and reduced bloodshed. Last fall, senior Saudi officials met secretly with Israeli leaders about how to establish a Palestinian state.


In recent months, Saudi Arabia has also increased its public involvement in Iraq and its support of the Sunni-led government in Lebanon. The process is shaping up as a counteroffensive to efforts by Iran to establish itself as the regional superpower, according to diplomats, analysts and officials here and throughout the region. Some even say that the recent Saudi commitment to temper the price of oil is aimed at undermining Iran’s economy, although officials here deny that.


“We realized that we have to wake up,” said a high-ranking Saudi diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “Someone rang the bell, ‘Be careful, something is moving.’ ”


The shift is occurring with encouragement from the Bush administration. Its goal is to see an American-backed alliance of Sunni Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, along with a Fatah-led Palestine and Israel, opposing Iran, Syria and the radical groups they support.


Yet Riyadh’s goals may not always be in alignment with those of the White House, and could complicate American interests. The Saudi effort has been taken in collaboration with its traditional Persian Gulf allies and Egypt and Jordan, but it also represents another significant shift in a region undergoing a profound reshuffling. The changes are linked to the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the transfer of power from Sunni Muslims to Shiites in Iraq, analysts said. They also reach back many years to the gradual decline in influence of Cairo and the collapse of a pan-Arab agenda, analysts and diplomats said.


[..]In January, the kingdom initiated talks with the Iranians to mediate the growing stalemate in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has faced off with the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in sometimes violent confrontations. King Abdullah then held a surprise meeting with leaders of Hezbollah.


The kingdom has played host to numerous meetings of Sunni and Shiite leaders as well as of so-called moderate Muslim leaders in recent months, possibly to emphasize its custodianship of Islam’s holiest sites. And it has decided that it will be the host of the next meeting of the Arab League, in Riyadh.


Officials said they hoped at that meeting to smooth relations with Syria after its president, Bashar al-Assad, insulted the Saudi king and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in a speech last summer. Officials believe that Syria had moved closer to Iran because of its isolation, and that that shift has given Iran a bridge to the Arab world.


“Politically speaking, Syria is not in the fold,” said an Egyptian diplomat who spoke on the condition he not be identified. “Maybe the goal is to bring Syria back to the Arab world.”

Attack On Iran Would Be Disasterous

More people speak out about the prospects of war with Iran. This article outlines all of what I have been saying for the past year. The US move into the Middle East has three objectives.
1. Dominate the world oil market.
2. Bankrupt the federal government, Medicare, Social Security and prevent any reasonable recovery out of reach by a increased taxes.
3. Empower the multi-nationals to control US foreign and domestic policy.
4. Disempower the US worker with unemployment to ensure they accept low wages.
The intention is roll back the US to the conditions at the turn of the previous century where wages were cheap and the rich was SUPER rich.
International Herald Tribune

A military attack on Iran could unleash disastrous consequences for the Middle East and the wider world, a coalition of unions, faith groups and think tanks warned in a report released Monday. The document, "Time to Talk," said a military strike, which many believe is being planned by the United States, could further destabilize neighboring Iraq, undermine hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace and embolden hard-liners in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government. It said an attack on oil-rich Iran could also drive up fuel prices, harming economies around the world.


"The possible consequences of military action could be so serious that governments have a responsibility to ensure that all diplomatic options have been exhausted," the report said. "At present, this is not the case."


The report was compiled by 17 groups, including the Amicus and GMB trade unions, aid agency Oxfam, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Foreign Policy Centre, a left-leaning think tank. Among the document's backers is Sir Richard Dalton, British ambassador to Iran between 2002 and 2006.


Dalton acknowledged the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions, but said "recourse to military action — other than in legitimate self-defense — is not only unlikely to work but would be a disaster for Iran, the region and quite possibly the world."


[...]The report is one of several high-profile appeals for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. In a letter published in the Sunday Times newspaper, three former high-ranking U.S. military officers urged the U.S. to open talks "without preconditions" with the Iranian government.


Retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar and retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan said an attack "would have disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions."


The Observer newspaper reported Sunday that Labour Party lawmaker Nick Brown, a former minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, would file a House of Commons motion this week calling on Blair to speak out against military action.


[...]The report said that an attack by the U.S. or its regional ally, Israel, could spur more violence in Iraq from Iran-linked Shiite insurgents.


"Iran's links with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza as well as Shia constituencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf States make regional retaliation against any military attack on Iran likely," the report said. "U.K. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan could be particularly vulnerable, with significant losses possible."


An attack could also increase terrorism by fueling anti-Western sentiment around the world, while strikes on nuclear facilities risk unleashing radioactive contamination, the report said.


Ali Ansari, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland, said both sides needed to step back from the brink.


"The view held by some in Washington that all diplomatic and political options have been exhausted is a palpable nonsense that needs to be challenged," he said.


At the same time, "the Iranian government needs to recognize the danger it faces."

The Cold War with Iran

Is the US or Israel preparing for war with Iran? Possibly, but they are already benefiting from a cold conflict with Iran. Saudi Arabia is very worried about Iran dominating it's neighborhood because of it's large Shia minority. They are quite willing to keep down the price of oil by maintaining high production. Iran and Venezuela have been lobbying hard for a cut to finance their agendas.
GlobalResearch.ca provides a good summary of the cold war tactics of the US and Israel.

According to US economist Jeffrey Sachs, “Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world in 50 years…he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world’s oil.” Sachs pointed out that stoking fears over who will control the world’s petroleum reserves is not new to the Bush administration.


