The Crazies
Mohamed ElBaradei is acting quite undiplomatic to stop the people who want to bomb Iran.
"I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis innocent civilians are dying," he said. "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'"
But for "the crazies" Iran is only small change. The real perceived enemies, the last big holdouts against a global empires are Russia and China.
They are the targets "the crazies" are really yearning for. In a well sourced piece in the Congressional Quarterly Jeff Stein writes:
The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
[...]
“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”
[...]
The independence issue, agrees China experts Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon, is Beijing’s third rail—touch it and you die.“Even if the odds are fairly low of miscalculation leading to war, and war then bringing in the United States, this scenario is scary,” they recently wrote in The Washington Times.
A Taiwanese declaration of independence, they said, “could result in the first major war between nuclear weapons states in history, with no guarantee it would be successfully concluded prior to a major escalation.”
"The crazies" certainly didn't talk to Taiwan like this without some coverage from the vice-side of the White House.
Though some names have changed, the "new crazies" are the same as the old ones who started the war on Iraq. At least the top guy didn't change at all. The big targets may be out of reach right now, but the crazies are still very active on the smaller one:
[S]enior officials at the State Department are expressing fury over reports that members of Vice President Cheney’s staff have told others that Mr. Cheney believes the diplomatic track with Iran is pointless, and is looking for ways to persuade Mr. Bush to confront Iran militarily.
[...]
In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney’s staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the report, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders were made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs.
These people are reckless enough to get into war with China. They certainly have no qualms to engineer something, maybe anything, to get going on Iran.
No wonder ElBaradei is breaking etiquette to sound the alarm.
Posted by b on June 2, 2007 at 18:22 UTC | Permalink
Now, Rememberinggiap, don't hold back! How do you REALLY feel?
Posted by: Jake | Jun 3 2007 3:11 utc | 2
the neocrazies, eh? that's getting closer to their national socialist roots (just drop several more characters)...
Posted by: b real | Jun 3 2007 6:42 utc | 3
More dangerous "crazy" stuff: The Lady and the Veep
A NEWSWEEK investigation shows that Cheney's national-security team has been actively challenging Rice's Iran strategy in recent months. "We hear a completely different story coming out of Cheney's office, even now, than what we hear from Rice on Iran," says a Western diplomat whose embassy has close dealings with the White House. Officials from the veep's office have been openly dismissive of the nuclear negotiations in think-tank meetings with Middle East analysts in Washington, according to a high-level administration official who asked for anonymity because of his position. Since Tehran has defied two U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of its uranium-enrichment program, "there's a certain amount of schadenfreude among the hard-liners," says a European diplomat who's involved in the talks but would not comment for the record. And NEWSWEEK has learned that the veep's team seems eager to build a case that Iran is targeting Americans not just in Iraq but along the border of its other neighbor, Afghanistan.In the last few weeks, Cheney's staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations. During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan's resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings.
...
Rice has more directly clashed with Cheney's office on issues like Mideast peace, where according to administration sources who declined to be named discussing internal deliberations, she's found herself stymied in efforts to push for more engagement with Syria and the Palestinian radical group Hamas. A senior White House official concedes that even on what should be the simplest-to-achieve deal—a new relationship with Syria that would help stabilize Iraq—Cheney's office is blocking Rice's efforts to bring Bush around. The secretary has also fought with the veep's office in seeking to soften detention policies at Guantánamo.
...
I have been waiting for the buzz to start for an attack on Iran and there have been a few false starts already. They seem to run out of steam fairly quickly and the best they can do is capture the news cycle for a couple of days and then it goes away. It seems that they have not yet got all the players to sing from the same sheet of music.
the only ones to remain consistent in their hate for Iran are our closest allies in the middle east and the rightwing whackos in the US. When Fox and/or CNN start a countdown on Iran we will know that the game is on.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 3 2007 15:37 utc | 5
b , that newsweek piece, cheney's MO in the second paragraph fits iraq to the tee. the pressure to come up w/evidence, anything it takes to justify what he wants to do. it is as if he is on this mission that has no bearing on current events other than he just wants it.
alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan's resurgent Islamist militia,.
lol, cheney could ask his cohorts in pakistan to can provide the smoking guns! maybe they can produce another fake document and have it delivered via sismi.
the title to the newsweek artivle is bs. the 'lady', whatever. what has rice ever actually accomplished? the idea that she could pose a threat to cheney... i wish his ticker would go out.
