Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Wind Will Carry Us
Big story at Raw Story today.
Larisa Alexandrovna (who - if you somehow don't know - broke the story that former CIA agent Valerie Plame had been working on Iran WMD when she was outed by Bush Administration officials) and Muriel Kane (one of the best damn researchers on the planet) have a story called A hidden history: Administration's move towards Iran strike dates back six years which accompanies a Buildup to Iran timeline.
Here's a short excerpt from the first Raw Story Investigates project:
The escalation of US military planning on Iran is only the latest chess move in a six-year push within the Bush Administration to attack Iran, a RAW STORY investigation has found.
While Iran was named a part of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, efforts to ignite a confrontation with Iran date back long before the post-9/11 war on terror. Presently, the Administration is trumpeting claims that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the CIA’s own analysis shows and positing Iranian influence in Iraq’s insurgency, but efforts to destabilize Iran have been conducted covertly for years, often using members of Congress or non-government actors in a way reminiscent of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.
When we got the first transcript of Bush's State of the Union address at Raw Story the other day, the first thing I did was search for the number of times Iran was used.
Markos Kaminis wrote at the Wall Street blog SeekingAlpha:
What we believe will garner investors' attention is Iran, unless President Bush has learned from his now infamous mention of the "Axis of Evil" in that speech we will never forget, post 9/11. I think the president may avoid alerting Iran of its potentially impending fate, considering our second air craft carrier fleet has yet to reach the Persian Gulf. However, if he does mention Iran, I believe you can expect a volatile market on Wednesday and sharply rising oil prices. I strongly believe this president considers confronting Iran during his tenure, just keeping his word. And if he's going to start that fire, he would probably prefer to finish it before he leaves office. That's why I strongly believe the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities and whatever havoc that may follow will happen in 2007. I believe that any indication of that in his speech, or any "Axis" level speak will be enough to concern oil traders, and drive the return of normal negative correlation between equities and energy.
The answer was five; which worried me, as does this:
Edwards: 'Iran must know world won't back down':
In a speech at a conference in Herzliya, Israel, former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) took aim at Iran, warning that the "world won't back down." The 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, who recently launched a new presidential campaign, also said that Israel should be allowed to join NATO.
Although Edwards has criticized the war in Iraq, and has urged bringing the troops home, the former senator firmly declared that "all options must remain on the table," in regards to dealing with Iran, whose nuclear ambition "threatens the security of Israel and the entire world."
"Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons," Edwards said. "For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse."
Edwards continued, "To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats."
The last line by Edwards is interesting.
What do you call it when in the same sentence you blast someone for myth-making you help spread a myth of your own?
Hint: think Alanis song...
While Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly has said a lot of messed up stuff he never used the word map when he referred to wiping away the Zionist regime...and that's regime as opposed to country.
Here's a link if you happen to be a curious Edwards staffer: And it was easily Googlable, dude.
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