[...]In the Bush administration’s assessment “Iran sees itself at the head of an alliance to drive the United States out of Iraq and ultimately out of the Middle East,” (New York Times, January 28, 2007) forcing the US hand from the world’s oil spigot. Like Iraq, which was said to be a WMD threat, Iran is portrayed as being on the verge of making a nuclear breakthrough. But the fears over Iran’s nuclear program are contrived. “Despite being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world power…a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian program (say) it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the material for industrial scale production.” (Observer, January 28, 2007)


[...]The US has established new offices in the State Department and Pentagon to build an opposition movement in Iran to topple the government. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked the US Congress a year ago for $75 million to supplement $10 million already allocated to underwriting the activities of dissidents in Iran and to expand Voice of American broadcasts. (Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006) The CIA’s budget for programs aimed at bringing about regime change in Iran is probably many times larger.


[...]In recent weeks, Washington has opened yet another front in its war on Iran: driving down the price of oil to reduce Iran’s revenue. The US can’t affect the price of oil itself, but it can pressure Saudi Arabia to increase output to bring prices down. In January, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, vetoed an emergency meeting of OPEC to discuss cutting production after oil dropped below $50 a barrel. The Saudis have signalled that they’re committed to keeping the price of oil hovering around $50 a barrel, down $27 a barrel from the summer. From Washington’s perspective, the high prices allow Iran (and another US bete noire, Venezuela) to export “radical agendas,” (New York Times, January 28, 2007) or more directly, to mount a threat of self-defense.


It’s unclear whether elements of the Israeli ruling circle are preparing to attack Iran or whether they’re simply engaged in a campaign of psychological warfare, seeking to unnerve Tehran by threatening war. The press is full of warnings of an imminent Israeli attack. “Two Israeli air force squadrons,” warned The Guardian (January 7, 2007) are training to use nuclear ‘bunker busting’ bombs to demolish Iran’s heavily guarded enrichment program.” (The Guardian, January 7, 2007.) The Independent (January 22, 2007) concluded that “senior Israeli politicians and analysts appear to be preparing the public for military conflict with Iran” and (January 25, 2007) “Israeli military officials warned … that Israel – acting alone or in coordination with the US – could launch pre-emptive military strikes against Iran before the end of this year.” The warnings were described by a senior British military source as “watering the turf.” Iran, the source said, “is not under enough pressure.” (The Independent, January 25, 2007.)


In early January, the Pentagon deployed a second aircraft carrier, the USS John Stennis to join a battle group led by the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, stationed menacingly close to Iran. (The Independent, January 14, 2007.) Britain also beefed up its complement of ships in the region (New York Times, December 21, 2006.) At the same time, the Pentagon dispatched a 600-strong Patriot anti-missile defense system to the Middle East. Asked to explain why the anti-missile defense system was being deployed, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a press conference that “We are simply reaffirming…the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future.” (Globe and Mail, January 15, 2007) US officials would later say the building naval presence was intended to deter Iran from trying to dominate the region.

Has US Military in Iraq Become a Patsy For Sectarian Attacks?

Two recent stories suggest the Iraqi government is in fact a fractured set of conflicting entities that has continued to manipulate US Forces to do their bidding in sectarian conflict and "ethnic cleansing". By turning over increasing "sovereignty" and command of US Forces, our sons and daughters become unwitting allies and ultimately cannon fodder for sectarian death squads.
AlterNet calls to question the reports that an odd religiously fanatical group was planning to attack Najaf enmass. Local Iraqis are reporting that a growing alliance of Shia-Sunni tribes were planning an attack against Iranian influence via it's main figurehead, the Iranian cleric al-Sistani.

Many southern Shia Arabs do not follow Iranian-born cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They believe the religious leadership should be kept in the hands of Arab clerics. Al-Hatami and al-Khazaali are two major tribes that do not follow Sistani. Tribal members from both believe the attack was launched by the central government of Baghdad to stifle growing Shia-Sunni unity in the area. "Our convoy was close to the al-Hatami convoy on the way to Najaf when we heard the massive shooting, and so we ran to help them because our tribe and theirs are bound with a strong alliance," a 45-year-old man who asked to be referred to as Ahmed said. Ahmed, a member of the al-Khazali tribe said "our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq which is against the belief of all Muslims, and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian dominated government happy."

Some 200 armed men with their families were massacred outside of Najaf. The US military supplied attack helicopters and logistic support as well as supporting troops on the ground.
McClatchy Washington Bureau documents the amazing success of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, despite being targetted repeatedly by US Forces.

The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it. U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.


"Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."


The Bush administration's plan to secure Baghdad rests on a "surge" of some 17,000 more U.S. troops to the city, many of whom will operate from small bases throughout Baghdad. Those soldiers will work to improve Iraqi security units so that American forces can hand over control of the area and withdraw to the outskirts of the city. The problem, many soldiers said, is that the approach has been tried before and resulted only in strengthening al-Sadr and his militia.


Amid recurring reports that al-Sadr is telling his militia leaders to stash their arms and, in some cases, leave their neighborhoods during the American push, U.S. soldiers worry that the latest plan could end up handing over those areas to units that are close to al-Sadr's militant Shiite group. "All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they'll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It'll be called the `Day of Death' or something like that," said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "They say, `Wait, and we will be victorious.' That's what they preach. And it will be their victory." Quinn agreed. "Honestly, within six months of us leaving, the way Iranian clerics run the country behind the scenes, it'll be the same way here with Sadr," said Quinn, 25, of Cleveland. "He already runs our side of the river."


[...] Al-Sadr's success in infiltrating Iraqi security forces says much about the continued inability of American commanders in Iraq to counter the classic insurgent tactic of using popular support to trump superior military firepower. Lacking attack helicopters and other sophisticated weapons, al-Sadr's men have expanded their empire with borrowed trucks and free lunches for militiamen.


