from Robert Parry, Consortium News, Jan 10,:

” At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.

  Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue - in the country and the world - in a very acute way.”

  Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.

  “The President’s inference was this: that an entire region would blow up from the inside, the core being Iraq, from the inside out,” Williams said, paraphrasing Bush.”

The USS Stennis is to steam through the Straits of Juan Defuca on Tue on its way to the Gulf.

We have a chief executive that is out of control!

“We’re waste deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.”  from Pete Seeger

Jon
Connecting the Dots: From human behaviors to ecosystem collapse
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org

Contrast this article with the clips of Condi in front of congress.  Our representatives appear to be shamefully simplistic in their analysis.

Forget all these sectarian details. The over riding big picture is that Iran is not going to let things settle down there and then position us to go after them—as we have promised we are going to.

The storms of war over Iran are gathering: US raid on Iranian consulate, and the arrest of 5 staff, in the Iraq city of Arbil. Another carrier, USS Stennis, departing Bremerton, WA this month for the Gulf, Bush surge speech rhetoric, and Israeli recent announcement that it is doing bombing practice in preparation for an attactk—nuclear bunker busters no less.

jon eden

Connecting the Dots: From human behavior to Ecosystem decline
http://StudentsforTheEarth.org

No one doubts the courage of US troops in Iraq. No one doubted the courage of German troops at Stalingrad, either, or Japanese troops at Iwo. That’s not the issue.

The good news is that the man Bush has selected as his top military man in Iraq is David Petraeus, a man who, accoridng to the Book Fiasco is the one general in Iraq who has been most sensitive to the need to address the political needs in Iraq as well as the military.  Petraeus has a PhD in international relations from Princeton, and is the one hero in Fiasco.  If there is any hope that we will succeed in Iraq it is Petaeus.

The pursuit of an impossible ideal is the best way of keeping everyone’s nose to the wall.  Military people are schooled in the arts of force and fraud, and yet they can’t seem to spot when it is being used against them.

Nanoparticles of depleted uranium may silence a world full of lazy cowards forever.  (We won’t be missed.)

With out a doubt this article goes to the very core of the problems in Iraq. No amount of money and military power can change the reality of the political in fighting in Iraq. What Bush’s Neo-Cons fail to understand that just like their own American faith based Neo-Con political originazations that are willing to to kill if anything that gets in their way, the Suni and Shite are on the same agenda. The difference in this armed struggle is that the Americans are the invaders and the Sunni and Shite are fighting in a civil war.

Bush is done listening.

Unfortunately for America and Iraq, a great many high-ranking officers, including one former general and Secretary of State, all-too-willingly went along in silence—when not outright actively assisting in the deception—while militarily inexperienced and ideologically hysterical maniacs launched America on a criminal invasion and occupation of a country that had never threatened America nor had any conceivable means of doing so. Millions of people all over the world saw this clearly and knew better. They marched in the streets and tried to stop the crime. No help from the fuck-up-and-move up brass there. So, how about acknowledging that the “leftists,” “fringe liberals,” “anti-war peaceniks,” and “dirty fucking hippies” got this one right a whole lot more honestly and courageously than all the stuffed-shirt, ticket-punching generals of the Warfare-Welfare/Makework-Militarism complex? And then tell us why we pay these people such big bucks and give them their own private jumbo jets to fly around in?

America’s military doesn’t have a “mission” or “goals” in Iraq—and never did. The whole bogus misadventure stems from no other desire than Deputy Dubya Bush’s infantile insistence on playing commander-in-briefs no matter how many die for nothing or how many trillions of dollars our descendants will find themselves obligated to work their entire lives paying off. Nothing here but rapacious intergenerational depredation. Thanks a lot, generals. I hope you enjoy those pensions, benefits, and contracts handing out your “advice” on CNN and other Orwellian propaganda outlets for our discredited government. As if anyone in their right mind would heed your worthless words. If you only had an ounce of the “improvisation” that those rag-tag, dead-ender “insurgents” seem to possess in such boundless amounts, then perhaps you wouldn’t keep getting so many thousands of your subordinates killed and maimed.

Parkinson’s Law, meet the Peter Principle: i.e., the upper ranks of the words fattest, dumbest miliary “leadership” since William Westmoreland defoliated South Vietnam and made starving, landless slum dwellers out of formerly self-sufficient rice farmers. Where does America get these people? Or do we just make them on demand like bad hamburgers at a fast food franchise? Time to stop eulogizing these eunuchs and start firing them by the trainload. At least that might save our kids and grandkids—if not us, too—a few hours of sweatshop labor working overtime off the clock at Wal Mart.

America doesn’t have too few soldiers. America has too many wars. Enough Warfare-Welfare and Makework-Militarism. America doesn’t have a small enough military. Time for regime change in America. Our regime might work for the generals and their rampant careerism, but it doesn’t work anymore for the rest of us.