The situation confronted by Cheney and Bush is that when US troops finally get out of Iraq, depleted, decimated, exhausted, traumatized and demoralized, Iranian commando/politico/reconstruction teams will set up shop throughout the Shiite 2/3 of the country and establish political and economic order and security. It's a done deal, just on hold while Cheney and Bush squander what remains of US military, diplomatic and economic power on the splurge.
The prevailing image of Dick Cheney is the Darth Cheney version, that he's a sociopathic wannabe brutal fascist dictator. That's true, but there's another side to Deadeye Dick: the gullible fool. The fascinating, entertaining and critically important untold story of how Dick Cheney used his power over Bush (and the CIA, State Dept., DOD, etc.) is how Ahmed Chalabi became Dick Cheney's good buddy, and how Chalabi systematically convinced and seduced intelligence agencies all over Europe, (and Cheney) through his Iraqi National Congress, and other proxies (like Curveball) and like-minded Iraqi exiles, to fan the flames of war.
Invading Iraq was stupid, but according to Cheney, Bush and the rest of the White House mob, they did it because the intelligence at the time was faulty. Of course they demanded faulty intel from everyone and then twisted it further to build a sense of urgency to remove Saddam, but how did they get the idea that it would work? In 1991 Dick Cheney argued against invading Baghdad precisely to avoid the disasters now unfolding.
Our one and only planet is heating up, fast. CO2 burned 200 years ago is still lingering up above us, warming the planet, compounded every day by still increasing tonnage that won't go away for a thousand years, melting ice caps and glaciers, heating and acidifying oceans, decimating phytoplankton that grows best in cold water, removing the foundations of Earth's entire biotic ecosystem, from crab larvae to terrestrial mammals like us.
So we have a choreographed ballet a trois, with Rummy and Cheney calling people Nazi appeasers while Bushy says Iraq is not just part of the war on terror, it's the main show!!
Their words are absolute BS. There's no comparison between Hitler and the Sunni insurgency or Al Queada or anything going on today, and the civil war in Iraq and the few foreigners there to take advantage of a chance to kill US soldiers have nothing to do with preventing terror attacks, anywhere.
But they are striking a pose, playing a role, acting like fighters, on the offensive, calling people names and starting fights to back up their authority and their decisions, regardless of any facts or reality at all.
I'm watching air strikes obliterate the foundations of life in Lebanon, while Israelis flee by the thousands to escape Hezbollah rockets. All the while Shiites are yelling "death to Israel" and more pundits are saying Hezbollah fighters are terrorists who don't care about human life and can't be reasoned with.
The best kept secret in all civilizations is that we are animals! We are medium-sized mammals, who just happen to have evolved the ability and the need to construct vast symbolic systems to define ourselves, and now we can't see our way out of our own systems, so we fight each other to the death to defend them. Hoisted on our own petards! Our daily lives are dominated by humans acting badly toward one another while ignoring and trampling the natural wonders that are the real foundations of our own lives.
But there is at least one other species that has also evolved the capacity to construct symbolic systems of self-definition and live according to those rules within distinct cultures sustainably for thousands of generations: Orcinus orca. We can learn much from the orca. If you are skeptical, you should be. That's the scientific method, along with reliance on the accumulated evidence and the published work of other scientists.
Below the fold: the astounding natural history of Orcinus orca.
Here's the answer to "cut and run." Here's the way to bring down the whole Cheney/Rove/Bush imperial presidency with pure, uncorrupted truth.
"Cut and run" implies that we Americans have made a commitment to the Iraqi people to help them form a unified, democratic government. The idea is that it's a moral failing to walk, or run, away from a solemn commitment, in keeping with the idea that the fear-baiters now in control of the US government are somehow more moral than those of us who want to end this war and get out of Iraq.
The following is the actual, true history of Cheney's war in Iraq.
I'm shouting to overwhelm the mass delusion that there is a single country inside the borders that we now call "Iraq."
Every time anyone, whether Republican, Democrat, media or neighbor says the word "Iraq" they are under the spell of a delusion that has been fostered for almost a century. They are reflecting the overall delusion that there is an Iraq, and there are Iraqis.
I'm painting a grossly simplified version of an alternate picture of that region knowing that there are many nuances and ambiguous trends in play there, but if anyone looks at the historical context with any timeline from the past millenium to the past century to the past week, one can see that there are three separate and distinct, and mutually hostile, cultures (Sunni, Shiite and Kurd) that were violently forced together under the brutal despotic rule of Sunni masters since at least 1920.
When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the Bush administration planned on liberating a monolithic people pressed beneath a dictator's heel.
But instead, the southern two-thirds of Iraq have de facto become "the Islamic republic of Iraq," says Ken Joseph, an Assyrian who grew up in Japan, studied in the U.S., and who has been active in Iraq since the downfall of Saddam Hussein. "We call it 'Western Iran,'" says a demoralized Joseph.
The Reverend Ken Joseph is one of many Assyrians who returned to Iraq, along with Iraqis of different ethnicities, after the U.S. invasion, equipped with high hopes that a new democratic and secular Iraq would emerge from the ashes of the old regime. Instead, he and the approximate two million Assyrians, of which many are Christian, are seeing the country divided into what Joseph calls "Shiistan" in the south, "Sunnistan" in the center and Kurdistan in the north.
RADICAL LAWMAKERS PASS BILL TO ALLOW EXTINCTION OF ENDANGERED SPECIES
Thursday, September 22 -
Washington, DC - The House Committee on Resources overwhelmingly approved the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (TESRA) of 2005 by a bipartisan vote, 26-12. Six Democrats and eight Republicans - including Cathy McMorris, R-Wash. - signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.
This bill would do exactly the opposite of what is claimed in the title. It would render the ESA null and void and prevent conserving and recovering listed species. The bill should be called "How to destroy the Endangered Species Act." See below for the "other purposes"
