Pack Your Bags, We’re Going on an Ego Trip!

Last week Seymour Hersh published an overview of the discussion between the military and politicians about the tactical measures being considered for Iran.

What is the most disturbing in the prevalence of the words “Nuclear Option” present in all these discussions. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Bush wants to nuke Iran.

Now, Congress has been showing it’s backbone lately and as the article points out, there are members of the Joint Chiefs who are ready to resign over this. Apparently Great Britain, Gods bless the lovely Isles, has also denied such a possibility in such derisive terms as to make the U.K. stance on the matter very clear: “You go into Iran with nukes, you’re going in alone you freakazoid nutcase.” So, it’s not like Bush has a clear path to this option. Most likely, given the way thing are trending this will not occur.

However, the picture this paints of the Bush administration is a very frightening one.

“Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy…. “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

We survived over 50 years of Cold War because we never had a President nor a Premier crazy enough to actually push the button…and now this. Lil’ Bushie is tired of playing with his toy soldiers and wants to play with the bomb now.

What is really frightening in the “messianic” part because the estimate is dead on. Remember what Bush said to Harry Taylor? “I’m not going to apologize because it was justified!” Bush doesn’t care what anyone thinks. It’s all justified, no matter how many laws he breaks, how many people die, how many freedoms he takes away from American citizens, how much he tortures people and imprisons them without due process of law, how much he destroys everything America has ever stood for, it’s all “justified”.

Because God agrees with everything Bush does.

Of course, we all know that's Cheney talking to him through an implant in his teeth.

Bush is a true believer. A zealot. He doesn’t goven by intellect, wisdom, compassion and rationality, he governs by emotions and ego. He doesn't care what evidence shows is good for the country, he believes what is good for the country and what he believes is fact and if it isn't, he will make it so.

“Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me, “I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons program—I believe it, but I don’t know it.”

You can’t make life and death decisions that will affect millions on what you believe about another nation. You need to know that thing about another nation. I can believe Mr. Armitage rapes children in his basement, but I have no moral or ethical right to shoot him unless I know he rapes children in his basement.

(And even then I really should be calling the cops, but you get my point.)

I have spoken with many people who last rationalization of their support of the Bush administration is this:

““This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

Folks, for all of you that missed that session in Sunday School: #7 THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

Just because you have run out of food at your house, you do not have the right to invade you neighbor’s kitchen and take possession of his or her ‘fridge. The oil belongs to them. It’s on their land. They sell it to us. That is what is morally and ethically right. It's not their fault we have been so shortsighted as to continue to depend on fossil fuels and tightened the apron strings to the Middle East. Invading the country to control it is stealing, period.

And let me tell you something people, a nuclear strike will affect us. A LOT. This isn’t the orderly 80’s where it's just the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (with China quietly hovering in the background). Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Israel (their denial is a cute formality at this stage) and let's not forget (since the administration likes to…a lot) North Korea.

(Gee we have one country that is developing weapon capability and one that already has the capability to strike our West Coast, ruled by a meglomanincal madman who really doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself, who is in fact starving his own population...and who do we go after?

You guessed it: The Islamic one, with the oil.)

Not to mention all the nuclear material floating around the black market.

Then there is what happens if we piss off the world, and trust me, by going nuclear we will have pissed them off royaly. They did not sit powerless in the middle of our 50 year stare down with the CCCP just to get nuked by some village idiot with a God complex. They will be pissed and we have sent all our manufacturing overseas! We no longer have the ability to sustain our economy if the world starts sanctioning us. Granted, we are the world’s consumers, but Asia, China (the one with the nukes, remember), could seriously have us by the short hairs.

Not to mention nuking the country is *not* going to incite the disaffected Iranian youth to rebel. What it will do is encourage them to close ranks with their theocratic government to protect their homeland. You see, Iran is not Iraq. That little hard for the President to understand so let me spell it out: Iraq’s government was a dictatorship. Iran’s government is a parliamentary theocracy. Iraq is made up of three very disparate cultural and religious groups that really don’t like one another all that much. Iran is a culturally unified nation: Persian Shia.

Trying to incite regime change in Iran is insane, especially when we are barely holding on in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iranians want to deal with the matter of their theocracy internally, they have no interest in having an occupying army in their midst. Zip.

“Hossein, like many Iranians who served in the war, resents America for supporting Iraq in the conflict: Washington provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with satellite images of Iranian troop movements and cities, looked the other way as Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and, in 1983, sent thenbusinessman Donald Rumsfeld as a presidential envoy to Iraq, where he greeted Saddam Hussein with a handshake. But Hossein, who served as a frontline soldier, said he’s willing to forgive and forget “as long as America does not attack Iran.”

(This is a great article by the way, if you would like to see an internal picture of what the people of Iran are like rather than the government.)