After U.S. units pounded al-Sadr's men in August 2004, the cleric apparently decided that instead of facing American tanks, he'd use the Americans' plans to build Iraqi security forces to rebuild his own militia.


So while Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, concentrated in 2005 on packing Iraqi intelligence bureaus with high-level officers who could coordinate sectarian assassinations, al-Sadr went after the rank and file. His recruits began flooding into the Iraqi army and police, receiving training, uniforms and equipment either directly from the U.S. military or from the American-backed Iraqi Defense Ministry.

Here is perhaps the most persuasive argument I've seen that a surge in fact plays into the hands of our enemies. We have already lost Iraq to a civil war and the region is spinning out of control. The only hope of turning the tide is direct negotiation with Iran and Syria and bringing all of Iraq's neighbors to the table to prevent regional war. The only country that benefits by a Shia-Sunni war is Israel. Already Israel is building behind the scenes network of support for Sunni efforts to confront the Iranians.

Bush Has Smoke and Mirrors for Global Warming

Lately, Bush has changed tactics on Global Warming. He now acknowledges it's a problem. Behind the scenes he continues to play down the dire warnings of science.
In public, he makes it clear there will be no meaningful change in policy. He gives lip service to alternative energy. Then he banks on spending our tax dollars with his buddies in the technology field with a far fetched plan to place mirrors in space. They don't even know what the results will be, but he's happy to throw more billions of tax dollars in his new barely disguesed scheme of redistribution of wealth back to the wealthy and continuing to "starve the beast" of government so that the country can't afford a spending federal government.
Los Angeles Times

So it's significant that the Bush administration has decided not to fight the IPCC's substantive scientific conclusions, though Washington's response to the draft does churlishly complain about its "focus on the negative effects of climate change." Back in the day, the administration wouldn't have stopped there. Vice President Dick Cheney would have wasted no time designating all 2,500 IPCC scientists as enemy combatants and shipping them off to Guantanamo.


What caused the policy shift? November's GOP electoral drubbing? Increasing anxiety within the corporate community about the economic impact of climate change? Growing alarm within the military and intelligence communities about the national security impact of global warming?


Whatever the cause, the shift is good news. But don't get too excited because there's bad news too. The administration's grudging admission that maybe, just maybe, there's something to this global warming stuff doesn't mean it is actually going to back a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, which most experts say would be needed to seriously reduce global warming.


Instead, the administration has its own cunning plan to combat global warming. As the president suggested in his State of the Union message, we'll try to shift to alternative energy sources that produce fewer carbon emissions. But if that doesn't work, we'll turn to our secret weapon: We'll reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth by shining giant mirrors back at the sun.


The administration is reportedly lobbying the U.N. panel to include in its report criticisms of the mandatory emissions caps imposed by the Kyoto Protocol (which the White House still hates). And the administration wants to add language noting that space mirrors and other techniques for "modifying solar radiance" could provide "insurance" against global warming. Keep the emissions, deploy the tin foil hats!


The idea is not completely bananas. Some scientists are researching alternative global climate control methods, ranging from the deployment of lots of shiny balloons to the giant space mirrors apparently now favored by the administration. The logic: Just as nomads in the scalding desert wear white robes to reflect the sun's heat away from them, the whole Earth could essentially don a reflective garment to keep from getting too hot. If the mirrors could be constantly adjusted, it would be like having a global thermostat.


But as the IPCC's draft report noted, these technologies are "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects." You don't have to be a sci-fi buff to imagine some of those: more space crud, bad stuff happening elsewhere in the galaxy when we start beaming more light up or, creepiest of all, deliberate climate change induced in some regions as a method of political control. (Imagine Cheney controlling the world's thermostat!)

Kirkuk, A Ticking Time Bomb

Civil war in Iraq is now finally a accepted reality. But regional war is just around the corner. Not only is Saudi Arabia arming insurgents, Iran arming death squads, Turkey is arming the Turkmen minority in Kirkuk. They have repeatedly made it clear that a Kurdish Kirkuk will guarentee a military intervention by Turkish troops. They already have Turkish Special Forces on the ground near Kirkuk.
Los Angeles Times

American officials, regional leaders and residents are increasingly worried that this northern oil-rich city could develop into a third front in the country's civil war just as additional U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad and Al Anbar province as reinforcements for battles there.


Al Qaeda-linked fighters recently have surfaced here, launching a wave of lethal attacks, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. The attacks come amid a rise in communal tensions in the months before a referendum on the status of the city and the surrounding province.


Elsewhere in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni Arab Muslims are locked in a bitter civil war. Here, the two groups have a common cause against the Kurds, a non-Arab minority that dominates Iraq's far-northern provinces.


The Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, another minority group, each want control of this city and the region. At stake are land, water and some of Iraq's richest oil reserves.


None of the groups want war, they say. Yet everyone here appears to be preparing for it.


"They are right when they call it a time bomb," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Obeidi, a prominent Sunni Arab leader in Kirkuk. "We will not leave, and we will not let anyone take Kirkuk. We are ready to fight. We hope we won't have to, but we're ready."


Kurdish leaders, in turn, warn that they will take the city by law or by force.


"People don't have any more patience," said Kurdish Councilman Rebwar Faiq Talabani, sitting in Kirkuk's heavily fortified provincial council building. "They are telling the government, 'If you can't get our rights back, we'll do it by ourselves.' "


Neighboring countries, especially Turkey and Iran, fear that if the Kurds do gain control of Kirkuk, Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region would have the confidence and economic power to move toward independence. That could embolden Kurdish militants in the surrounding countries and further destabilize the region. Turkish officials recently have threatened to intervene if the Kurds take over Kirkuk and have warned against efforts to change the city's population balance.


