Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link

Hey, whaddya know? The Bush Junta is lying again! I wonder if Curious George will accuse Iran of supplying weapons to the Iraqi insurgents tonight in his catatonic state of the union address? Yep, the LA Times is reporting that scant evidence has been found of an Iran-Iraq arms link. I'm shocked. Shocked that there are no weapons there.

Really, folks. Are we sensing a theme here? These guys make the Gulf of Tonkin look like the greatest ruse of all time.

For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.

The lack of publicly disclosed evidence has led to questions about whether the administration is overstating its case. Some suggest Bush and his aides are pointing to Iran to deflect blame for U.S. setbacks in Iraq. Others suggest they are laying the foundation for a military strike against Iran.

Of course, they could be doing both. You don't have to be a genius to think that in one of the many meetings the administration has had on how to do the politics of attacking Iran, Cheney has shot something like this into the faces of his fellow hawks:

Quack. We can blame the insurgency, quack, on the Iranians. Quack. That'll cover our asses on why we're losing in Iraq, and we can say attacking, quack, Iran will help us win in Iraq. Quack.

Of course, since it's not being reported on FAUX Nothing (it sure ain't news, as Olberman pointed out yesterday), the shit-for-brainers, like the fucking idiots in charge of my union news group, who think Obama is a muslim sleeper cell won't believe it.

Historic Quote Pertinent to GW Bush

I more than suspect already that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong - that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive - what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning - to involve two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory - that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood - that serpent's eye that charms to destroy - he plunged into it and has swept on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico [read Iraq] might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his late message!.....His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease. -- Abraham Lincoln

Administration leaving out important details on Iraq

Why am I surprised to hear that Bush-Cheney Inc. is cherry picking information again? It's really par for the course, isn't it? Because, as Bill Clinton pointed out, these guys are operating on ideology. They already know what they want to do in a given circumstance. Their ideology tells them to make friends with whoever they think can win the civil war in Iraq, so they can push through an oil law that allows Western Oil Services companies (think Halliburton) a nice chunk of the pie. So, it's not really that shocking to find that the Bush Administration is leaving out important details on Iraq:

"President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq."

Go read the whole story. The details are irrefutable. It's all so damn obvious, and yet, they thumb their noses and dare us to stop them.

No Oversight on Katrina?

Just what is the White House doing for Joe Lieberman? Besides bombing Arabs, that is. In No Oversight on Katrina?, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball investigate why the Joementum has ended on demands "that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans." Could Joe be kissing Republican butt in order to be John McCain's vice president? Is Joe looking for a cabinent appointment? Just why, for example, would Joe back off this position:

Asserting that there were “too many important questions that cannot be answered,” Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel “did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House.”

Seems good ol' independent Joe just isn't interested in finding out why the Bush administration did nothing to help the thousands of Americans who were devastated, and still are, by Katrina.

Among the missing material: the record of a videoconference in the White House Situation Room in which former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown said he warned senior officials about the dire situation in New Orleans, but was greeted with “deafening silence.” Also missing: records believed to include messages and conversations involving the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and their top aides during the days in late August and early September 2005 when the Katrina disaster was unfolding and thousands of city residents were flocking to overcrowded shelters and hanging onto rooftops awaiting rescue.

Gee, Joe. I bet is this had happened to Hartford Connecticut, you'd really want to see that video...

The Geo Strategic Importance of The Horn

In Salim Lone's article at Tom Paine, Destabilizing The Horn, you can get a brief history of the recent developments in the Horn of Africa, especially Bush's support of the Warlords, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is also just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through that waterway.

So, if you're following along on your Risk Game Board, you need to note that you can guard your oil route from a land with even more oil. Geo-politics is all about business for these guys, and business means oil.

The New Iraqi Oil Law

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

Wonder if this vote has a chance in the Iraqi Parliament? I wonder who wrote this proposal? I wonder whose behind all this?

Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Blogswarm for Fair Use in Free Speech

The legal ramifications of this move by Disney to squelch fair use in free speech make this story noteworthy, but it also spotlights a dangerous disease rampaging through the right wing of this country, and that is hate speech which encourages violence as a way to settle disputes with liberals. Join the effort to cover this story so that ABC/Disney will be challenged for going after this blogger, Spocko, who is exercising his rights as a US citizen, but also to make sure that the hateful commentators are exposed for the disgusting, violence inciters that they are.

Of course, we can go after these assholes by targeting their advertisers, or by blog-swarming, or many other peaceful ways. I don't want to advocate violence against them. HOWEVER, I am for instant Karma, and I think if these bloodthirsty shits are so set in their ways that they want to call incitement to violence free speech, then I can take a few of their "conservative" points of view and beat them over their proverbial heads with them.

For example, they advocated blowing up all the mosques in Syria with cruise missiles while they're full of people praying. Of course they don't mention how they'll pay for it (cruise missiles costing millions each), but that goes without saying for wing-nuts. The instant Karma here would be for me to hope that some one blows up their church while they're praying in it. But I'm not going to hope that. I wouldn't want any innocent people to get hurt. What I do hope for, though, is for them to get stuck in Iraq with crappy body armor, in a shittily armored Hummer. Or, since they support everything the Bush administration does, I could just wish my old standard on them: I hope they get cancer, are refused marijuana to help with the pain, and just days before their cancerous organs explode, I hope they're denied the right to a dignified death and have to suffer through the cancer death, as Republicans have tried to force the people of Oregon to do, despite the fact that Oregon voters passed the death with dignity act.

Big difference between what they're doing and what I'm doing. In one case, these frumunder cheese eaters fantasized about putting NY Times editor Bill Keller in a malfunctioning electric chair. What has Bill Keller ever done to anyone? These people have supported a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. They support a president who says the law does not apply to him. They support policies of torture and murder. I do not. I only wish that these people get to experience a little of what they've wished on others. Maybe if they actually had to suffer a little in their delusional little lives, they'd think twice before wishing torture and murder on people.

White House argues its visitors log is off-limits to public

That's odd. I was under the impression that we, the taxpayers, own the White House. Bush doesn't even pay rent. But this isn't the usual landlord/tennant relationship. Bush isn't just our tennant. He's our employee. The Business side of the White House is not the residence. As Bush's employer, I want to know who's been visiting during office hours. So, when I heard that in yet another step towards unitary executive authority, that the White House is arguing that its visitors log is off-limits to public, I thought, well, that's gotta be the last straw. Coupled with the recent announcement that the executive branch can read any American's mail without a warrant, I figure even the die-hard anti-impeachment lefties must be caving in now.

And I was right. Thereisnospoon, one my favorite bloggers at the Daily KOS, has finally come over to the pro-impeachment camp:

The fact is that George Bush's continued insistence on using contra-legal signing statements to justify increasingly outrageous activities has left Americans with any shred of respect for the law with their backs against the wall.

Torture, wiretaps, mail reading, and hundreds of other laws have been shredded by the Bush egomania machine. Each one is a big fuck you to the legislative branch, as if laws of the land do not apply to the office of the President.

But I think it's more than that. After a life of having everything handed to him, GW Bush is convinced that he can do whatever he wants. And considering that many legal experts contend that a President can pardon himself, perhaps he is right. George can do whatever he wants and get away with it, because, when the shit hits the fan, the most that can happen is impeachment. In the midst of the investigations into the charges of impeachment, Bush could just pardon himself, or pardon Cheney and resign, and then Cheney pardons him. Either way, the worst that happens to the spoiled little brat is that he has to leave the Presidency a little early. Big deal. He's done what he went in to do anyway.

The rest of us will pay for years.