Here, reposted for your edification, are a couple of bits and bobs from the mojowire from the past two years...[c.f. here from Aug. '05 and here from Sept. '04]
van.mojo: No More Bets Please...How about that oracular gang at the mojowire, huh?
This is President Bush on October 16, 2002:
“Like the members of Congress here today, I've carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us. If we go into battle, as a last resort, we will confront an enemy capable of irrational miscalculations, capable of terrible deeds”
This is President Bush on May 3, 2003:
"The use of force has been, and remains, our last resort," he said. "Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our Nation has a mission: We will answer threats to our security, and we will defend the peace."
And this is also President Bush:
"All options are on the table," Bush, speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, said in the interview broadcast on Saturday. Asked if that included the use of force, Bush replied: "As I say, all options are on the table. The use of force is the last option for any president and you know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country."
However, this statement was made yesterday, August 13, 2005 and in this last quote he is referring to Iran, not Iraq.
That's it ladies and gentlemen, the bones are rolling, no more bets...
mojo sends
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THE CLONE WAR
J. In March of this year, our Maximum Leader took the little noticed action of declaring in executive order 12957 a National Emergency regarding the "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of the Government of Iran."
Not much to think about there, these things are generally pretty rote. For instance, an official "state of emergency" has existed with regards to Iran since 1979.
At first glance, the creepy thing about this order is the language that mirrors reasons for the Iraq emergency declration made July 2001, two full months before 9/11. But then you read further, and then something even creepier (at least in retrospect) appears: "the emergency declared by Executive Order 12957 constitutes an emergency separate from that declared on November 14, 1979, by Executive Order 12170."
This creepiness was injected directly into the brain stem last week when the Los Angeles Times and several other papers across the country carried the Max Boot piece about how the President needs to take off the kid gloves regarding Iran and get them to respect our authoritay! In a sparse 760-word essay, specific references to terrorism or terror groups: six. And he was very careful to evoke the 9/11 frame and tie Iran to that heinous crime.
At first, when I brought this to Mojowire Editorial Board, we generally agreed that this was just more of Max Boot's dark military fantasies, wet dreaming their ways onto the nation's op-ed pages, especially given that they want to change the conversation right now given that much of that hive brain is currently embroiled in an Italian-Iranian-Israeli-Neocon spy scandal.
We also thought that this was possibly something out of the West Wing; an attempt to stir the jingo pot given Dick Cheney's assertion that the next plane that flies into a building will be piloted by John Kerry.
Then I started to look around and I came up with a few more disquieting bits of deja vu. The President and his inner circle talking about "Iranian links to 9/11" -- which the CIA has already openly discredited, or at least cast serious doubt upon, and Iran's unremitting push to get the bomb, as well as other weapons of mass destruction, and of course casting a righteous light on Iran's deplorable Human Rights record.
This stuff is not coming from the Political Office, though, much less the hideous belching pipes of the Mighty Wurlitzer. This is coming out of Doug Feith's little kingdom in the Office of Special Plans. Literally, the first rock we looked under, and we find John Bolton sucking a smoldering chair leg and sounding off on the way of the world; action, now, against Iran. Interdiction, interruption and control.
But through it all the language of the administration has not necessarily been that of regime change. Yet that will apparently be the new policy of the Bush Administration if they manage to falsify another election. The same phrases appearing in speeches by Condi Rice, Bolton, W and in the op-ed pieces of the likes of Boot, the "grave and growing threat," "links to the 9/11 attacks," "can't afford appeasement."
From the Sunday Herald in Britain on July 18: "A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership. The official said: 'If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.' "
This langauge has been ratcheting up all summer, only now to come full circle. On Monday, the President is going to go the IAEA and ask for a declaration of non-compliance as a step on the way to the U.N. Security Council to get one of those resolutions that he can twist into military intervention.
S. You might be remembered, Wireheads, that about this time last year, the dread Doctor Strychnine dropped a beat down on us all, reminding us why such a war on a conventional scale, like we are fighting in Iraq, is going to be a doomed enterprise right out of the blocks in Iran.
Let's revisit the frightful Dr. momentarily... He pointed out that Iran's military is about 4 times the size of Iraq's, it’s a much larger, richer country that has not been suffering under sanctions and unlike the agreeably flat and mostly water rich Iraq, Iran is a a big giant mountain crag surrounded by a completly arid plane and 2.400 miles of coast.
Yeah... geographically, it's Mordor by the sea.
And as the good doctor also pointed out, it is highly likely that this was the "red team" that handed U.S. military geniuses a public beating out on the town square during the Millenium Challenge War games of 2002.
So why on Earth would these stupid gits pick a fight with these guys now?
Well, for one thing, that question assumes a certain amount of reality in the thinking of the people in OSP. But I think our experience with their strategerie in Iraq has been enough to cure of any delusions regarding Doug Feith's relationship to reality.
Then there's the Israel card. Israel is already conducting operations in Northern Iraq, and the Likudniks currently in power in Tel Aviv would love nothing better than a reason to take out Iran, which backs Hezbollah. We already have the troops ready to stage in theater, and the potential assitance of a newly frocked Iraqi army.
Between the American Israeli Committee for Public Affairs, evangelicals in Department of Defense and a Petroleum industry connected to the White House that would love to see $100 bucks a barrel, regardless of what it would do the economy... yeah, that's a recipe for disaster.
The talk of 9/11 connections to Iran will continue to increase as we get closer to the election, along with Iranian intransigence on nuclear inspection. This will help W get a better handle on the electorate by by scaring them with tales of Iranian death rays mounted on the heads of endangered sharks off the eastern sea board.
In the meantime, the Bolton doctrine being run out of the office of special plans and Doug Feith, the actors are being put in place right now to create an incident that might make military intervention plausible or necessary. At the same time, goading the hardliners to crack down on reformers by continually expressing our support, and making reformers distance themselves more and more from Western engagement.
Then after the election, we start the real march, but make no mistake. This war has already started.
Hey s9, can you find some of the stuff you've written on Iran?
Stay tuned wireheads, there will be a mojowire broadcast this Saturday with all the updated information you will need...
mojo sends
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