"Turkey cannot stand idly by, watching the efforts to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month, according to the Cihan News Agency.


Turkish officials recently hosted a conference in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on the future of Kirkuk. Participants included Sunni Arab and Turkmen parties as well as the political party affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, all of whom oppose Kirkuk's inclusion in Kurdistan. None of the main Kurdish parties were invited, and Kurdish lawmakers responded angrily, denouncing what they described as Turkish interference.


Against this backdrop of ethnic, political and regional tensions, Iraq's new constitution mandates that a referendum on control of Kirkuk be held by the end of this year. If the vote goes ahead as scheduled, most analysts expect the Kurds to win.


Kurdish bureaucrats are pushing through little-noticed administrative decisions that will take away the voting rights of tens of thousands of Arabs.

A Day For Rule of Law: Germans Charge 13 CIA Operatives

News that will raise the hopes of Civil Libertarians around the world, German Courts join the Italians in challenging the Bush Administration claim to extraordinary rendition.
They are charging 13 CIA operatives for doing their masters bidding. Of course finding and trying a spook is not a likely outcome, Bush Administration officials and Intelligence services worldwide will now consider long and hard a policy that violates International Law, US law and English Common Law, upon which both US and British Law is based.
And it is notable, that one of the reasons this is happening is the man was tortured, saw no due process and then was dumped in Albania when they figured he was the wrong man.
washingtonpost.com

The CIA's clandestine program of abducting suspected terrorists and taking them to secret sites for interrogation unraveled further on Wednesday as German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 agency operatives in the kidnapping of a German citizen in the Balkans in December 2003.


The case is the second in which European prosecutors have filed charges against CIA employees involved in counterterrorism operations. Italian prosecutors have charged 25 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force officer with kidnapping a radical cleric on a Milan street in 2003 and taking him to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.


European law enforcement authorities acknowledged that it is highly unlikely that any CIA officers -- most of whom work undercover, using false identities -- would be apprehended or extradited from the United States. But the arrest warrants, filed in Munich, mark yet another case in which CIA activities in Europe since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have strained diplomatic ties and underscored deep differences between the United States and its transatlantic allies over how to fight terrorism.


Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld, the chief prosecutor in Munich, said the 13 CIA operatives were wanted on suspicion of kidnapping and inflicting bodily harm on Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent. Masri has said he was detained by border guards Dec. 31, 2003, while en route to a holiday in Macedonia, and handed over to the CIA, which took him to a secret prison in Afghanistan and interrogated him about his alleged ties to Islamic radicals in Germany.


After five months in detention -- during which, he said, he was physically abused -- Masri was flown back to the Balkans and dumped on a hillside in Albania after his captors apparently decided they had apprehended the wrong man. German prosecutors said they were skeptical when he came to them with his bizarre-sounding story but later corroborated many parts of his account.

Cheney's Lap Dogs, Libby and Miller Go Down in Flames on Plame

Judith Miller, defrocked of her NY Times credentials, is clearly feeling the betrayal of being a lap dog tossed by it's master in a self-protective move. Testifying against her past collaborator, Libby, her presentation was described as unusually subdued unlike her aggressive reputation. She avoided all eye contact with Libby.
Libby, on the other hand, glared across the room as he saw his defense undermined by surprise testimony based on Miller's allegedly "lost" notebook.
At this point, they both look like liars, and deserving of their fate, Miller stripped of career and all credibility, Libby facing prison.
Los Angeles Times

Testifying against a source she once went to jail to protect, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller said Tuesday that she had three discussions with former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in which he told her that the wife of a Bush administration critic worked for the CIA.


Miller described one meeting with Libby that occurred a full two weeks before the time that Libby has told investigators he first learned about CIA operative Valerie Plame from another journalist.


The hourlong appearance by Miller — who spent 85 days in jail rather than reveal her conversations with Libby to a federal grand jury two years ago — was a blow to his defense.


Vice President Dick Cheney's onetime chief of staff is charged with lying about his conversations with Miller and two other prominent journalists in an effort to obstruct a federal investigation into how the identity of Plame became public. She is expected to be followed to the stand by former Time magazine White House correspondent Matthew Cooper and Tim Russert, the moderator of the NBC News program "Meet the Press."


The spectacle of reporters from three major news organizations becoming government witnesses in a criminal prosecution has been a source of dread for media advocates concerned that the legal precedent — and glare of publicity — could make it harder for reporters to gather and report the news from confidential sources.


And Miller, 59, was often on the defensive during a hard-edged cross-examination.


She is one of the trial's most compelling figures because of her high-profile role covering Iraq's alleged weapons programs, her extensive contacts with Libby, and the time she spent in an Alexandria, Va., jail for refusing to reveal his identity as her source.


Miller left the New York Times in 2005 and now works as a freelance journalist.


Her jailing became a media event but also raised questions about how far journalists should go in protecting their sources; essentially, she was refusing to blow Libby's cover — even though Libby was blowing the cover of a CIA operative in their conversations together.

The REAL McCain

John McCain HAD a reputation as a statesman. That was until he began his run for the Presidency. Now he's a rather poor imitation for Doublethink Dubya. See the The REAL McCain.

Iran Already is An Ascendent Power In the Middle East

Here is an angle about the build up in the Persian Gulf I hadn't thought of. Virtually all other Persian Gulf countries are Sunni dominated with significant Shia populations. Iran's threats of retaliation target virtually all of these US allies should the US or Israel attack. Two carriers in the Gulf might be giving the political leaders in the Saudi peninsula further warning that they MUST choose sides and support the American presense.
It is indeed interesting that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been back peddling, further demonstrating US weakness.
washingtonpost.com

Iranian officials -- emboldened but uneasy over nuclear-armed neighbors in Israel and Pakistan and a U.S. military presence in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan -- have warned that they would respond to an American attack on Iran's facilities.