Posted by: annie | Jun 3 2007 16:00 utc | 6
well jake, for a start - these crazies are a collection of cretins whose catastrophic calculations are sending to us to another kind of hell that will make the cold war seem, friendly
they are a category of clawing clowns that cry at every hint of conspiracy - whether it is some homeless jamaicans in florida or some loudmouths in new jersey & make of that the institutions of fear & it is to our discredit, the people - that actually some people believe them
these motherfuckers are so malefique - they make count dracula seem like a model citizen
for what they & their minder murdoch does - is to draw on the blood of the people, on the imagination of the people, on the desire of the people & they spray it in our own faces
& if edward teller & his gang of go go girl ice cream licking lackeys who presented themselves as an intellectual elite had any real idea of what they have done, what they are doing & what they will do - perhaps even they would understand they are burying the monument they have tried to create
they will lose in iraq, they will lose in afghanistan, they will lose against iran & in the en, in the lobg war - they will be defeated by the dynamic titans - china & india
i suppose there may have never been policy maker so peurile except in the last days of the raj or in the french empire's last ejaculations in indochina & algeria
one after another an imbecility inouï. that punk powell, that asshole armitage, that other asshole ashcroft, the neverending negroponte, the cia's continuing changing guard, & way up there - the complete & utter madmen - rumsfield & gonzales & rehnquist. of course, at their head - the madman in chief whose heart horrifies us all - cheney
bush the barker - who wouldn't know a foreign relation if its name was consuella or fréderique - has made of these crazy motherfuckers & farce worthy of the worst moment in dante's inferno or in any poem of john milton
they possess a madness that goes way off the charts of that evil little manual dsm lll - that otherwise catalogues craziness
Posted by: r'giap | Jun 3 2007 16:10 utc | 7
One typical anti-Iran propaganda piece in todays WaPo: Iranian Flow Of Weapons Increasing, Officials Say
In Iraq, Iranian 240mm rockets, which have a range of up to 30 miles and could significantly change the battlefield, have been used recently by Shiite extremists against U.S. and British targets in Basra and Baghdad, the officials said. Three of the rockets have targeted U.S. facilities in Baghdad's Green Zone, and one came very close to hitting the U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital, according to the U.S. officials.240mm is about 10 inch in diameter. The rocket in question is a Fajr-3. The specs say:
# Calibre: 240 mm
# Length of rocket: 5,200 mm
# Max. range: 43,000 m
# Max. height: 17,000 m (at max. range)
# Weight of rocket: 407 kg
# Weight of warhead: 90 kg
# Weight of HE content: 45 kg
# Weight of system: 15,000 kg
# Length travelling: 10.45 m
# Width travelling: 2.54 m
Such rockets do need dedictated vehicles/lauchpads to be used.
Are we to made believe that insurgents in Iraq are driving around with 11 yard long, half a ton heavy rockets? This with the US air force and thousands of drones ruling the skies?
Sorry, but that is obvious bullshit.
DoS
Judging by the slow drift towards something approaching direct diplomacy, it would seem that the split in the Bush administration over Iran continues to ensure that they can't even share the same hymn book.
FWIW the removal of Rumsfeld definitively killed off the possibility of launching a war with Iran for the remainder of the Bush administration; Gates, the JCS, Petraeus and Fallon share the same policy alignment wrt to Iran - which is the avoidance of a direct confrontation, preferably coupled with a substantive diplomatic approach.
That's not to say that the atmosphere of hostility won't persist and that covert/proxy actions ( from both sides ) will not continue; it's also not to say that the military option cannot be revived at some point in the future - although that would require a radical shift in events/circumstances in the US's favour.
Posted by: dan | Jun 3 2007 17:14 utc | 9
B
The rockets being alluded to in the WAPO are not the Fajr-3 but the modified katyushas that Hizbullah was using to target Haifa, for example, during the war last summer. A quick bit of googling should result in determining the "official" designation.
Obviously the discovery of a truck-mounted heavy rocket system such as the Fajr-3 would have the propaganda machine running in visual overdrive.
Posted by: dan | Jun 3 2007 17:21 utc | 10
@dan - from the wapo piece I linked:
The Tehran government has supplied the same weapon, known as the Fajr-3, to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia.
Anyway - any 240mm rocket will be like some 20+ feet long and will need 10 people to carry it. This with various checkpoints on the roads and under US surveilance?
B
Not disputing that - but the majority of the rockets fired by Hizbullah into Haifa were long-range Katyushas, which are much smaller, can be moved by 2 persons ( with or without a donkey ) and can be rail-launched.
Obviously the WAPO report is not credible and suffers from basic inaccuracies - and they are confusing the modified Katyusha, which is man-portable, with the truck mounted Fajr-3, which is not.
Posted by: dan | Jun 3 2007 17:37 utc | 12
i have dreaded to think of all the shit these (how did you put it, remembereringgiap?) "seriously mad motherfuckers" have been up to behind the fog of the war in Iraq. America's "supreme international crime," the invasion and occupation of Iraq, tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room -- to overwhelm and exhaust our attention. but meanwhile, Lord Bruce Cheney and Karl Christian Rove, and the rest of them . . .
what resources might a true Department of Justice require to confiscate the "day planners" of just these two -- Rove and Cheney -- and rectify every single constitution-shredding, treasury-looting, democracy-thwarting crime against man and nature committed by this bunch?
China! fuckin' 'el!
thanks b!
Posted by: manonfyre | Jun 3 2007 18:06 utc | 13
If Bush and the Officer-puppets want to puke the propaganda that Iran is assisting Afgan Sunni-Wahabbist Jihadis, suppying the Iraqi Shia with Fajr-3 rockets, and supplying both the Iraqi ex-Bathists and Iraqi Sunni-Salafi groups with IEDs (despite the fact that these crude homemade pipebombs can be made in any machine shop) then the Iranians should follow the DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T rule... and flood Iraq with real man-portable anti-tank guided-missiles and real anti-tank land mines. Israel learned a lesson in Lebanon, after years of deploying Merkava tanks against stone-throwing Palestinian boys, the limitations of mechanized armor when confronted with modern anti-tank weapons.
Posted by: Sgt.York | Jun 3 2007 21:54 utc | 14
Same story, except for the small matter of the headline...
Ahmadinejad: Collapse of Israel imminent says Monsters & Critics,
Ahmadinejad: Israel Will Be Destroyed says the Guardian.
Posted by: Alamet | Jun 4 2007 0:02 utc | 15
re: Alamet #15
...and here is a marquee headline on debka.com
Ahmadinejad: Lebanese and Palestinians have pushed “countdown button” for the destruction of the Zionist regime_
Posted by: Rick | Jun 4 2007 0:56 utc | 16
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we have known for some time now that these are some seriouslly mad motherfuckers - they'd invade the womb of their mothers if they thought they could get a halliburton contract
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 2 2007 21:45 utc | 1