Are Bush and his circle simply enemy saboteurs?
By Lee Russ
Tuesday, May 02, 2006 at 04:12 PM
The White House and their media buddies at the right end of the dial keep pushing these two concepts in their fight to stop their loss of support:
Iraq was necessary to show our enemies that we ware strong and willing to fight them.
The outing of Valerie Plame was minor, since she wasn't a covert agent, and even if she was, her outing did us no harm.
Both of these now appear to be demonstrably false.
...said he had confirmed an earlier report that she was helping to keep track of Iran's nuclear activity--not a front and center issue for the White House.Earlier this year, Larisa Alexandrovna of the Web site RawStory.com, reported that Plame, whose covert status was compromised in the leak, was monitoring weapons proliferation in Iran. At the time, officials told her that Plame's outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation."
On last night's Hardball, MSNBC correspondent Shuster reported that intelligence sources told him that Wilson was part of an operation three years ago "tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran." And the sources asserted, he said, "that when here Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well."
Now that's nothing of any importance at this point in time, is it? Just because the US and Iran keeping doing a war dance, with the likelihood of invasion tied directly to an assessment of Iran's current and short term WMD abilities?
And I can't wait to hear what the right wing chorus will send out for talking points to deny or muddy this development.
As to the need to show our Middle Eastern enemies how tough we are....does anyone not named Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld still believe that's what we're doing? It seems to me that what Bush & Co. has managed to trumpet to the entire world is that the US is essentially unable or unwilling to control another rather small hostile country, despite all our technology.
Do you think Iran is looking at the situation in Iraq and saying, "Whoa! Better not mess with the US?" Especially in light of the fact that Iran has reportedly had its troops inside Iraqi Kurdish territory twice in the last few days?
NOTE: If you want to feel really good about the tension between the US and Iran, read the Raw Story report that Ahmed Chalabi is now trying to insert himself into talks between Iran and the US.
Take a look at these two developments: we've shown the world that we can't back up the tough talk, and we've rendered one of our experienced Iranian WMD analysts useless just as we desperately need good WMD analysis about Iran. And this follows the numerous firings, demotions, etc., of the more ethical and competent people in the military hierarchy and various federal agencies.
Come on; don't you wonder, just for a minute, if Bush & Co. aren't actually saboteurs sent by our enemies to destroy us, rather than committed civil servants devoted to saving us from destruction?