I hear Bechtel’s contract is almost up in Iraq. I don’t know about Halliburton’s.

They’ll need a new war zone to make money in.

Iraq was such a smashing success of a war, why not do it all again in Iran, exactly the same as in Iraq?

I say 50,000 troops is plenty, especially after we have shocked and awed them with our massive air power.

Most Iranians like Americans, so we’ll likely be greeted as liberators.

We know they’re working on WMD. We know where they are located - somewhere north, spouth, east or west of Tehran.

Iran may have the bomb - now, you surely don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, do you?

Certainly no one would dispute the fact that Iran is the greatest threat in recent history to the free world?

We can just send the same troops that have been on back-to-back deployments in Iraq over to Iran.

We’ll leave maybe 20,000 troops in Iraq to ensure continued stability in Iraq.

You’re doing heckuva job, Rummy!

Now about those new contracts needed for Iran…

Apparently, George W. Bush didn’t study history at Andover or Yale.  If he did, he might recall the words of George Santayana, “Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.”  We are hearing the same old catch phrases we heard during the Vietnam conflict:  stay the course, winning hearts and minds, etc.

If future leaders of this country or our fellow citizens make the mistake of again listening to another fanatic neocon, we deserve what we will get. The whole bunch of them—Boot, Perle, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Libby ad nauseam—deserve only political oblivion.

If the United States government were to in fact provide funding for groups such as the MEK, wouldn’t that make America a state sponser of terrorism?

#36298 by Tim:
“About a year into the Iraq war, he had a column in the LA Times comparing the situtation in Iraq to the US Civil War.  He said that winning the war was a matter of replacing generals, as Lincoln had done.”

Even if the US Civil War analogy were apt (it most certainly is not), the General revolving door scheme is completely inaccurate in describing the key to victory (and a stupid idea for achieving anything useful anyways). The only way Lincoln won the Civil War was by grinding it out, until finally the rebellion simply couldn’t stand any longer (the south was a total shambles). He only replaced generals that became weary of the fighting (e.g., Gen McClellan, who ran against Lincoln in 1864 on a reconciliation platform). In the final analysis, it really didn’t matter who was in charge…of course, this revolving door process converged on Grant (Lincoln liked him, because “he fights!”), a man who could shrug his shoulders at 10,000 casualties like swatting away a fly, and then go back to his tent to drown his miseries in whiskey to wake up again and wage another day’s horror.

George Bush’s General revolving door involves getting rid of anybody who speaks up about reality (Shinseki was the first to go, many others since), and retaining those who will keep their mouths shut and tow the administration’s line. Needless to say, this is also a stupid strategy. Unlike the US Civil War, however, grinding things out this way will not lead to anything resembling victory.

Every Republician running for office sticks to the same script, we are fighting over there to keep them from fighting over hear, sounds like the War between the States back in the 19th century.  What they do not say is we want to keep the middle class in their place, so lets have a war, we can get rid of a lot of young middle class men and women, sent them to war, the ones who survive will come home to get a job, run for office (those who want a soft job, kind of like Duba). and some can hope to go on to college, and college from what the government gives out is not much, so college graduation will be years away, no G.I. bill for the veterns, and if severely wonded maybe not even Veterans Benefits, you know to keep this Tax break going someone is going broke, and that rests on the heads of the middle class which make up the majority of the american people. 

Someone made the point that the people who are kept from voting in Texas and other poor states also pay taxes, put into social security, pay local taxes and so on and so on. 

I have never seen it so that people of a certain class are discouraged from voting, I believe the current administration is racist also.

Marge from Vancouver Washington

Max Boot is prone to factual errors and faulty analogies.  About a year into the Iraq war, he had a column in the LA Times comparing the situtation in Iraq to the US Civil War.  He said that winning the war was a matter of replacing generals, as Lincoln had done. 

This Tuesday, in a column titled “Who likes Ike?” he states, “The existence of US nukes did nothing to avert a French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the rise of a communist North Vietnam bent on conquering its southern neighbor.  HELLO, Max; South Vietnam did not exist as a separate political entity until after the French withdrew and the Americans entered.  Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh troops would have won the 1954 election had not the CIA disrupted it.  There was very little sense of loyalty to South Vietnam among the people who lived there.  This was proven by the poor showing among its troops during US involvement and the fact that they lost to Viet Cong troops after US withdrawl.

Max Boot is Evil, lying, scum with only murder and larceny on his mind.

This is a FACT, and not an opinion.

Most rigthtwingers are pure scum as well.
Boot is just worse by a matter of degrees.

All this is fact, not opinion or spin.

Time to face the truth.

