Iran, Texas, The Difference Is?

And one can tell the difference, how? Iran:

Iran has imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be based on Western schools of thought and therefore incompatible with Islamic teachings, state radio reported Sunday.

The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran's conservative leadership — women's studies and human rights.

"The content of the current courses in the 12 subjects is not in harmony with religious fundamentals and they are based on Western schools of thought," senior education official Abolfazl Hassani told state radio.

Sounds a little bit too close to this.

The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.

Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue.

[snip]

One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that "there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature", that "there is a creator" and "government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual".

Barton says children should be taught that Christianity is the key to "American exceptionalism" because the structure of its democratic system is a recognition that human beings are fallible, and that religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen.

Food for thought.

First Pakistan, Now Afghanistan

Afghanistan has banned eight private security firms, including the company formerly known as Blackwater, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai told reporters Sunday.

Among the companies whose operations are being dissolved are Xe (formerly known as Blackwater), NCL, FHI, White Eagles and other small companies, spokesman Waheed Omer said. Both international and domestic companies were affected.

Weapons and ammunition belonging to these companies has been seized, he said.

Karzai finding his cajones.

A vital border crossing remained closed to U.S. and NATO supply trucks for a third day Saturday, a sign that Islamabad's desire to avoid a domestic backlash over a NATO incursion that killed three Pakistani troops outweighs - for now - its desire to stay on good terms with America.

Two U.S. missile strikes that killed 16 people in a northwest Pakistani tribal region, meanwhile, showed that America has no intention of sidelining a tactic it considers highly successful, even if the strikes could add to tensions.

The closing of the Torkham border to NATO trucks has exposed the struggles and contradictions at the heart of the U.S.-Pakistan alliance against Islamist militancy.

Nice work, U.S.A. How are those drones working for you? Got any tips on more diplomacy?

Afghanistan and Pakistan (with WMD, cough, cough) on the one side of Iran, while we are still occupying Iraq, on the other side of Iran.

Is it just me, or does this position look a little troubled for the warmongering U.S. and those supporters? Does anyone with a grain of salt for a brain see how invading Iran, or bombing anything in Iran, will have disastrous results for the U.S.?

We really aren't wanted in Iraq. We really aren't wanted in Afghanistan. And we clearly are not wanted in Pakistan.

Great Middle East policy, guys.

UPDATE: HT to Rachel Maddow Tweet

The U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to significantly expand the CIA's campaign against militants in their Pakistani havens.

The shift in strategic focus reflects the U.S. view that, with Pakistan's military unable or unwilling to do the job, more U.S. force against terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan is now needed to turn around the struggling Afghan war effort across the border.

In recent months, the military has loaned Predator and Reaper drones to the Central Intelligence Agency to give the agency more firepower to target and bombard militants on the Afghan border.

It appears that the U.S. is hell bent on taking over the Middle East. After that, what's next? Personally, I would not be antagonizing a country that has nukes. Just saying.

Nobody Listens, Nobody Cares

The Neda video.



I mourn for my brothers and sisters in Iran. As a Baha'i, Persia has a personal place hisorically for me in my life, and I have been surrounded by Persians and their culture for over 40 years.

Is Baha'i a religion or a political organization?

I often wondered why many of my Jewish friends tended to dismiss me when I would favor the attitude of the Palestinians over the Israelis, especially when I get the "you’ve never been persecuted" look, or comment. Then I read this article which reminded me of my upbringing in the Baha'i Faith, and how Baha’is have been persecuted, ever since the religion came into existence.

Putting that aside, for the moment, let me just say that I have never been comfortable with the hard line Israeli attitude since the 1967 war, nor with how they took land that was not theirs, and displaced a great many Palestinians in the process. I understand the level of persecution and aggression directed towards Israel since it was granted statehood in the 1940's, but there has to be a solution that resolves the issue of the land that was taken, and Israel has conceded that it will never give back the land it took from the Palestinians. Therein lies the permanent dilemma.

