Shit.
Posted by DjW at March 30, 2007 03:41 PMDidn't a second carrier task force just sail from San Diego this week, headed for the Gulf? How long would they take to transit the Pacific and Indian oceans, and arrive? In time for 4/17?
Posted by Trip at March 30, 2007 04:59 PMThe Dems have indicated with their votes that they, one way or the other, will continue to fund the Iraq war and they have also green-lighted an attack on Iran by their statements, and by indicating that Bush needn't come to congress before 'bombs away'. So, while Bush isn't popular, there's no meaningful opposition to his crazy agenda and we'll all pay the price. It's sad. War is not the answer.
"A true revolution of values will say of war, 'This way of settling differences is not just.'-- I call on Washington today, I call on every man and woman of goodwill all over America today: Take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late; a book may close. And I don't know about you -- I ain't going to study war no more." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted by Don Bacon at March 30, 2007 05:34 PMWhen Olbermann did the Gonzo story tonight he said that Abu has now asked to move his testimony UP--by a week. Anyone else hear about this?
Posted by Lisa at March 30, 2007 06:12 PMApril 7th is another date that's being bandied around the blogosphere. That's Good Friday, you know. Something symbolic about that date and a guy who thinks he can bring on Armageddon.
Posted by pol at March 30, 2007 06:41 PMI can't wait till April 16th!
Posted by political forum at March 30, 2007 07:17 PMAnd impeachment is off the table. The price we pay for that will be death and destruction. FOOLS, ALL FOOLS.
I am beginning to believe that we are at war with evil in this Country.
Posted by Judith at March 30, 2007 07:29 PMFWIW -- because it's better than doing nothing...
Latest video message from Wes Clark and Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org.
Posted by jen at March 30, 2007 08:37 PMIn a speech Wednesday before a summit of the Arab League, Saudi King Abdullah decried what he called the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq.
There are signs that the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and their allies - including Jordan - have been equipping and training Sunni extremists in Iraq for some time now. Critically, not all the weaponry and munitions have been used against the militants' Shia and Kurdish Iraqi enemies. Some of them - including lethal roadside bombs - have been aimed at US forces.
At least six helicopters are now admitted to have been downed by hostile fire, and the number could be as high as 50, including a Chinook loaded with dozens of troops. The chances are that at least some of the helicopters have been downed by those Sunni extremist pals of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
But just like we went after Iraq after 9/11 and not Saudi Arabia where the purported terrorists originated, we're going after Iran and not Saudi Arabia or Jordan now. . .
In Baghdad this week US forces have displayed 'shaped charge' roadside bomb kits - also known as EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) - which have killed 170 American service personnel in Iraq. This figure is surprisingly precise, in contrast to much of the rest of the American presentation: the officers and intelligence analysts would not give their names, and could not substantiate their claim that the deployment of the EFPs was sanctioned "at the highest level" of the Ahmadinejad regime.
. . . because that's what AIPAC wants.
Posted by Don Bacon at March 30, 2007 08:40 PMPlease read this and sign the petition to StopIranWar:
Bush's Iran Policy Hurts Israel
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/7001
Posted by jinny at March 30, 2007 09:29 PMThom Hartmann spoke of this on Monday. This link has more info. I also heard that it was moved to the 17th..
Kind of dumb for Iran to take British hostages, IMHO. Just when you thought the rest of the world was about to abandon the US in the war on radical Islam, Iran does something stupid. It'll unite the world against Iran.
Posted by muckdog at March 30, 2007 09:59 PMI wonder if Iran now has British hostages to locate at potential US bombing sites?
Posted by editor at March 30, 2007 10:14 PMHmm, it looks like wag the dog with the red herring to distract from the coup d' etat of the bushies. They got to protect their investment in packing the gov with wingnuts. These posts seem to me to suggest that Iran is the red herring and the dog is us non-evangelical working folks. Nukes? complicated and will take a long time to constuct. British marines? dang, bush is doing a little hitler jig. There are solutions to these issues -- look a the bbc now: "US officials rule out a deal to swap 15 UK Navy personnel captured in the Gulf for five Iranians seized in Iraq." So the "moderates" say when I bring the coup angle up that we still have MTV and chicken wings and freedom rings throughout the realm. Just wait for the vitriol of the wingers when folks wonder what the deal is. Then you will know. Chirp, chirp, traitor. Trapse on over to digby's place and let this sink in... "Coburn was elected in spite of this revelation and I think we know why: good conservative Christians have no problem with sterilizing bad poor women without written permission and charging the taxpayers for it." That's the wingers big coup.