One of the fallacious reasons Bush and the theocons give for meddling in the Middle East is to establish democracies.  They conveniently (for them) neglect the fact that the British and the U.S. CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 in favor of the dictatorial regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose mis-governance ultimately led to the Islamic Republic of Iran we have now. 

Then there’s that democratic election in Palestine, whose winners, Hamas, we abhor, and so we are collaborating with Israel in starving them out.  And what are we going to do with the Shi’a-dominated ‘democracy’ we’ve arranged in Iraq, which will most likely become strongly allied with Shi’a Iran?  (Be careful what you ask for.)

The typical US problem: binary thinking. US politics works with the dogma: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. To support Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against USSR, Saddam Hussein against Iran and so on.
To respect the sovereignty of other countries would be a proven and long established policy.

As long as there is the overwhelming arrogance of the ruling class in America- the wealthy industrialists (don’t call me a commie) who control the mightiest companies of America (and I’m not referring to “The Jews” that so many morons think control our government’s every move)- we will stick our noses and our missiles and our young disenfranchised soldiers into the far reaches of the planet. Was Iraq a threat to us (and I don’t mean Israel) in any way? Did Israel ever ask the USA to do anything this stupid? Did Iraq have even the remotest thing to do with 9/11? Did our big buddies, the Saudis, contribute most of the funding of OBL and friends and something like 19 out of 21 of the 9/11 terrorist killers? The ruling family didn’t, but their loyal subjects did. Are we going to war with them? Did our president and his cronies manufacture a slate of “evidence” to hoodwink our spineless congress into going along with this stupid, pointless “War on Terror” that has killed 2,000+ of our soldiers and maimed countless others? Does he know how many American families are suffering because of his big balls and little brain? Does our president know how insulting it is to continually be told that we are fighting the “War On Terror” to give a legitimate name to the most illigimate and blatently criminal military action that the USA has ever been involved in? Are we safer , in any regard, as a result of this action? Have we blown our international good will forever? Is it our responsibility to take out every “bad actor” out there? Did they have the slightest notion of what they were getting us into? Did he think that 9/11 gave him carte blanche to spend a gazillion dollars destroying the infrastructure of Iraq and another gazillion dollars to sort of rebuild it, enriching his rich buddies along the way with untold amounts of graft and profiteering on the misery of our wretched military? Does he and his cronies yammer on about controlling government spending? That is the biggest joke of all. Let’s just run a tab on this Iraq thing. Was the action in Afganistan justified? Yes. Was it botched and ended prematurely? Yes. Are there any repercussions there now? Did we pussy-foot with the Pakistani’s and let OBL get off scott-free? Did they not promote an attitude that anyone who had the gall to question this insanity was unpatriotic? Is Senator Hagel a pariah in his own party because he asked questions like why are we doing this and what is the goal of this action? Is it not our president’s sacred duty to keep us out of conflicts that have nothing to do with our security? Does he think the UN fact finding committee and Hans Blix were completely incompetent? Was it proper to compromise an operative of the CIA because her husband exposed evidence of the administrations lies? Is this ridiculous boondoggle costing us like 2 billion dollars a day and there is literally no end in sight? Is this degenerating into a civil war and neither side is our ally? Did the evil dictator Hussein need to talk a big game (WMD’s) with a potential of conflict with his neighbors looming? Should our experts have recognized this as just a bunch of talk to keep Iran at bay? Does this have anything to do with oil? It probably does, but it is pretty abstract. It’s not like we can just take it for ourselves with everyone watching. It has to be dressed up some how. I don’t get it. Does it have to do with the criticism leveled at dad because he didn’t get the bad guy in our last, but decidedly more legitimate, fight with Iraq. Was he spoiling for war long before 9/11? Does he blame Clinton and the liberals and the democrats for every problem that we have? Does the buck stop anywhere in the general vicinity of him (GW)? Do they criticize anybody who is critical and does not have a better plan? Can anybody tell me how to get any of the toothpaste back in the tube after I took off the cap and jumped on it from about 5 or 6 feet up? I can’t get too excited about how some journalist sees our role in Iran, good or bad,  when it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. We have an imbecile in charge of the White House. He is out stumping for fellow republicans and warning of the dire consequences if the democrats are free to “control the debate”. This guy seriously belongs behind bars. I’m GODDAMNED SERIOUS. The only way that we could be in worse shape is if we had been nuked. Stand by for further developments. Has there ever been a more concerted effort to betray the trust of the shmucks, I mean citizens? He makes Nixon look like Pollyanna, whatever that means. Hey that Clinton was really immoral, why he bonked a chick and everything. Gee, what has good ole god-fearing GW done? What is GW going to do next? The shame is, I don’t have all of that much faith in the opposition. The president would have us think that it would be much worse with the donkey’s in control. I don’t think anyone could screw it up any worse.