First there was the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) whose mandate was a return to Palestinian self-rule. Eventually, the PLO stood for a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Israel. Yasser Arafat became the recognized leader of the PLO by most of the world, including Israel. The PLO sought support from other Arab nations such as Jordan, Syria and Egypt, and over the past 40 years, has been helped by these countries and then expelled from these countries, depending on the changing ideology of the Arabs at specific times in history and their own peculiar problems within their own nations. Suffice it to say that the PLO was oftentimes supported by other Arab nations in its continued quest for Palestinian independence, and sometimes abandoned by the same Arab nations when political pressure was exerted by Israel, the United States, and other leading countries. The PLO has always been considered by Israel and the United States to be a terrorist organization until around the early 1990's. Most of the world had recognized the PLO to be the representative of the Palestinians.

PLO committed many terrorists acts in concert with other Arab nations’ political terrorist groups in Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The United States, after 9/11, reclassified the PLO as a terrorist organization in 2004.

In the Arab nations, terrorism is almost a common comport to daily living and politics. Infighting amongst many organizations, all of which mainly had in common the opposition to the state of Israel, created many diverse and disparate terrorist groups, most of which could not inflict a great deal of damage – at least not on the level that Israel has shown it has the capacity to do.

Now we move on to Hamas, which was originally founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an Islamic charity, and an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and was at the time of its inception supported by the Israeli government. This support by Israel was, of course, an effort to undermine the PLO’s influence in the area, and especially with Palestine. Israel considered Hamas as a counter balance to the PLO, the former being a charitable group, the latter a terrorist group. Thereafter, based on Arafat’s support of Saddam Hussein’s invasion into Kuwait, Arab groups began to withdraw their financial support of the PLO and direct it to Hamas. As the PLO and its influence was waning and Hamas was on the rise, the following is interesting to note:

"The 1993 Oslo agreement inaugurated the final phase of the PLO's degeneration, as its leadership -- or rather the leading nucleus of this leadership, bypassing the official leading bodies -- was granted guardianship over the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This came in exchange for what amounted to a capitulation: the PLO leadership abandoned the minimal conditions that were demanded by the Palestinian negotiators from the 1967 occupied territories, above all an Israeli pledge to freeze and reverse the construction of settlements which were colonizing their land. The very conditions of this capitulation -- which doomed the Oslo agreements to tragic failure as critics very rightly predicted from the start -- made certain that the shift in the popular political mood would speed up. The Zionist state took advantage of the lull brought to the 1967 territories by the Palestinian Authority's fulfillment of the role of police force by proxy ascribed to it, by drastically intensifying the colonization and building an infrastructure designed to facilitate its military control over these territories. Accordingly, the discredit of the PA increased inexorably. This loss in public support hampered more and more its ability to crack down on the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement -- as was required from it and as it began attempting as early as 1994 -- let alone its ability to marginalize the Islamic movement politically and ideologically. Moreover, the transfer of the PLO bureaucracy from exile into the 1967 territories, as a ruling apparatus entrusted with the task of surveillance over the population that waged the Intifada, quickly led to its corruption reaching abysmal levels -- something that the population of the territories hadn't seen first-hand before. At the same time, Hamas, like most sections of the Islamic fundamentalist mass movement -- in contrast with "substitutionist" strictly terrorist organizations of which al-Qaeda has become the most spectacular example -- was keen on paying attention to popular basic needs, organizing social services, and cultivating a reputation of austerity and incorruptibility."

Let’s switch now to Hezbollah, which although based in Lebanon, has been supported by the Iranian government. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah was defined by its own actions from its inception, as terrorists. It was linked to the PLO until they distanced themselves from the PLO after Israel began massive attacks against Lebanon.

