ABC News reported Tuesday that George Bush signed a “non-lethal presidential finding” authorizing covert action to subvert the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Right-wing pundits and presidential candidate Mitt Romney fired away at ABC, accusing the news staff of betraying America. Left-wing pundits fired back, saying it’s clear that the Bush administration wants the story leaked, in hopes of threatening the Iranians. In like vein, the three aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and the thousands of marines staging an amphibious assault exercise in Kuwait, just down the beach from Iran are there to threaten, too.
Did I mention that the U.S. and Iran are about to sit down in Baghdad and discuss ways to cooperate in stabilizing Iraq? So, is it a bluff or is the CIA already operating inside Iran? The likely answers are yes and yes.
I’m confused by the hoopla over the ABC announcement; Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker for months that covert operatives, some from the armed forces, are operating in Iran. So what’s the big deal over the ABC report? Is this just another case of Americans refusing to believe anything until they’ve seen it on tee vee? (Or YouTube?) Or is it a case where the Bush administration deliberately leaked the “non-lethal finding” to ABC and the right wing pundits (encouraged by their administration contacts) whipped up the rhetoric, to give the story legs? And Mitt Romney, was he getting inside dope from the White House too? Maybe, or maybe he’s just exhibiting the opportunism that’s been the hallmark of his career. After all he’s targeting that portion of the electorate that, after six years of Mr. Bush, is still gullible enough to vote Republican.
Would it really be a betrayal of America to expose the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney are trying to take us into yet another ill-considered war in the Persian Gulf region? Are we really so soon again ready to fall into the trap of “standing behind the president as he takes us to war”? Have we learned nothing from the last four years?
The war in Iraq, launched against the best advice of our military professionals, has broken the army, marine corps and reserves, although the private mercenary armies are doing quite well on the tax dollar. Who’s supposed to fight the next war?
As the Democrats in Congress cave in to Mr. Bush on a timeline for getting the troops out of Iraq, the news reports that May, with one week to go, has been “one of the bloodiest months yet” of the war. Isn’t that what the news reported in the third week of April? (The record still belongs to November 2004 with 137 deaths.) By ghoulish coincidence, the American death toll in Iraq crested 3,000 at the end of 2006, so it’s easy to calculate the number of deaths so far this year – around 434 this week, which means we’re on pace to see 4,000 dead Americans in Iraq a few weeks before Christmas. If you’re counting – I am – you’ll see the pace of American deaths is accelerating. Things are not getting better for the Iraqis, either. This morning’s Washington Post reports that sectarian violence is increasing with 321 corpses dumped in the streets of Baghdad in the past three weeks. That’s one city, three weeks.
At the Coast Guard Academy Wednesday, Mr. Bush claimed Al Quaeda is as much of a threat to America as it ever was and he needs more blank checks from citizens to save us from the danger. It’s difficult to understand why Mr. Bush would bring that up. Before 9-11, before the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld “global war on terror,” Al Quaeda was in Afghanistan. Now it’s in Iraq, has carried out bomb attacks in Jordan and as we recently learned, it’s established bases in Lebanon.
This is American history in the first decade of the 21st century: Republicans lie to us, Democrats let us down, our international reputation is in tatters and those poor and unlucky enough to find themselves in the military are killed and maimed and kept away from their homes and families for years at a time.
May 2007 has been one of the bloodiest months yet and George Bush has 20 months to go.
One of the Bloodiest Months Yet
ABC News reported Tuesday that George Bush signed a “non-lethal presidential finding” authorizing covert action to subvert the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Right-wing pundits and presidential candidate Mitt Romney fired away at ABC, accusing the news staff of betraying America. Left-wing pundits fired back, saying it’s clear that the Bush administration wants the story leaked, in hopes of threatening the Iranians. In like vein, the three aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and the thousands of marines staging an amphibious assault exercise in Kuwait, just down the beach from Iran are there to threaten, too.
Did I mention that the U.S. and Iran are about to sit down in Baghdad and discuss ways to cooperate in stabilizing Iraq? So, is it a bluff or is the CIA already operating inside Iran? The likely answers are yes and yes.
I’m confused by the hoopla over the ABC announcement; Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker for months that covert operatives, some from the armed forces, are operating in Iran. So what’s the big deal over the ABC report? Is this just another case of Americans refusing to believe anything until they’ve seen it on tee vee? (Or YouTube?) Or is it a case where the Bush administration deliberately leaked the “non-lethal finding” to ABC and the right wing pundits (encouraged by their administration contacts) whipped up the rhetoric, to give the story legs? And Mitt Romney, was he getting inside dope from the White House too? Maybe, or maybe he’s just exhibiting the opportunism that’s been the hallmark of his career. After all he’s targeting that portion of the electorate that, after six years of Mr. Bush, is still gullible enough to vote Republican.
Would it really be a betrayal of America to expose the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney are trying to take us into yet another ill-considered war in the Persian Gulf region? Are we really so soon again ready to fall into the trap of “standing behind the president as he takes us to war”? Have we learned nothing from the last four years?
The war in Iraq, launched against the best advice of our military professionals, has broken the army, marine corps and reserves, although the private mercenary armies are doing quite well on the tax dollar. Who’s supposed to fight the next war?
As the Democrats in Congress cave in to Mr. Bush on a timeline for getting the troops out of Iraq, the news reports that May, with one week to go, has been “one of the bloodiest months yet” of the war. Isn’t that what the news reported in the third week of April? (The record still belongs to November 2004 with 137 deaths.) By ghoulish coincidence, the American death toll in Iraq crested 3,000 at the end of 2006, so it’s easy to calculate the number of deaths so far this year – around 434 this week, which means we’re on pace to see 4,000 dead Americans in Iraq a few weeks before Christmas. If you’re counting – I am – you’ll see the pace of American deaths is accelerating. Things are not getting better for the Iraqis, either. This morning’s Washington Post reports that sectarian violence is increasing with 321 corpses dumped in the streets of Baghdad in the past three weeks. That’s one city, three weeks.
At the Coast Guard Academy Wednesday, Mr. Bush claimed Al Quaeda is as much of a threat to America as it ever was and he needs more blank checks from citizens to save us from the danger. It’s difficult to understand why Mr. Bush would bring that up. Before 9-11, before the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld “global war on terror,” Al Quaeda was in Afghanistan. Now it’s in Iraq, has carried out bomb attacks in Jordan and as we recently learned, it’s established bases in Lebanon.
This is American history in the first decade of the 21st century: Republicans lie to us, Democrats let us down, our international reputation is in tatters and those poor and unlucky enough to find themselves in the military are killed and maimed and kept away from their homes and families for years at a time.
May 2007 has been one of the bloodiest months yet and George Bush has 20 months to go.
© Mark Floegel, 2007