That Iran is an issue that needs to be dealt with, I do not question. That we might have to not merely rattle the sabers but draw them is a distinct possibility, though one I would hope is not needed. But it looks like Bush is lining all his ducks up in the exact same fashion that he did with Iraq. He has his shady, openly discredited intelligence source (Khan), he has his “Think Tank” filled with cronies to back up his wishes with “findings”, the same lying BS to scare the country into letting him declare war.

The question is will we let him?

Harry Taylor showed us the way: I am going to attend at least one meet & greet event for each of the candidates running in my state and ask them: “The greatest threat to America’s safety, well-being and freedom is sitting in the Oval Office, what are you going to so to stop the Bush administration?” And I going to get booed? Yeah I will. But it’s time we stood up, got in our representatives faces and reminded them who they work for: Us. And that we are very angry that they allowed Bush to run this far and we’re not going to take it anymore.

I encourage people to find out who is running for their Congressional seats this November and ask them, every candidate: "What are you going to stop the Bush administration?”

Speaking of Hitler…

Is it just me or is Chavez getting scary?

I’ll Never Do It Again, Honest!

After posting a comment questioning to purpose of, o.k. mocking, sport hunting, Nextel Cup’s biggest sport hunter (well, next to Childress), Elliott had an engine fail on him toward the end of today’s race. Yes, I’m superstitious. Yes, I’m sorry. No, I’ll never make fun of sport hunting deer again.

;) :D

Mark stayed the top ten all day to finish 9th and Dale Jr. was all over the place but came back to finish 12th.

You can say one thing about Dale: He’s never boring. :)

P.S. Dear Nicole, Eva can’t do anything about the way her Fiancé drives. You need to have a “heated discussion” with someone who does: Kurt.

Speaking of Hunting

I am going to post some of what I posted to Jade’s blog (edited so it's cohesive) so you folks get an idea where I’m coming from. I've been thinking about how to approach this topic because I do believe that hunting groups and environmental groups can and should work together.

I began my political activism with environmental causes, what drew me away was the more immediate issues of the Iraq war (and man, I would love to go back to worrying about wetlands again) but I can honestly say the Environmental movement has problems. The first of which are media whores like PETA who do far less work than they do drawing attention to themselves. They're an embarrassment to animal and environmental causes. The Sierra Cub also went thought a long period of completely losing it's mind: protesting the construction of more wind farms because it might alter the migratory path of a particular swallow and other such idiocies. But at least people do more now than just focus on the cute and fuzzy creatures. The outrage over shark finning, for example, has been steady growing over the last five years. 10 to 15 year ago most people wouldn’t have understood why wetlands were vital not only to an ecosystem but to human settlement nearby (so we have to thank Katrina for something). However, there is an elitist refusal of environmental groups to work with hunting organizations, which have the exact same goal: Preservation of natural habit.

I grew up in the backwoods of New England, and I mean the BACK back woods so I grew up in a hunting society. The recession hit the state pretty hard, we needed the protein, so when October 31st rolled around everyone was out in the woods. Hell, we found out later my mom had to feed us horse meat at points so if anyone in the neighborhood got a deer or a moose (though mostly it was partridge), hosanah! No oatmeal meatloaf tonight. I suppose there was more to it than simple food procurement, but it was governed by common sense: no drinking, no pulling the trigger just because you haven’t had a chance to all day (I swear, 75% of hunting accident are the result of machismo "shootus interruptus": "I ain't had a chance to shoot nuthin'. I'm gotta blast the first thing that moves ‘cause if I don't, I have not fulfilled my manly duty!"). So I am on the only vegetarian I know who has taken part in dressing a deer.

However, the sport aspect of it I do not get.…but at least deer aren’t endangered and its licensed & regulated and having been raised in such a culture, I respect it as a cultural institution. It is certainly less of an impact on the environment than development and it does keep the herds in homeostasis with their surroundings. I hope they use all the deer at least. That if they don’t eat it all, they send it to a local homeless shelter, old folks home or someone who could use it. Send the hide to a tanner or something. A lot of guys that come back from fishing on off Baja do that in L.A.: keep maybe ten or twenty pounds of the catch for a BBQ and then send the rest off to old folk's homes.

I do believe there is an opportunity here. Hunters have the right idea, the same idea the Nature Conservancy does: If you don't want property developed, buy it. Hunting groups have parcels of land all over the country. And while they hunt, I don’t know of any decent hunter that wants to see the species they hunt go extinct. Remember the first conservationist this nation ever saw was also a big game hunter: Teddy Roosevelt. Why can’t the two groups come back together to where they started from? Makes sense to me.

(I still think people who take part in canned hunts need to be locked naked in a cage and randomly jabbed with cattle prods by by-passers for all eternity, though. That's not sport, that's cruelty and slaughter.)

You all have a good week!

My semester is winding down so I am going to be busy as heck. :)