Hamas eventually went on to win parliamentary victory in Palestine territories, much to the shock of the United States. From Juan Cole:

"The sweeping electoral victory of Hamas is but one of the products of the intensive use made by the United States in the Muslim world, since the 1950's, of Islamic fundamentalism as an ideological weapon against both progressive nationalism and communism. This was done in close collaboration with the Saudi kingdom -- a de facto U.S. protectorate almost from its foundation in 1932. The promotion of the most reactionary interpretation of the Islamic religion, exploiting deeply-rooted popular religious beliefs, led to this ideology filling the vacuum left by the exhaustion by the 1970's of the two ideological currents it served to fight. The road was thus paved in the entire Muslim world for the transformation of Islamic fundamentalism into the dominant expression of mass national and social resentment, to the great dismay of the U.S. and its Saudi protectorate. The story of Washington's relation with Islamic fundamentalism is the most striking modern illustration of the sorcerer's apprenticeship. (I have described this at length in my Clash of Barbarisms.)"

According to Iran, the Baha'i Faith is not a religion, it is a political organization bent on the destruction of Islam, and Iran, in particular. The religion is banned in Iran, and many Baha'is are arrested on a regular basis. Therefore, its members are considered terrorists.

From Wikipedia: "The Iranian constitution that was drafted during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1906 set the groundwork for the institutionalized persecution of Bahá'ís. While the constitution was modeled on Belgium's 1831 constitution, the provisions guaranteeing freedom of worship were omitted. Subsequent legislation provided some recognition to Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians as equal citizens under state law, but it did not guarantee freedom of religion and ‘gave unprecedented institutional powers to the clerical establishment.’ The Islamic Republic of Iran, that was established after the Iranian revolution, recognizes four religions, whose status is formally protected: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Members of the first three minority religions receive special treatment under Iranian law. For example, their members are allowed to drink alcohol, and representatives of several minority communities are guaranteed seats in parliament."

Which brings me back to the universal question: Is Baha'i a religion or a political organization with terrorist thoughts and/or activities on its mind or under its belt? It is obvious that it is a religion, but Iran has chosen to ignore that fact and raise it to the level of terrorist group, subject to penalty of death. Yet, Iran supports Hezbollah, whose main operation is the destruction of Israel, while it allows Judaism to exist within its borders. Why, then, is Iran so threatened by the Baha’is? Why are they not allowed recognition within Iran, the country of the religion’s birth?

All along, it's been the Saudis who are the enemy. P.S., My 1,250th Post

BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

It still amazes me that we are even in Iraq. The Saudis are our enemy, not the Iraqis. The 9/11 attackers were Saudi, not Iraqi. Bin Laden is Saudi, not Iraqi. The Bush family has been in bed with the Saudis from day one. If not for the Bush family, the Saudis, including Bin Laden's family, would not have been so quickly evacuated from the United States after 9/11.

Now that the Bush family has their war in Iraq, they keep trying to blame Syria and Iran so they can invade their countries and make their war profiteer friends more money off the bleeding of the United States Treasury. But, all along, it's been the Saudis who are the enemy.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never provide sufficient rationale for a one-sided thermonuclear engagement."

Read the piece by Eli about Iran, over at Firedoglake.

Deja ... ?

If America has a brain left, we'll all call for complete and total hand-tying on these war mongers if they even LOOK at Iran funny.

Ok, so that made me really laugh. Courtesy of Hoffmania!

Setting Our Sights On Attacking Iran

A little tidbit from Frank Rich at the NYT, courtesy of Raw Story:

Cheney was honest, at least, when he said that the White House's Iraq policy would remain "full speed ahead!" no matter what happened on Nov. 7. Now it is our patriotic duty -- politicians, the press and the public alike -- to apply the brakes. Our failure to check the administration when it rushed into Iraq in 2003 will look even more shameful to history if we roll over again for a reboot in 2007. For all the belated Washington scrutiny of the war since the election, and for all the heralded (if so far symbolic) congressional efforts to challenge it, too much lip service is still being paid to the deceptive PR strategies used by the administration to sell its reckless policies. This time we must do what too few did the first time: call the White House on its lies. Lies should not be confused with euphemisms like "incompetence" and "denial."

