But now the American war with Iran they originally wanted is coming closer

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/iraq-israel-iran_b_62995.html

But now the American war with Iran they originally wanted is coming closer. Last Tuesday, when the mass media were crammed to distraction with the behavior of a senator in an airport washroom, few could be troubled to notice an important speech by President Bush. If Iran is allowed to persist in its present state, the president told the American Legion convention in Reno, it threatens "to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He said he had no intention of allowing that; and so he has "authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities." Those words come close to saying not that a war is coming but that it is already here. No lawmaker who reads them can affect the slightest shock at any action the president takes against Iran.

Admittedly, it was a showdown speech, reckless and belligerent, to a soldier audience; but then, this has been just the sort of crowd and message that Cheney and Bush favor when they are about to open a new round of killings. And in a sense, the Senate had given the president his cue when it approved, by a vote of 97-0, the July 11 Lieberman Amendment to Confront Iran. It is hardly an accident that the president and his favorite tame senator concurred in their choice of the word "confront." The pretext for the Lieberman amendment, as for the president's order, was the discovery of caches of weapons alleged to belong to Iran, the capture of Iranian advisers said to be operating against American troops, and the assertion that the most deadly IEDs used against Americans are often traceable to Iranian sources--claims that have been widely treated in the press as possible, but suspect and unverified. Still, the vote was 97-0. If few Americans took notice, the government of Iran surely did.

That unanimous vote was the latest in a series of capitulations that has included the apparent end of resistance by Nancy Pelosi to the next war. After the election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared her intention to enact into law a requirement that this president seek separate authorization for a war against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint, shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC against the anti-war base of the Democratic party.

This much, one might know without the help of Mearsheimer and Walt. But without their record, how many would trace the connection between the removal of Philip Zelikow as policy counselor of the state department, at the end of 2006, and a speech Zelikow had given in September 2006 urging serious negotiation and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? The ousting of Zelikow was a blessing to the war party, since it freed them from a skeptical confidant of Secretary of State Rice--perhaps the only person of stature anywhere near the administration whom she treated as an ally and friend. And the meaning of the change was clear when Zelikow's replacement turned out to be Eliot Cohen: a neoconservative war scholar and enthusiast, an early booster of the "surge" on the pundit shows, and incidentally a shameless slanderer of Mearsheimer-Walt ("Yes, It's Anti-Semitic," Washington Post, April 5, 2006).

From Zelikow to Cohen was only a step on the long path of humiliation that now stretched before Condoleeza Rice. When, in March 2007, amid suggestions of a renewal of diplomacy, she intimated that talks might be helpful in dealing with the Hamas-Fatah unity government (whose formation the Arab world had greeted as offering a promise of peace), she was demolished by an AIPAC-backed advisory letter bearing the signatures of 79 senators, which directed her not to speak with a government that had not yet recognized Israel. From that moment Rice was effectively neutralize


They are gunning for an incident.


Unless some opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend with non-partisan compliance into a moral and political disaster that will dwarf anything America has seen.

[Kip Humphrey]

1. The war that will destroy the Democratic Party:

:nuke:IRANIUM:nuke:

[seemslikeadream]

2. I like your inc

[Kip Humphrey]

4. wear one...

Available in Black:
http://www.cafepress.com/theproteststore.19464262

and White:
http://www.cafepress.com/theproteststore.19467278

[seemslikeadream]

5. From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars: A suicidal, genocidal, omnicidal course

Thanks, is that your's cause I'd like to have it to put on my photobucket account

http://www.sfbayview.com/2007011722/News/Front_Page/From_Hiroshima_to_Iraq_61_years_of_uranium_wars_A_suicidal_genocidal_omnicidal_course.html

From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars: A suicidal, genocidal, omnicidal course
by Leuren Moret
Tuesday, 16 January 2007
PULLQUOTE: The irony in this demonic plan is that we were never informed. The decision was made for us – to face genocide and the death of birth.

PHOTO: Darren Matthew, daughter, depleted uranium.jpg

CAPTION: When Army National Guard Spec. Darren Matthew came home from Iraq and his daughter was born with a deformed hand, he learned his body is contaminated with radioactive depleted uranium.

“The nuclear weapons labs exist for the Pentagon, and the Pentagon exists for the oil companies.” – Richard Berta, Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy, November 19911

The conduct of secret nuclear wars since 1991, through the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States and Great Britain with their allies, has taken place in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan2 and Lebanon.3 It has been carried out for the express purpose of destroying the public health and mutilating the genetic future of vast populations in oil rich and/or pipeline regions.

Carpet and grid bombing with depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan has guaranteed permanent radioactive terrain contamination. The recent discovery that U.S. depleted uranium bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 contained enriched uranium4,5 suggests covert testing of fourth generation nuclear weapons.

The United States and its allies are fully aware that this weaponry violates the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the 1925 Geneva Poison Gas Protocol.6 It meets the definition of WMD in the U.S. Code7 in two out of three categories. And its use violates U.S. military law.8 since the U.S. is a signatory to The Hague and Geneva Conventions.

The blueprint for depleted uranium radioactive poison gas weaponry – dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets – was contained in a declassified memorandum9 dated Oct. 30, 1943. It was addressed to Gen. Leslie Groves, who was head of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to build atomic bombs in World War II.

However, at that time, depleted uranium and Agent Orange were new weapons developed under the Manhattan Project but thought to be too horrific to use on a living population.10 Ironically, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deemed to be more acceptable by decision makers in the U.S. government than the use of depleted uranium poison gas weapons.

The recommendation for development of depleted uranium as kinetic energy penetrators was never mentioned in the Groves memo. It was specifically for depopulation.

The Groves memo makes it clear that in 1943, U.S. scientists recommended using radioactive poison gas weapons in order to contaminate the air, water, soil, food, environment and the blood of exposed populations. The long-term contamination is permanent, since uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, making contaminated areas uninhabitable for eternity.

For populations that must continue to live in contaminated areas, the long-term effects are lingering illnesses and mutilation of their DNA. Widespread depleted uranium contamination of DNA in populations results in the potential mutilation of future generations. Mutations induced in the DNA of a single egg or sperm which form a fertilized egg are expressed and repeated in every cell of the developing organism, and defects are passed on to all future generations11.



http://www.sfbayview.com/20061226198/News/Front_Page/From_Hiroshima_to_Iraq_61_years_of_uranium_wars_A_suicidal_genocidal_omnicidal_course.html

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. K&R. This has over 300 comments at Huff Post. Well worth a read n/t

[slipslidingaway]

6. K&R n/t