"Iran's supporters are widespread -- they're in Iraq, they're in Afghanistan, they're everywhere. And you know, the American soldiers in the Middle East are hostages of Iran, in the situation where a war is imposed on it. They're literally in the hands of the Iranians," said Najaf Ali Mirzai, a former Iranian diplomat in Beirut who heads the Civilization Center for Iranian-Arab Studies. "The Iranians can target them wherever, and Patriot missiles aren't going to defend them and neither is anything else."


"Iran would suffer," he added, "but America would suffer more."
As that struggle deepens, many in the Arab world find themselves on the sidelines. They are increasingly anxious over worsening tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the Middle East, even as some accuse the United States of stoking that tension as a way to counter predominantly Shiite Iran. Fear of Iranian dominance is coupled, sometimes in the same conversation, with suspicion of U.S. intentions in confronting Iran.


[..]Iran has found itself strengthened almost by default, first with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to Iran's east, which ousted the Taliban rulers against whom it almost went to war in the 1990s, and then to its west, with the American ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, against whom it fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.


Arab rulers allied with the United States issued stark warnings. Jordan's King Abdullah in 2005 spoke darkly of a Shiite crescent that would stretch from Iran, through Iraq's Shiite Arab majority, to Lebanon, where Shiites make up the largest single community. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt suggested last year that Shiites in the Arab world were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. And in a rare interview, published Saturday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia suggested that Iran, although he did not name the country, was trying to convert Sunni Arabs to Shiism. "The majority of Sunni Muslims will never change their faith," he told al-Siyassah, a Kuwaiti newspaper.


Across the region, Iran has begun to exert influence on fronts as diverse as its allies: the formerly exiled Shiite parties in Iraq and their militias; Hezbollah, a Lebanese group formed with Iranian patronage after Israel's 1982 invasion; and the cash-strapped Sunni Muslim movement of Hamas in the Palestinian territories.


[..]"If Iran is bombed, Iran's reaction is a sure thing. They cannot sit idle, and what kind of reaction they will take is a big question," said Abbas Bolurfrushan, the president of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai, a booming city-state on the Gulf that is part of the United Arab Emirates, where an estimated 400,000 Iranians live and work.


[..]Mirzai, the former Iranian diplomat, offered a similar scenario in more threatening terms. Wearing a white turban and the robes of a cleric, he sketched out potential Iranian responses: cutting the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes; retaliation in Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon; attacks on U.S. targets in the Gulf.


[..]In an attempt to contest Iran's influence, the United States has sought to form an axis among Sunni Arab states it considers moderate: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and smaller countries in the Gulf. Israeli officials have spoken about a possible alignment of their country's interests with those states to arrest both Iran's influence and its nuclear program.


In November, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would try to deepen ties with those states, some of which have yet to recognize Israel, in what Israeli analysts saw as an opening bid to create an anti-Iranian bloc.


But Zisser, of Tel Aviv University, cautioned that "all of these countries are not very strong, and they have their own problems."


"Iran's threat could do something to bring them together, but I would say that any alliance that comes out of it would be defensive in nature," he said. "These countries are not going to be able to unite in any way that would meaningfully change the face of the Middle East."


Potentially more far-reaching is the sectarian tension that the struggle has ignited. In the Palestinian territories, Israeli officials say, Iran has been increasingly successful in influencing the chaotic political situation, particularly by funding the Hamas-led government.


[..]"It's very bleak and it's very dangerous," said Dakhil, the Saudi writer. "We have a sectarian civil war in Iraq now and this is drawing sectarian lines through the region. This is the most important, the most dangerous ramification of the American war in Iraq."

Iraq Has No Sovereignty When It Comes To Iran

When US forces arrested Iranians, they not only invaded sovereign territory of a consulate, but they broke into the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who also happens to be a leader in the Badr militia, part of a group that founded Hezbollah.
How long can the US pretend ignorance to the twisted alliances in Iraq, where high government officials have ties to sectarian ethnic cleansing? How can we support the government and interfere directly with it's sovereign relations with Iran? How can we support a government that engages in ethnic cleansing?
We need to get out of Iraq, ASAP.
New York Times

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs.


Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said his country hoped to bolster financial and military ties. Iran’s plan, as outlined by the ambassador, carries the potential to bring Iran into further conflict here with the United States, which has detained a number of Iranian operatives in recent weeks and says it has proof of Iranian complicity in attacks on American and Iraqi forces.
The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraq government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called “the security fight.” In the economic area, Mr. Qumi said, Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for Iraq reconstruction, an area of failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago.


[..]Although Mr. Qumi was not given specific questions before the interview, he was made aware of the general topics that would be covered and seemed prepared with detailed answers in many cases. He seemed keen to give his government’s view of what occurred in the early morning of Dec. 21, when American forces raided the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who had traveled to Washington three weeks before to meet President Bush.


Within the compound, the Iranians were seized in the house of Hadi al-Ameri, who holds two powerful positions: he is chairman of the Iraqi Parliament’s security committee and leader of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of Mr. Hakim’s party, which spent years in exile in Iran.


Although the Americans have suggested that the Iranians were providing support for militias like the Badr Organization, Mr. Qumi said that his countrymen were dealing with Mr. Ameri in his government capacity.