What does Sam Gardiner say?
Posted by gtash at March 31, 2007 05:23 AMWhile U.S. (and world) fortunes in the Middle East spiral down the toilet America's finest are taking a holiday. Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, for example, is leading a delegation of lawmakers to Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines "to promote U.S.-Caribbean relations and discuss emergency disaster assistance," among other things, according to a letter he distributed to other lawmakers.
Senators are only taking a one week holiday, so they probably aren't able to promote U.S.-Caribbean relations, but House members are taking two weeks. The full Congress will be back to its usual nonsense on April 16th.
Which is why Iran will happen before April 16th.
Posted by Don Bacon at March 31, 2007 08:23 AMSome have speculated that the Iranian clerics and hardliners actually want to provoke Nero into a Lebanon-style attack on Iran, with nukes if possible, as a way to permanently radicalize their overwhelmingly young, not so enchanted with the Islamic Republic citizens.
"The Great Satan" is just a banal phrase to these young Iranians, I'll bet. But it won't be after Nero's nuclear humiliating destruction of their country's infrastructure as a way to "teach 'em a lesson about thumbing their nose at Murica!"
Provoking a nuclear attack would also clear the way for a grand shi'ite uprising against the hopelessly surrounded US Army in Iraq, which is simply sitting on top of a shi'ite powderkeg as it does their sunni ethnic cleansing dirty work for them, escalatin' and all.
Stalingrad on the Tigris, remember? Think bagging an American Army might be viewed as a feather in the shi'ite cap?
If they don't want to provoke an attack, it's hard not to conclude that the famous chess-players have gotten over-rattled and made a mistake here. Hostages won't deter Cheney's nuclear attack, they are grasping at straws if they think it will.
Look for some secondary "mistakes", like trying to abduct some American soldiers, Hezbollah style. We know how that turned out as well.
I think that we're on the verge of a huge war, Nero, Deadeye and Pace n' Gates are too stupid or willful to understand or care about the consequences, and our economy is sunk. "Worst President Ever" cannot begin to convey the sentiment and the concept.
This is it.
Posted by euzoius at March 31, 2007 10:33 AMTwo thoughts.
1. Iran is making a ton of money with oil going up in price by their hostage taking.
2. If the US backs out of Iraq, it will be a victory for radical Islam in "fighting off the infidels" and the biggest recruiting surge ever. Allah will have proven himself over the Great Satan.
Posted by muckdog at March 31, 2007 10:42 AM1. Iran won't be making any petro-dollars after our nuclear Lebanon-style attack.
2. This should have been thought of beforehand, I'd say. Unless the occupation was always intended to be permanent, which Bushco adamantly maintains is not the case.
In any event, your point logically means permanent occupation of Iraq, and I'm sure you're aware that one can't stop one's "enemies" from saying whatever they might like about you.
Al qaeda certainly doesn't want us to leave Iraq, yet will taunt us when we do leave. It's a win-win for them, and just one of the many strategic disasters we'll have to live and deal with as a result of the Worst President Ever and his band of retarded citizen-supporters.
Posted by euzoius at March 31, 2007 11:05 AMEvery place I checked has 18 Jan 2003 as a Full Moon. Whatever. Like actionable intelligence, it don't matter as much as when political planets come into alignment. That said, I think Operation TPAjax 2 is off, scratched, aborted, kaput. The flags know when the balloon goes up, JAM comes down along with the Badr organization, most Iraqi Army units and a lot of armed citizens. But then, Bush desperately wants Iranian oil off line.
Hell, even Wild Bill Lind smells potential calamity:
Operation Anabasis by William S. Lind, On War # 211
Defense & the National Interest, March 27, 2007
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_3_29_07.htm
Lev'ee en masse. Just like Israel's second Lebanon disaster Jul/Aug '06 when Hizb'Allah & Co. fought Dan Halutz's IDF to a draw...at least.
The potential exists for a decisive US operational defeat (combination Little Big Horn, Chosin Reservoir and Dien Bien Phu) with 30,000+ US killed & 150,000+ Iraqis. Of course, that's what often happened to invaders in the Land of the Two Rivers and Parthia over the past several millenia.
Are our leaders so delusional or desperate they can't negotiate this like sensible people? If so, this empire's ending lots faster than anticipated.
I'm not interested in seeing if Petraeus is as good at this manuever as Puller or as bad as Custer and Navarre. Let's call the whole thing off.
Nuclear 9/11 is coming thanks to the Bush Adminstration and the Neo-Cons.
Posted by Natas Enasni at April 2, 2007 05:18 PM