The New York Times is reporting that Admiral William Fallon, the top commander in the Middle East, is retiring early.

As you probably already know Admiral Fallon has been at the center of recent controversy for opposing any war with Iran. So, naturally, having said something so sane and sensible, he must be driven out of his job.

See the NYT article.

AL gets letters:

A friend writes from Tehran:

Here the political weather is terrible. You might know that the parliamentary election is near and the reformist nearly are not allowed to be involved. About 80 per cent of reformist candidates has been labeled as unqualified by the Government. Mr Khatami and Rafsanjani had a meeting with the Supreme Leader but it had no fruit. We are waiting for much worse days.

The Iranian film festival has been just finished with no movie by great directors of the country. All movies were about Islam, religious rites and Imams. Good for Ahmadinejad!

I love my country but i really hate it. That’s iranian life. Always dealing with dilemmas.

To which I’d like to respond:  Read more 

And the Jackass Texan.

From Navy Times:

The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”

Now you tell us. Not that anyone is really covering it in the major media.  Read more 

Everything that comes from Chimpy’s administration and his SCLM sternographers, that is. Via Uruknet, comes this Times report which should tell you a thing or two about the Iranian “threat:”

Marie Colvin
THE HEAD of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps slipped into the green zone of Baghdad last month to press Tehran’s hardline position over the terms of the current talks with American officials, it was claimed last week.

Iraqi government sources say that Major-General Mohammed Ali Jafari, 50, travelled secretly from Tehran. Jafari appears to have passed through checkpoints on his way into the fortified enclave that contains the American embassy and Iraqi ministries, even though he is on Washington’s “most wanted” list.  Read more 

And you America doubters-in-chief thought it would stop the drumbeat to war.

Watch as Bush explains it all, nice and slow for all the haters in the house:

I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace.

[…] I believed before the NIE that Iran was dangerous and I believe after the NIE that Iran is dangerous.

And I have said Iran is dangerous. And the NIE doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary.

How could it be read any other way?

A lot of folks are chattering about a fresh poll from Zogby, in which 52% of the respondents were favorable to an attack on Iran. I’ve seen other numbers in other polls, some with support for an attack in the low 20s. Obviously, an attack is a stupid idea neither the nation nor the military can really afford, and would have all sorts of horrible consequences; there is also no real threat from Iran, unless by threat you mean “brown not-xtians making lots of money selling oil.”  Read more 

In a preview of corps coverage for 2008, we get this from Murdoch’s Times of London:

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’
Secret raid on Korean shipment

Gee, I guess Bush must have butchered the negotations with Dear Leader after all. Incredible.

Anyhow, that’s the headline. But if you read the details, there are a lot of questions about the crucial details that would lend substance to the headline. Which I imagine the self-correcting wankosphere is busy filling in right now. Gee, it’s almost like they’re trying to keep us in a constant state of shock, isn’t it?

The Israeli government was not saying…. The Syrians were also keeping mum…. Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians” in the country. … But intelligence sources suggested it was a highly successful Israeli raid on nuclear material supplied by North Korea.

Of course, from Whitewater and Iraq onward, we’ve seen plenty of disinformation take root in Fleet Street, and then spread to WaPo and the Times, so color me skeptical. (And the 101st Fighting Keyboards are, naturally, creaming themselves.)

The Observer’s coverage is a little less breathless:  Read more 

[Dept. of You-Can’t-Make-This-Up]
On the very same day the 5th Munitions Squadron loaded six nuclear warheads on a B-52 for transport out of Minot AFB (don’t worry, five showed up in Barksdale) they released this press release:  Read more 

“Advanced Cruise Missiles carry a W80-1 warhead with a yield of 5 to 150 kilotons” and are being flown over your head right now.  Read more 

Boilerplate: There is a legitimate resistance to theocracy in Iran, but I very much doubt those are the people getting our taxdollars. Charles:

The study was made available by Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story (via Avedon and Chris Floyd). The authors are Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of the University of London. They state that:

Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan.  Read more 

Yeah, it’s like Kremlinology back in the day, isn’t it? Where a bunch of dour-looking** hatchet-faced old guys all in ruthless bureaucratic infighter costume would line up on the missile-reviewing stand in Red Square, and we’d try to figure out what was really going on by who was smiling, and who stood next to who. Good times. Why is that?

But let that pass. CIA analyst Ray McGovern’s hat is making that krinkly sound:  Read more 

Guardian:

“Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.

“The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action,” Mr Cronin said. “The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself.”

So, if Cheney thinks Israel is “adamant,” our guys go in?

Splendid. Outsource our war and peace decision making to another country—one that, needless to say, has its own interests at heart, and not ours.  Read more 

The Amazing Froomkin, quoting Steve Clemons:

Clemons writes: “Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been … explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

“This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an ’end run strategy’ around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

“The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles)… .

“The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice [and others] have sculpted.

“According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the ’right decision’ when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie Bush’s hands.”

Well, splendid.  Read more 

Via Think Progress, this from ABC. Dear God (if indeed there is a God):

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Excellent! Because if there’s one thing we don’t have enough of, it’s war!  Read more 

[On rereading this post, I’m thinking that, really, the foreign policy establishment thinks that the administration is, well, batshit. DFH types, obviously.]