Have a nice day! 

Max Boot is another Likud-NeoCon who wants to spill US blood to defeat Israel’s enemies. He wants to ‘reshape’ the middle east so that Israel is safe to pursue its racist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Afterall you could never expect Israelis to live in a democratic state with sub human Arabs. Give Boot the boot!

The first time I saw Max was on TV the day after Powell gave his speech at the Un and Max said Powell presented undeniable proof about WMDs.
Last week he had an article saying that technology is the answer to winning wars and that is why Germany lost.
The ass evidently is unaware that Germany was the leading scientific nation before WW11 and that in fact Werner Von Braun and other Germans were responsible for the advance of both the US and Russia bomb projects
What he does is show that right wing intellectuakl elites who are leading Cheney through the nose are real world idiots

A lot of people think Iraq is a disaster. Look at it this way:

When will Iraq again be lobbing scuds into Israel?

When will Iraq oil reach market in quantities sufficient to lower oil prices?

When will the warbucks companies again see such cash flow?

Would Boot and his oil and warbucks buddies like to see the same in Iran?

Can you spell inevitable?

william

>>>Frankly, “the only serious option left” is to start bombing the neocons and the thecons. <<<<

Precidely we need to get guns, etc. That is the only way to deal with Republicans/Fascists.

Max Boot is not playing with a full deck, or as my Brit friends would say, he’s not wrapped too tightly.  (Before I fired the LATimes, after they fired Scheer, I occasionally read Mr. Boot - so I know of what I speak.)  He’s only one among many essayists getting mega-press ink these days who consistently refutes his own arguments, which, because they’re specious in the first place, are easily refuted, but it does make for a peculiar read.

1) the Shah of Iran went to the Ford Administration (think Cheney, Chief of Staff, Rumsfeld, Sec. of Defense) and this dictator was supported in his idea of Iran developing nuclear power as the oil was best used as a commodity (cite:  an interview on Democracy Now).

2) the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a, I think I’ve got this right, “Fatwa,” against using nuclear weapons (making it considerably unlikely that the President would go against this religious dictate)(cit: op. cit.).

Let’s get real, people.  The CIA and Israeli Secret Police taught the Shah how to torture his people (cite:  “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzer).

We’ve no right to dictate anything to them.  Not our business.

FYI, Mark

“Though ruling out an outright invasion, he advocates doing “to Iran what the Iranians are doing to us in Iraq,” that is, “funneling weapons and money to militias that are killing our soldiers.” Among the militias to which he advocates funneling weapons and money is the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK)”

Oh, brilliant - that kind of thing worked out so terrifically well in the case of Afghanistan, didn’t it.

Max Boot is another one of those conservative warriors who never himself served in the military.
He’s still young enough to put on a uniform, but instead he lives the good life while urging more troops and more wars. Disgusting!!

Don’t be naive. Anyone who belongs to the council on foreign relations (CFR) has one thing on their mind: how to monopolize the world, principally by monopolizing its resources, mainly oil. Without oil, no modern war is possible. Clearly, Iran’s dissidents want nothing to do with American “help.” But they shall have it nonetheless, because the same people who run the CFR also run the Federal Reserve and the US Gov’t.

Look at a map. Iran is sandwiched between iraq and saudi arabia on the west, and pakistan and afhanistan on the east. The Caspian Sea is to the North. Oil and gas are everywhere in this region, which contains perhaps 60-70% of the world’s remaining oil and gas. The US has military bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It is only a matter of time before the US manufacture’s some excuse to get troops into Iran and put bases there, too. We don’t have enough “volunteer” troops to put ground forces in without a draft, so the option of bombing nuclear sites is the only (miltary) option.

Bravo to Kerry for growing a spine, but it doesn’t matter who is in power here; Bill Clinton belonged to the CFR, for example, and I’m sure that Kerry does, too. The elections are a joke (see the HBO documentary on Nov 2nd, ‘Hacking Democracy’), but even that fact hides the reality that we live in a one-party state. Perhaps the Iranians should send a delegation to help us out.

Frankly, “the only serious option left” is to start bombing the neocons and the thecons.

“Like Ganji, those dissidents want the support of global civil society—human rights groups, intellectuals, NGOs—but not of foreign powers.”

It should be pointed out that a good number of NGOs, human rights groups, and intelectual think tanks are on the governmnet payroll.  Especially, but not exclusively, in the US.  This, of course, means government purse strings.