I am amazed that this group has not deviated from their past lies with respect to the lead up to attacking Iran vis-a-vis Iraq. If they weren't so serious, and the consequences so dire, I'd be laughing my butt off (LMBO).

You know damn well this country, or Israel, alone or in tandem, will attack Iran this year. That is a given. What is not a given is what, exactly, will Congress and the American people do about it. Will impeachment talk actually become a reality?

Iraq ... Iran ... Deja Vu

“That’s the way he sees the world,” Russert explained. “His rationale, he believes, for going into Iraq still was one that was sound.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews then interjected, “And it could be the rationale for going into Iran at some point.”

Russert paused for a few seconds before responding, “It’s going to be very interesting to watch that issue and we have to cover it very, very carefully and very exhaustively.”

Well, that would be a first.

Amen. H/T to Digby.

Here They Go Again

VIENNA - UN inspectors have protested to the U.S. government and a Congressional committee about a report on Iran's nuclear work, calling parts of it "outrageous and dishonest," according to a letter obtained by Reuters.

The letter said the errors suggested Iran's nuclear fuel program was much more advanced than a series of IAEA reports and Washington's own intelligence assessments have determined.

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: "We felt obliged to put the record straight with regard to the facts on what we have reported on Iran. It's a matter of the integrity of the IAEA."

The letter said the report falsely described Iran to have enriched uranium at its pilot centrifuge plant to weapons-grade level in April, whereas IAEA inspectors had made clear Iran had enriched only to a low level usable for nuclear power reactor fuel.

The U.S. has also said that mass quantities of uranium gas await enrichment, which would ultimately be used for the construction of some 40 nuclear bombs.

"Furthermore, the IAEA Secretariat takes strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion" that the IAEA opted to remove a senior safeguards inspector for supposedly concluding the purpose of Iran's programme was to build weapons, it said.

The letter said the congressional report contained "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion" that the inspector was dumped for having not adhered to an alleged IAEA policy barring its "officials from telling the whole truth" about Iran.

The letter recalled clashes between the IAEA and the Bush administration before the 2003 Iraq war over findings cited by Washington about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that proved false, and underlined continued tensions over Iran's dossier.

"This (committee report) is deja vu of the pre-Iraq war period where the facts are being maligned and attempts are being made to ruin the integrity of IAEA inspectors," said a Western diplomat familiar with the agency and IAEA-U.S. relations.

Sent to the head of the House of Representatives' Select Committee on Intelligence by a senior aide to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the letter said an Aug. 23 committee report contained serious distortions of IAEA findings on Iran's activity.

Diplomats say the inspector remains IAEA Iran section head.

The IAEA has been inspecting Iran's nuclear program since 2003. Although it has found no hard evidence that Iran is working on atomic weapons, it has uncovered many previously concealed activities linked to uranium enrichment, a process of purifying fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.

Well, Duh, Maybe There IS NO Direct Evidence, Dummy

A key House committee issued a stinging critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran yesterday, charging that the CIA and other agencies lack "the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments" on Tehran's nuclear program, its intentions or even its ties to terrorism.

The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. But it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion.

I added the emphasis in the original.

My response to that is because maybe the there is no direct evidence to support that assertion, just as it was the same with no direct evidence to support the claim that Sadaam and al Qaeda had any connections to each other.

You'd think by now this administration would notice that the rest of America is not buying all their crap as of late.

Of course, let's not forget the fact that Cheney is, as usual, getting his information from a completely different source, so that when it comes time to do his Iraq, I mean Iran dance, we'll all now the score and can hum along.

UPDATE: Great discussion over at The Carpetbagger, where I came upon this funny quote by commentor Dan:

Did the neoboobs not learn the lessons of Iraq? It looks like they're still thinking war is the game Risk. "I will attack Persia with six armies from the Middle East and come'on triple sixes!"