Iran Walking a Thin Line

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has called for a “timeout” for both Tehran and Western nations to head off a larger confrontation. He notes recent moves by either side have represented little more than "flexing muscles" and "calling names” Dr. ElBaradei said “It’s time to engage.”
He proposes a suspension of the sanctions against Iran, while the Iranians simultaneously suspend enrichment of uranium. Iran says it needs time to review the idea of a "timeout" from it's drive to accellerate it's enrichment of uranium.
But it may be that Iran's announcement is little more than a bluff. Iran has been stonewalling for the past year with negotiations. There is no indication this is little more than more of the same. Besides Tehran has fallen behind it's own timetable for assembling centrifuges to enrich uranium. It predicted a year ago it would have 3,000 centrifuges running by now.In fact it is just getting the installation underway at Natanz.
But clearly once construction begins, the world will be hard pressed to stop Iran. Any new construction would instantly become a military target for the United States or Israel.
ElBaradie calls any such strike “absolutely bonkers,” Not only would it not deprive Iran of the technological expertise to pursue any nuclear ambitions, it would strengthen the hand of the hardliners in the Iranian government, and further destabilize the Middle East.
Everyone seems to agree that Iranians are three to eight years away from being able to manufacture a nuclear device. Apparently, the US is thinking like ElBaradie and wanting to stop them at the gate. So far the US negotiators have not discouraged ElBaradie's attempt at getting key players to the table.
PINR agrees with me that Tehran has been emboldened since the US invaded Iraq. And the US is scrambling desperately to regain leverage.
One way the US has been attempting to gain traction has been with a direct threat of military force. Despite repeated insistence it has no intention of using force, it soon will have two aircraft carrier fleet in the Persian Gulf, calling this development a "warning to Syria and Iran." Then the US military arrested six Iranians in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, accusing them of being part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and having an active role in the insurgency. This repeats the ridiculous assertion that Shiite Iran would aid Sunnis. Even the Kurds, no friends of Iran attacked the American move as violating the sovereign soil of an Iranian consulate, an accusation denied by US generals.
There are also ominous reports from Turkey that the United States moved 16 F-16 fighter aircraft into the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey as well as a squadron of F-117 to South Korea, presumable to discourage North Korea of taking advantage of an increasingly engaged US military in the Persian Gulf.
PINR makes an interesting point that even though the attack militarily may not be in the interests of the US, it may be the ONLY path available to influence the current track of events in the Middle East towards a region dominated by Iran. Such an attack would prove detrimental to Iran's regional ambitions.
This could be why there appears to be movement in Iran to rein in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The New York Times has an excellent article giving an in depth review of a topic I've mentioned before, Khamenei is balancing competing forces within political Iran. Rued in America, honored in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini built his revolution on balancing the forces of democracy and fascistic theocracy. He drew support from both. It was only after the revolution that it became clear the left would be left wanting for a true democracy. His successor, Khamenei, supreme Imam of Iran, leads what is called the "traditional conservatives".

As president, Ahmadinejad looked to the extreme right rather than seeking allies among the traditional conservatives, and in so doing, he exposed himself politically. “They were very arrogant,” Hadian said of Ahmadinejad and his camp. “They didn’t want to make any compromises. He has stood against the entire political structure in Iran, not inviting any of them, even the conservatives, to be partners. You don’t see them in the cabinet; you don’t see them in political positions.”


And for that there was a price to be paid. This fall, Rafsanjani, who had suffered a humiliating defeat at Ahmadinejad’s hands in the presidential election of 2005, was reportedly persuaded to run again for the Assembly of Experts by the supreme leader or people close to him. Rafsanjani is a divisive figure in Iranian politics. He is widely perceived as a kingmaker, the power behind the rise of Khamenei to the position of supreme leader and that of Khatami to the presidency. But though he remains highly respected among clerics, Rafsanjani is not a beloved figure in Iranian public life. During his presidency, he adopted an economic liberalization program that involved extremely unpopular austerity measures; meanwhile, through pistachio exports, he had himself become one of the richest men in Iran. Political and social repression did not ease until Khatami, his successor, came into office.


Nonetheless, in the Assembly of Experts elections in December, Rafsanjani emerged as the compromise candidate of the reformists and traditional conservatives. One reformist activist described him to me as the very last line of defense against the extreme right. And Rafsanjani delivered a staggering blow, winning nearly twice as many votes as Mesbah-Yazdi [extreme right-wing ally of Ahmadinejad and would be replacement of Khamenei as supreme leader]. The neoconservatives, it seemed, had been slapped down much the same way the reformists had: the traditional conservatives had decided that the threat they posed was intolerable, and the voters had decided that the president associated with them could not deliver on his promises.


[...]Sadegh Zibakalam, a reformist Tehran University professor, reflected when I visited him at his mother’s home in north Tehran in December. “Trying to make an amalgam of Western, liberal, democratic ideas and Shiite theology is nonsense. It doesn’t work." Later, he added: “Either Khamenei is infallible, or he’s not. If he’s not, then he is an ordinary person like Bush or Blair, answerable to the Parliament and the people. If he is, then we should throw away all this nonsense about Western values and liberal democracy. Either we have Western liberal philosophy, republican government and checks and balances, or we should stick to Mesbah. But to combine them? Imam Khomeini was so popular and charismatic. People rallied behind him and believed he was infallible. We never thought, What if the supreme leader is not supported by the people? The answer to this was brilliantly made by Mesbah: to hell with them.”


Zibakalam described Mesbah-Yazdi’s reading of velayat-i-faqih as a radical version of the one first proposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But when I looked back through the lectures in which Khomeini first delineated the theory in Najaf in 1970, I found a vision strikingly similar to Mesbah-Yazdi’s. At that time, Khomeini had little truck with popular sovereignty. He quoted the Koran and sayings attributed to Muhammad: “The prophet has higher claims on the believers than their own selves” and “The scholars are the heirs of the prophet.” The only legitimate legislation was that which had already been made by God, and this would be administered by the learned jurist, who would rule over the people like a guardian over a child.


