Some good Iran posts from the last 24 hours or so...
Firedoglake (guest post: Ian Welsh)I have to tell you, that from a foreigner’s point of view, and this is true even in your closest allies (the majority of Britains, for example) you are a rogue nation. You invade people based on lies. You have no credibility on Iran. You are the boy who cried Wolf. You don’t obey the Geneva conventions. You have secret prisons. You torture people, including the citizens of your allies. You have abolished habeas corpus for classes of people. You kidnap foreigners and secretly ship them off to be tortured. You have endorsed Bush’s war crimes – crimes for which Americans hung Nazis who had been in no way involved the with the Holocaust. You could produce pictures of nukes and missiles and half the world wouldn’t believe you. Even if we did believe you, we don’t care enough to endorse going to war with Iran.. There are only two nations in the world who constantly talk about how they’re willing to nuke people without even being attacked first: The North Koreans - and the UNITED STATES.
Once Upon a Time:
We should not be surprised, whatever may happen now. A lunatic ideology rules us, and almost everyone takes it for granted. And practically no one is protesting against it in any serious manner at all.
Existentialist Cowboy:
There is no upside gain, only painful blowback. As [George] Will accurately pointed out, despite Adhmanijad’s rhetoric, the Iranian populace is overwhelmingly pro-western. Bush’s loud mouth has already undone much of that good will. A bombing campaign will most certainly turn a pro-western nation into sworn enemies. A nuclear strike, in particular, will radicalize the entire population.The Left Coaster:
Where the hell are the Democrats on this issue? Why hasn’t any Democrat on either the Senate Armed Services Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee publicly demanded to know under what authority the Bush Administration is doing advance work inside Iran? We now know that Bush redirected resources from Afghanistan towards Iraq war planning in the spring and summer of 2002, without congressional authorization, so it is entirely plausible that we have already been engaged in these activities for over a year now inside Iran, as new reports indicate. Yet we have heard or seen nothing from Carl Levin, Joe Biden, or Bill Nelson of Florida, who is the only Democrat on both the Armed Services and the Foreign Relations committees.I still take solace in the fact that, unlike the run-up for Iraq, there isn't a 100% consensus among the media (or Republicans, for that matter) that Iran will happen and must happen. Of course, while that might mean Democrats won't get totally and completely destroyed at the polls in November, it still means that the United States is going to pay for this dearly for decades, and it will be at least 1% the fault of Democrats and other pathetic souls who once again didn't step up in crunch time, when their voices were desperately needed.
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