I Was Israel’s Dupe - By Tom Hayden

One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.

Excellent read. Hat tip to That's Another Fine Mess.

US Bigger Threat In Middle East? Doooahh!

The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is a greater threat to Mideast stability than the government in Iran, according to a poll of European and Muslim countries.

People in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Russia rated America's continuing involvement in Iraq a worse problem than Iran and its nuclear ambitions, according to polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Views of U.S. troops in Iraq were even more negative in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan.

As if that is startling news. Come on, guys.

What Sectarian Violence?

In Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Islam, Shias are known as rafida, which means “rejectionists.” A highly pejorative term, it implies that Shias are outside Islam, and to Shias it is the equivalent of being called “nigger.” This is the same word Sunni radicals in Iraq and the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, use to describe Shias. Saudi Arabia’s two million Shias have been persecuted, prevented from celebrating their festivals, and occasionally threatened with extermination. Saudi Arabia is also the main exporter of foreign fighters to the Iraqi jihad to fight both the Americans and the Shia “rafida” collaborators.

But, to hear Bush speak, it is Iran that is the main exporter of foreign fighters to the Iraqi jihad. So, which is it? Huh? Well?

Hat tip to Juan Cole. The above quote is from Nir Rosen. Read more of his rather lengthy piece entitled "On the Ground in Iraq - The roots of sectarian violence."

Still Trying To Connect The Dots?

Such bright contradictions were on display in Bush’s latest strategically bankrupt “plan” for victory: spending $3.3 billion to fight the improvised explosive devices(IEDs) that Bush now claims Iran is smuggling into Iraq — to the very Shiite forces that won the U.S.-engineered election and are positioned to form the first real post-Hussein government. The IEDs, mentioned a whopping 26 times in the president’s speech, have obviously come to replace that nonexistent WMD threat as the centerpiece of Bush’s Iraq policy. We will stop them, he says, by bumping anti-IED-related spending by a factor of 22, from $150 million in 2004 to $3.3 billion. “We’re putting the best minds in America to work on this effort,” Bush said.

Why not put a few of them to work on figuring how to extract the U.S. military from Iraq instead? After all, that is where all the IEDs happen to be exploding.

I posted earlier about Bush's new WMD threat, the IEDs, and how he's trying to connect them to Iran, much like he did with the 9/11-Saddam Hussein-Iraq-AlQeada thread. 26 times he mentioned the IEDs. Talk about slinging the propaganda!

The polls may be down for the big guy, and this time around, the American public will have to factor the "where have I heard that story before" into their thinking, but I am not of a mind to think that this will matter to our goverment currently in power. After all, it's clear that the majority of our elected representatives (and that includes those nasty DINO's) vote the corporate way, not the constituents' way.

No Proof Of Bush Claim Iran Supplying Iraq With IED Components

I posted a week ago about Bush's new lies about Iran providing Iraq with components to make IEDs. Well, it appears I was right!

The top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday the United States does not have proof that Iran's government is responsible for Iranians smuggling weapons and military personnel into Iraq.

President George W. Bush said on Monday components from Iran were being used in powerful roadside bombs used in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been inside Iraq.

Asked whether the United States has proof that Iran's government was behind these developments, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing, "I do not, sir."

There you have it. Proof, not that at this point in time we aren't swimming in pools of proof concerning the Bush Administration lies, but proof nonetheless that the claim of Iran supplying Iraq with components to build IEDs is not supported by any factual evidence.

Isn't anyone else just as fed up with this crap, as I am?

Marching On To Iran

Here we go again.

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

Ummm, uh, where I have I heard that before.

Another way Brian Ross is failing to be in any manner "investigative" is in failing to find out or inform the public that this isn't any kind of exclusive - it is actually old news from
way back in October last year.