In the latest issue of the very establishment Foreign Afffairs, Bruce Riedel has an excellent* analysis of the state of play in the waronterra, in particular how Al Quaeda, with the help of the Bush penchant for creating chaos, has reconstituted itself. This paragraph of Al Qaeda Strikes Back caught my eye (remember that AQ is Sunni, unlike the majorities in Iran and Iraq, who are Shiite):

Bin Laden might also be nurturing bolder plans, such as exploiting or even triggering an all-out war between the United States and Iran. Indeed, there is evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq — and elements of the Iraqi Sunni community — increasingly consider Iran’s influence in Iraq to be an even greater problem than the U.S. occupation. Al Qaeda worries about the Sunni minority’s future in a Shiite-dominated Iraq after the Americans leave. Propaganda material of Sunni jihadists in Iraq and elsewhere openly discusses their fear that Iran will dominate a postoccupation Iraq and seek to restore the type of regional control that the Persian Empire had in the sixteenth century. In a remarkable statement last November, Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Hamza al-Masri, thanked President George W. Bush for sending the U.S. Army to Iraq and thus giving al Qaeda the “great historic opportunity” to engage Americans in direct fighting on Arab ground. (He also said that Bush was “the most stupid and ominous president” in U.S. history.) But he warned that the invasion had “revived the glory of the old Persian Safavid Empire in a very short period of time.” Similarly, the self-proclaimed emir of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, issued a statement in February 2007 welcoming news that the U.S. government was considering sending more troops to Iraq and saying that he was eagerly looking forward to an American nuclear attack on Iran.

Al Qaeda would especially like a full-scale U.S. invasion and occupation of Iran, which would presumably oust the Shiite regime in Tehran, further antagonize Muslims worldwide, and expand al Qaeda’s battlefield against the United States so that it extends from Anbar Province in the west to the Khyber Pass in the east. It understands that the U.S. military is already too overstretched to invade Iran, but it expects Washington to use nuclear weapons. Baghdadi has told Sunnis in Iran to evacuate towns close to nuclear installations.

Translation: Al Qaeda to Bush: Let’s you and Iran fight.

And when the going gets tough, the tough get foily:  Read more 

And our media continues to ignore crucial facts in this matter.  Read more 

But did you hear about it from your SCLM? No. Despite the fact that these folks probably represent upwards of 50 million believers in this country. Contrast that with the Southern “War Jesus” Baptists, who represent just over 20 million, and not all of them die-hard sandnigger haters. Christians and Jews who don’t want Bush to invade or bomb Iran? Invisible, to our media, the pundits and politicians.

Don’t tell me blogs don’t do “real” reporting.

Let’s all sit down at the table, shall we? Did Shooter see god after that bomb went off?  Read more 

Bleh, I’m so tired. Don’t start your workday at 4:30am if you can avoid it. Anyway- what do you think? Is Iran on the table, or not?

Smart people tell me that there is no more money to be made from senseless war, the gravy train is over, and the war talk is a bunch of chest puffing. Other smart people tell me that there is political and financial gain still to be made from an expansion of the war in Iraq, and that there are those in the White House (Shooter) who will go down guns blazing, reality be damned. What do you think?  Read more 

Beyond all the rhetoric, beyond all the “democracy building, beyond “national security” and “terrorism.” Keep in mind that we’re basically going to invade Iran because our True Masters want us to. Why would they want us to? Money. As Ian notes:

Brad Setser notes that Dubai is adding so much new office space in 2007 that it’s equal to Minneapolis’s entire office space in one year. In 2008 – as much office space as all of San Francisco is scheduled to come on-line. This is a direct result of high oil prices, and can only be partially explained by Dubai’s continuing strength as a financial center. As long as oil prices remain high, this is sustainable, and it’s also a version of welfare for the elites – most of whom are in the construction business.  Read more 

The better to bring on WWIII. Sigh. Where there’s a will, there’s a war. Update: Sy has more on what’s going on in our military.

Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.
senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an “air corridor” in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.  Read more 

I’m days and days behind on my reading (but I’ve got two shiny new hardwood floors to brag on!) but this WaPo piece felt like disinformation to me. This part made me laugh out loud:

“Dick was always very realistic,” said Kenneth L. Adelman, the Reagan administration arms-control official who has known Cheney for more than three decades. “I don’t really understand how month after month he gets briefings showing Iraq’s getting worse and worse, and he engages in all this happy talk. Bush has become more realistic. Certainly [Defense Secretary Robert M.] Gates is more realistic, so the happy talk from the Pentagon is over. Yet Cheney is still stuck in the mold.”  Read more 

Col. Gardner is reporting not-good things happening in and around the Iranian border.  Read more 

Sweet Jeebus, did WaPo’s Karen DeYoung bury the lead on this page A18 story, or what? After the [editor-composed] misleading headline:

U.S. Keeps Pressure on Iran But Decreases Saber Rattling

and the innocuous lead:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted again Friday that, despite persistent reports to the contrary circulating in Washington and around the world, the United States is not planning military action against Iran.

and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten paragraphs down we get to the meat of the story:

Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.

I mean, sure, that’s just Cheney’s view—  Read more 

Consider the sources:

US claims the bombs were smuggled from Iran cannot be independently verified.

Thank The God(s) of You Choice, If Any, for the BBC.

In the word of the old joke: “Trust me?”  Read more