Nine years later, from his Paris exile during the revolution, Khomeini would approve a constitution drafted by more liberal associates. It was the blueprint for a parliamentary democracy, in which a council of clergymen would play an advisory role. This draft became the basis for the debate that occupied the first Assembly of Experts, convened to revise and approve a final constitution. After much discussion of the contradictions it engendered, the experts, many of them clerics, nonetheless yoked velayat-i-faqih to the republican structure they had been handed.


To this day, the structure of the Iranian state remains too liberal for the authoritarians and too authoritarian for the liberals, but the traditional conservatives at the center of power cannot resolve this obvious paradox at the republic’s heart without relinquishing their own position. The best they could do was to revise the Constitution after Khomeini’s death, greatly expanding the powers of the clerical councils and of the supreme leader at the expense of the elected offices.


[...]After eight years in power, the reform movement found itself blocked by the conservative establishment, hamstrung by its own mistakes and unwilling or unable to shore up the failing economy. Ahmadinejad rose in its wake, campaigning not on ideological extremism but on populist blandishments. He would ease the financial pain of his countrymen, he promised, by bringing Iran’s oil wealth to the people’s tables.


As Omid Malekian had intimated to me at the Mahestan shopping mall, however, this was not a promise to make lightly. The Iranian economy has been mismanaged at least since the revolution, and to fix it would require measures no populist would be willing to take. Under Ahmadinejad, inflation has risen; foreign investors have scorned Iranian markets, fearing political upheaval or foreign invasion; the Iranian stock market has plummeted; Iranian capital has fled to Dubai. Voters I talked to pointed to the prices of ordinary foodstuffs when they wanted to explain their negative feelings about the government. According to Iranian news sources, from January to late August 2006 the prices of fruits and vegetables in urban areas rose by 20 percent. A month later, during Ramadan, the price of fruit reportedly doubled while that of chicken rose 10 percent in mere days. Housing prices in Tehran have reached a record high. Unemployment is still widespread. And Ahmadinejad’s approval rating, as calculated by the official state television station, had dipped to 35 percent in October.


Iran is not a poor country. It is highly urbanized and modern, with a sizable middle class. Oil revenues, which Iran has in abundance, should be channeling plenty of hard currency into the state’s coffers, and in fact the economy’s overall rate of growth is healthy and rising. But as Parvin Alizadeh, an economist at London Metropolitan University, explained to me, what ultimately matters is how the state spends its influx of wealth. The Iranian government has tried to create jobs swiftly and pacify the people by spending the oil money on new government-run projects. But these projects are not only overmanned and inefficient, like much of the country’s bloated and technologically backward public sector; they also increase the demand for consumer goods and services, driving up inflation.


Ahmadinejad has continued this trend. He has generated considerable personal good will in poorer communities, but hardly anyone I asked could honestly say that their lives had gotten better during his presidency. He fought to lower interest rates, which drove up lending, leading to inflation and capital flight. The government cannot risk infuriating the public with the austerity measures that would be required in order to solve its deep-rooted economic problems. But as long as its short-term fixes continue to fail, the government will go on being unpopular. The last two presidents have lost their constituencies over this issue. And so officials seek to distract people from their economic woes with ideological posturing and anti-Western rhetoric. Not only has this lost its cachet with much of the Iranian public, it also serves to compound Iran’s economic problems by blackening its image abroad. “Iran has not sorted out its basic problem, which is to be accepted in the international community as a respectable government,” Alizadeh said. “Investors do not take it seriously. This is a political crisis, not an economic crisis.”

The rulers of Iran live on borrowed time. Their popular revolution has turned sour for the poor and is gradually turning off the the oil barons and the middle class. It's just a matter of time that the flagging support of the people will undo the rule of the Imams and bring into power the reformers. Bush and Israel seems so determined to strengthen the hand of our enemies in Iran. All military assessments agree that it is a useless attack on infrastructure that will simply delay the nuclear program and strengthen the hand of the Imams and President Ahmadinejad.

Tens of Thousands Rally Against the War

New images of war protest conjured recollections of Vietnam War protests as 10s of thousands rallied today in Washington DC against the war in Iraq. Jane Fonda and Jesse Jackson stood together with a sampling of Congressment on a podium again to protest an unpopular war.
Perhaps the most persuasive speaker of the day was a 12 year old girl.
Los Angeles Times

Standing on her toes to reach the microphone, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold told the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar." The sixth-grader from Harvard, Mass., the youngest speaker on the National Mall stage, organized a petition drive at her school against the war.

2008 AND THE MEDIA MYTH MACHINE

Sam Smith has an outstanding and unfortunately rare editorial on his blog UNDERNEWS today. Its a commentary about the Democratic field for the 2008 election. His at times caustic cynacism is a welcome contrast to the "feel good" media mythology that helps create talking head images on TV that wins elections.

ONE THING is clear about the 2008 Democratic primary: there will be little room for reality. The media story line is already being driven by a mythology that in more trivial times would only be annoying but, given America's collapse as a constitutional society and as a respected nation, merely adds to the extraordinary danger the country faces today.


It used to be that the length of the Democratic primary season at least allowed time for reflection and for recovery from illusions shattered in scattered states as presumed victors stumbled or fell. Now not even that is possible.


[..]The Times politely notes that "Democrats and Republicans said that the changes would be the latest step in the evolution of a presidential nominating system that increasingly seems resistant to the kind of dark-horse presidential bid that was possible back when small states like Iowa and New Hampshire enjoyed such influence over the nominating process."