Back then, the British media were full of the accusations that improved IED's using motion detectors as triggers were being sent to Iraq from Iran. They were being sent, according to British claims, to the Sadr militia - an organisation that the US has gone out of it's way to placate - but that too isn't mentioned by Ross. Just as now, absolutely no evidence was brought forward to show that the Iranian government were at all involved... and then the kerfuffle suddenly stopped. Why?

Well as I wrote at the time, it was discovered that the new, deadly IED's were using a British design that had been stupidly given to the IRA by British intelligence and then passed around various terror groups the IRA were allied with. Major egg on faces - story dropped.

I am dumbfounded that this administration would do exactly the same thing again, only this time it isn't uranium tubes, it's IED's. And it isn't Iraq, it's Iran.

About the only thing that is different is that the American public is not so compliant as it was back in 2003 in the lead up to the war on Iraqis. I doubt this administration will be able to muster the popular support for another war based on dubious charges.

More likely, though, is that Bush is looking to just send some bombs over there, specific strikes at specific targets. There's no mention of invasion like with Iraq. However, a move of that nature will completely blow up in our faces, and can only be the start of WWIII, for Iran will not sit down and take it. And by forcing Israel and the US's hand, who will both respond to any aggression by Iran with overkill, you will have a major world war erupting, one in which there will certainly be no coalition of the willing on the side of the US and Israel.

At least, that's my dire prediction.

Bolton Ready To Nuke Iran

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.

Doesn't this just scare the shit out of you on a Monday morning?

However the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, visiting Washington last week, encountered sharply different views within the Bush administration. The most hawkish came from Mr Bolton. According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, the envoy told the MPs: "They must know everything is on the table and they must understand what that means. We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."

US military denies Iraq on brink of civil war

The US military rejected the idea of a brewing civil war in Iraq, saying the number of confirmed major attacks on mosques across the country were only seven.

Ha ha ha. Like anyone is believing what the US military has to say about it?

"Some drive-by shootings against mosques have been reported ... that's where we are. So we are not seeing civil war igniting in Iraq. We are not seeing 77, 80, 100 mosques damaged in Iraq. We are not seeing death on the streets."

Move along, nothing to see here. Meanwhile...

Shiites came out in the thousands all over the Shiite south on Wednesday to protest. Quoting Sunni Arab spokesmen, the wire services are saying 75 Sunni mosques have been attacked, with two burned to the ground and 3 Sunni clergymen assassinated, with 6 Sunni Arabs dead altoghether in the violence.

And then there is this ...

Amid reports of more than 100 killings nationwide -- many of them Sunni Muslims -- the Sunni Accord Front announced it is leaving political unity talks after meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

But, face it, folks, when the US military rejects the idea there is an uprising, then by golly, there is no uprising!

Yeah, and pigs fly out of Mike Meyers butt, too.

You Say "Stop-Loss," I Say Involuntary Draft

"When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you're edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism."

This is what the Bush administration has done to the Army. If things do not dramatically change, and I mean an indefatigable turn from any and all desires to start a war with Iran, we can immediately kiss our all-volunteer military service goodbye. As long as the likes of Rummy can still face a camera and say everything is just hunky dory, and certain segments of Americana lap it up, conscription will become a fact of life in the not-too-distant future.

The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called "stop-loss," but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat.

Stop-loss. Just another word to desribe indentured.

"The persistent use of stop-loss underscores the fact that the war-fighting burden is being carried by a handful of soldiers while the vast majority of citizens incur no sacrifice at all."

That is it, in a nutshell. This so-called war on terror, which is a misnomer anyway, is only minimally supported, in a physical way, by the Republican party members and electorate. In the blogosphere (hat tip to skippy), we call them keyboard commandos. In the real world, I'd call them cowards. Unfortunately, the term "cowards" has been usurped by the right-wingers and turned around to mean any Democrat, liberal or opponent of the current regime's policies. Double-speak is the norm for this crowd.