What is really happening is that the primary system is being nationalized and compressed for the benefit of those with the most money and the best early standings in the media mythology.


Money at every level in American politics has already replaced the importance of the voter because money combined with media mythology makes voters do what the money wants them to. And in the last election cycle 48% of this money came from zip codes with a high proportion of households making over $100,000 a year.


Two items give a good feel for what's going on this year:


From ABC News: Movie moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg want their Hollywood peers to join them at a Feb. 20 fundraiser the three are throwing for Obama. For $2,300 a person and $4600 a couple, they can meet the candidate at a reception at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Those who commit to raising $46,000 (10 couples/20 tickets) for the evening will be invited to a private dinner at Geffen's Malibu, Calif., home.


From the Jewish journal Forward: Democratic activists and operatives said Clinton will pull in large quantities of cash among Jewish donors not only because of what they described as her strong positions on Israel and domestic matters of interest to Jews, but also because of longtime ties with these activists dating back to her husband's administration. The haul is important: Strategists say that serious candidates will need to raise at least $50 million -- and probably more like $100 million -- by the end of the year. They say that money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates.


This is not democracy. This is a cattle auction.


But the money's not enough. The media, which is, after all, part of the money, has to provide a myth to replace any troubling intrusions by reality. Hence we have the lovely story of an iconic feminist running against an iconic black with, by our count, two-thirds of the candidate headlines this month going to Clinton and Obama. The third placed candidate, John Edwards, has gotten just six percent of the headlines this month despite being ahead in Iowa and tying Clinton for second place in the last New Hampshire poll.


Edwards, once a darling of the Democratic Abandonship Council, has done the unforgivable. He has strayed from the flock and is playing his own game. It matters not that this game is the most realistically Democratic one of any major candidate in the past few decades or that his opponents often seem to be trying to prove how conservative they can be. For them it's not a matter of being the best Democrat; it's a matter pleasing the media and the money.


So you won't hear much about Hillary Clinton once being a Goldwater Republican or that Barack Obama offers little to write about, let alone justify electing him to the White House. To a media that otherwise produces soap operas and American Idol, Clinton and Obama are ideally simple to present in their mythcasts.


[..]On the other hand it's hard to think of anyone since as far back as Fred Harris who has been willing to run for president sounding so much like a real Democrat, which is to say one centered on making life better for the most number of Americans.


And I would rather deal with Edwards' straight-forward error on the death penalty than with Hillary Clinton's attempt to make all sides think she agreed with them.


I may be unduly optimistic, but Edwards seems an unusual politician in another way. He seems to have learned something along the way. That doesn't happen often in politics. But then Edwards lost a son in a car accident and his wife had breast cancer. It's hard to retain the sort of hubris one finds in a Clinton or a Kerry when life intrudes like that.


[..]And it's also possible that Obama might turn out to be something other than a somewhat sanctimonious pop star trying to make us feel good about him. Certainly he's a vast improvement over the most corrupt and dishonest Democrat to seek the presidency since her husband.


But at the moment, whatever his faults and given the realities of America's sick politics, Edwards is the best we've got, the best chance to hold the line against the money and the myths, against the corrupters and the corroders. And we don't have a hell of a lot of time. Both the money and the media want this settled soon and weeks to them would be better than months.


The SUV liberals will stick with Clinton and Obama but, as Howard Dean showed the last time round, there's still a little room for an unanticipated rebellion, a demand for Democrats to be Democrats, for decency to go before power, and for the myth makers and the money shakers to be taught the lesson that reality still matters.

I like Edwards too. Obama just doesn't have the experience. That doesn't mean he can't be a good president, but I want to make sure we have a winner.

Anti-Science Movement Turns on "Inconvenient Truth"

The anti-science sentiment in the community continues now with Gore's thoroughly documented presentation on global warming. Apparently some people are so caught up in right wing propaganda that global warming is a liberal conspiracy that they will not be confused with the facts. Worse yet, some see global warming as representing the coming rapture and see no reason to intervene!
washingtonpost.com

Frosty E. Hardiman is neither impressed nor surprised that "An Inconvenient Truth," the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination this week for best documentary. "Liberal left is all over Hollywood," he grumbled a few hours after the nomination was announced.


Hardiman, a parent of seven here in the southern suburbs of Seattle, has himself roiled the global-warming waters. It happened early this month when he learned that one of his daughters would be watching "An Inconvenient Truth" in her seventh-grade science class.


"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," Hardiman wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.


His angry e-mail (along with complaints from a few other parents) stopped the film from being shown to Hardiman's daughter. The teacher in that science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardiman's e-mail she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present "controversial" materials in class.

Senator Jim Webb Rebuts Bush

This is well worth the listen. It's great to see one of our veterans just elected to the represent his country so well. I want to see more of him.

Dubai Think-tank Tells US to Tend to Iraq and Israel Before Messing with Iran

Here is a good example of the credibility gap the world has with the Bush Administration. U.S. undersecretary of State Burns makes a get tough speech about Iran and he gets publically lectured on how the US needs to clean up it's messes before starting another war with Iran.
Los Angeles Times

R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of State for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Tehran and said rapprochement was "not possible" until Iran halted its uranium enrichment program.


"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran," Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, a think tank. "The [Persian] Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region."


[..]The aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and accompanying ships are headed toward the Persian Gulf to join the carrier group already in the region, the Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.


Some members of the audience in Dubai complained that American wars in the Middle East were threatening the region's stability and asked Burns and the U.S. to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before focusing on Iran.


"What we are not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. "Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess."